52 earrings: #25 Kumihimo Hoops

The same kumihimo braid pattern as last time: this time I made them into hoops.

#25 Kumihimo Hoops

I was going to add more wirework at the top but didn’t have the wire ready, so I will probably readjust these ones.

The hoops have been ready for a while – last night I added the lampwork dangles and earwires.

52 little things links
• Craft Pimp Week 24 thread
• Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design: http://www.earth-shine.co.uk/
• Sue of BlueBoxStudio: http://www.blue-box-studio.blogspot.co.uk
• Jolene of Kitzbitz Art Glass: http://kitzbitzartglass.blogspot.co.uk

52 earrings: #24 Woven Around

A lot of my friends are doing kumihimo at the moment, there was a full kit on sale a few months ago… I’m sure you can guess the rest. Kumihimo is rather addictive and I can do it in my lunch breaks. (It takes me back to the knotted friendship bracelets I used to make when I was a teenager, too). I made a few long braids, then decided that the pattern on this one would look good in short earring-length pieces.

#24 Woven Around

So I made the braids, wrapped up the top ends in thread so that they couldn’t come undone, then added the copper wire-wrapping. Which should have been simple, but I will now have to digress into the evils of anti-tarnish coated wire…

I said I was going to patinate last week’s earrings with liver of sulphur. I have the gel variety, followed the instructions and put them in a little pot with warm water and a few drops of gel. So far so good. I put in some textured washers I’d made beforehand too. They sat in there for a while and I noticed that the earrings weren’t getting any darker, unlike the washers. I’d got this wire in a sample pack of different sizes: some of them are anti-tarnish, some aren’t, and they don’t say so on the packaging. I got everything back out, neutralised in bicarb solution and went looking for how you remove the coating. I tried attacking it with micromesh, steel wool, nail polish remover and had another go. This time I used much hotter water and got little bits of black, but only on the top side of the topmost wrap of wire. So my previous earrings are now backwards from the usual finish, where everything goes dark and then you polish back the highlights!

These earrings were made with the same wire and the copper was too bright for the braid, so I’d wanted to patinate these ones too. I’d been going to just paint the LoS on the surface of these, because I didn’t want to soak the cord in the solution in case it absorbed the smell. But after all the faffing about above I obviously wasn’t going to be able to get the effect I wanted this way!

Instead, I knew the coating burns off easily because I’ve seen that before when balling up wire, so I unwrapped all the wire, carefully went along straightening both pieces out with my pliers and then passed them through my torch flame in sections. The coating burns off quickly (and with a green flare) and at the same time the wire gets flame patinated and reannealed. I ended up with darkened varicolour wire that was easy to wrap back around my braids. Hooray! They will probably get darker still over time.

These are shown on my niobium earwires and I am wearing them right now. They’re nice and light for long earrings.

52 little things links
• Craft Pimp Week 23 thread
• Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design: http://www.earth-shine.co.uk/
• Sue of BlueBoxStudio: http://www.blue-box-studio.blogspot.co.uk
• Jolene of Kitzbitz Art Glass: http://kitzbitzartglass.blogspot.co.uk

52 earrings: #23 Robin’s Egg Drops

A speedy post this week, sneaking in before midnight!

#23 Robin’s Egg Drops

These are another pair that I’ll be keeping. Picasso-finish Czech glass in a greeny turquoise, wire-wrapped in copper. The bigger beads are from the Curious Bead Shop. These are in my to-be-patinated pile – I want the inner wraps to be quite dark to go with my niobium earwires and then polish back the highlights on the wraps (they’re on copper earwires here). They’re nice and light to be easy to wear.

I have some liver of sulphur gel since my liquid has been unused for years and is likely way past its shelf life, I just need to take the time… I have some other ones that need doing too.

