Vacation

Over the next few weeks, my family and I will be taking a few short vacations to visit the waterfalls of northern Georgia and western North Carolina.  I won't have much time to fire up the torch, but I'll be back in September.

Hollow glass shells

Now that summer has arrived, I've been thinking about beaches and beach combing and a recent issue of Soda Lime Times gave me some ideas for making shell beads, using hollow beads.  The results, still experimental are shown below:

The one in the lower left was made on a puffy mandrel, using two layers of glass, a transparent pin, and ivory.  I purposefully left one spot thinner than the rest, and as I kept blowing that spot ballooned out until it popped.  Then I played with the edges to produce a shell-like shape.  The others were made by first laying down a thin tube of pink (CIM Desert Pink).  Then I built up discs of ivory or CIM Butter Pecan at either end, pushed them together and let nature take its course in making a hollow bead.  When I achieved the shape I wanted, I heated one spot until glowing, then pulled that part of the bead with my pliers and when sufficiently cool, I cut it with nippers and opened up the resulting hole, again playing with the edges to mimic a shell.  There's plenty of room for improvement and improvisation!

Caramel candy

I recently purchased some Double Helix silver glass from Franz Glass and I've been experimenting with the colors.  One idea I found as a free tutorial on Lampwork, Etc.   It's listed as fire opal but it reminds me more of creamy caramel.   You make a base bead out of black,  wrap silver foil around it, burning off the edges but leaving the band intact.  Then you heat a rod of Ekho and when the tip is transparent you, you lay down one or two swirls of the glass around the bead, then encase with clear. 

In addition to using black as my base bead, I tried butter pecan (CIM 703), shown in the middle, and honey crunch (Vetrofond 990), shown at the end.  I think I prefer the lighter background,  They look good enough to eat!

Striped beads

I've been trying to make striped beads forever and haven't had any success.  at a recent class at Spruill Center for the Arts with Margo, she demoed the technique she uses and the results is shown below:

The base for these beads was black or ink blue;  the dots were made by placing 6 largish white dots around the bead, leaving space between them.  The amount of space determines whether there will be a dark line between the stripes or not line.  Then I places transparent colors on top of the white, in this case alternating transparent pea green and aqua.  I allowed the dots to melt in completely before placing clear around the bead in the center of the dots, being careful not to touch the edge.  I put several (3-4) layers of clear, then melted that in.  Voila! Stripes!

Galaxy beads

Galaxy beads are a favorite with lampwork bead artists because there is so much room for individuality, yet just about anything you do looks fabulous.  For these beads, demoed by Margo in her class at Spruill Center for the Arts, we started with a thin layer of clear glass, then wound a layer of transparent cobalt blue glass followed by threads of clear.  From here we  improvised.  I added silver foil.  I trapped some of it under clear, but left some to burn away.  I also added silver mesh and allowed it to burn into beads.  I added small pieces of dichroic to one of the beads.  I spread the burned off silver foil by gravity on another bead to create swirls.  Finally, I encased them with clear.  Below are the beads, three of which have been prepared for use as pendant with silver caps and silver wire bails:

Raked star beads

I'm back in Margo Knights class at Spruill Center for the Arts for the spring term.  For our first class, Margo demoed raked star beads.  The concept is simple:  start making a disc bead with two or three layers of class.  instead of continuing to add layers, add dots around the edge of the disc.  Build up as many layers of complimentary colors as desired.  When you are satisfied with the layers, heat just the area to be moved, then rake towards the center of the bead with a metal rake or the end of a stringer.  It sounds simple, but the placement of the dots is critical.  Also, the dots must be uniform in amount of class used.  My attempts are shown below.  I didn't try anything more adventurous than 6 pointed stars.

For a more complete tutorial on raked star beads, see the thread on WetCanvas.

Southwest frit

After having spent a month touring the national parks of Arizona and Utah, I feel inspired to make beads and jewelry with a southwestern motif.  I've attempted to recreate the scenery of the winter landscape:  sagebrush and juniper against a background of red sandstone mesas.  I made my own frit mixture from commando (CIM 475), shrubbery (CIM 410), muskmelon (CIM426), pine tree (Effetre 344), light brown (Effetre 0444, spanish leather (Effetre 423), and brown rock (Effetre 654).  Here's what the frit mixture looks like:

Here are some of the beads I've made from it:

The three beads on the left were made by adding the frit to a base beads of commando, canyon de chelly (CIM 722) and stone ground (CIM 351), respectively plus periwinkle (Effetre 220) for the sky.  I melted in silver wire on the second bead from the left.  The bead on the right was made by adding frit to a base bead of red roof tile.

As usual, it's highly likely that these beads or ones like them will end up on my Etsy site:  etsy.com/shop/DeborahDRoss