52 little things links
• Craft Pimp Week 22 thread
• Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design: http://www.earth-shine.co.uk/
• Sue of BlueBoxStudio: http://www.blue-box-studio.blogspot.co.uk
• Jolene of Kitzbitz Art Glass: http://kitzbitzartglass.blogspot.co.uk

Some more 96 coe beads

Here are a few more beads I made with the 96 coe glass.

I made a latticino with steel blue and heliotrope and used it on this little bead (which vaguely reminds me of an elephant). I probably pulled it down a tad too small, but you can still see the lines.

I made some flowery beads – these include a vine cane made of steel blue and vanilla.

I forgot to include the swirly blue bead in the pictures above – it was made from the end of the cane pull.

Finally, these are some little cylinder beads similar to my previous test beads that I am going to make a necklace from.

52 earrings: #22 Plum Sparkle

I made this pair using some of my recent 96 coe test beads – these are the plum blue.

#22 Plum Sparkle

They’re very shiny themselves, so I added sparkly purple Czech crystal dangles and did double wire-wrapping in sterling silver to add a little more bulk. I used long sterling earwires for these.

I’ll be away on a sculptural borosilicate course with Jennifer Umphress this Fri-Sun, so will try and get the next pair done early and schedule my post in advance. (I am so looking forward to this!)

52 little things links
• Craft Pimp Week 21 thread
• Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design: http://www.earth-shine.co.uk/
• Sue of BlueBoxStudio: http://www.blue-box-studio.blogspot.co.uk
• Jolene of Kitzbitz Art Glass: http://kitzbitzartglass.blogspot.co.uk

Colour testing: Lauscha SNT 219 red, 05/13 batch

Lauscha have made a new batch of SNT 219, the more transparent of their reds. I was sent a sample to test, and here are the results.

Firstly, this is an absolutely gorgeous red. The 05/13 is a darker colour than the 02/13 batch and it is a true transparent. I made a plain lentil bead first, and there is no mistiness or opacity developing at all. (The last batch began to go a bit misty). New lentil is in the bottom left.

You can see that in colour it is more like a transparent version of the old SNT 220 I have, while the other two lentils are a brighter red. The clarity and depth of colour is beautiful.

I did some layered dots: here we have a base of red, tehn dots in white and red. By the light shining through on the bottom right you can see that this bead is still transparent (it is harder to see that on this type of bead because the opaque dots block the light). You can see the dots show as orange when used so thinly and do not spread quite so much as the brighter reds. The dots struck and unstruck as I added more layers: it isn’t hard to strike them at all and in larger amounts no deliberate striking is needed.

I made two dotty ladybird beads – these have a core of SNT 219, encased in SNT 100 clear and black dots on the surface. You can see they are definitely still transparent. I then etched them to give a nice inner glow.

I made a rose to compare with the others. The difference in transparency is huge! This is still a true transparent. The edges of the outer petals have an orange cast – this is fairly typical since the glass is thinner there and is not worked for long. The heart of the rose shows as the darker red.

Finally, the new rose on its own!

I love this colour. Like all the Lauscha transparent reds, it doesn’t go brown when worked for a while and it’s also very easy to strike. And it has the bonus of being truly transparent!

52 earrings: #21 Thunder Lizard

For my earrings this week, I used a pair of beads I made a long time ago.

#21 Thunder Lizard

The lampwork beads are dragonscale ones that I made when I was testing what colours that technique worked with – this pair went much darker because of a reaction with the base glass, but they still have a good organic look.

I also used some Indian agate rondelles in a colour that is really difficult to describe… They’re a slightly translucent mottled brown/lilac that just reads as ‘dark’ most of the time. I added a pair of golden Czech glass pearl nuggets and put them on copper headpins and earwires.

52 little things links
• Craft Pimp Week 20 thread
• Linda of Earthshine Lampwork Bead and Jewellery Design: http://www.earth-shine.co.uk/
• Sue of BlueBoxStudio: http://www.blue-box-studio.blogspot.co.uk
• Jolene of Kitzbitz Art Glass: http://kitzbitzartglass.blogspot.co.uk