Busy, busy, busy! And more Lauscha

It’s been a rather hectic week and half! I’ve had another Lauscha delivery (glass up on Lauscha.co.uk. I have some odds: Grey Tint and Blue-Reddish (I tried to find a better name for the Blue-Reddish, but none were forthcoming and periwinkle is already taken to refer to a different colour…). I have a little SNT 230 Copper Ruby, which is an intriguing glass: transparent greyish olive in the rod, clear in the flame… strikes opaque brick red in the kiln! More of that is on order. A little bit of Czech glass from the guys at Lauscha taking over a workshop: transparents including a lovely deep blue, plus some white opalino. And a restocking of the soft clear.

So I’ve had all of that to make test beads of, cut and weigh the rods, photograph them, make labels and get them all up on my website so people can actually buy them! On top of that, my oxycon had troubles the weekend before last and needed taking to pieces and investigating. All working now *touch wood* and I documented the process in case it’s useful to anyone else, so there are more photos to edit for that! I’ll post it here too, once I get it written. It shows you how to get to the fan in a DeVilbiss, which is fairly involved and needs two specialised tools. I hadn’t had a look inside before, innnteresting. There are tubes and cylinders everywhere, and of course the compressor taking up a chunk of the space.

Oh, I did a blues comparison for the Odd Blue-Reddish, because blues are notoriously difficult to photograph accurately, so yu can see more accurately what’s what with them all side-by-side. Lauscha, a fair bit of CiM, some Effetre and Vetrofond. These aren’t all the blues I have, just the ones in the same sort of area. May do a more comprehensive one that also includes CiM glacier as I left that out. It also shows Lauscha sky blue, which is a lovely baby blue opaque. I asked for some to test as I had no idea how different it was from other sky blues: very much so! Will be getting some in the future.

I got a bundle of mystery glass: Kate Drew-Wilkinson’s brother was auctioning off a box of her old glass, including some stained glass. I won it, and he very kindly let me pick it up within London, so we went on an adventure one night to collect it and trundle it back via the Tube in my oh-so-trusty wheely trolley. (I did have to mend the bag beforehand, as it came a cropper when transporting the long boxes of Lauscha round the corner and up the stairs). Anyway, mystery glass! I cleaned it all up (the stained is gorgeous and I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring myself to cut it up for beads) and spent some time trying to work out what exactly it was! Think I have it IDed as Plowden & Thompson 93coe – I have a sample pack from them and some of the colours match exactly. Am also meaning to photograph those and see if anyone can give me colour names for the others. I have a lot of a very neon transparent green. Maybe I ought to try making mad scientist beads!

Etsy listings are continuing apace. I’m trying for one a day and frequently failing – getting 5 good photos edited for everything is killer.

In my oh-so-copious spare time (*snort*), I am trying to design some earrings made with semi-precious beads that I’m happy with. I can do lampwork earrings, and I can do semi-precious ones that mimic lampwork earrings: ie the actual design is simple and the bead or stone does all the work, but I’m trying to use some of the smaller beads I have in something a tad more complex and am not getting far. I want to use some hammered copper rings, for example, but use them with sterling earwires without that looking out of place, so that needs more silver accents elsewhere… and I don’t have any larger sterling jumprings to tie things together, so I think I need to make some of those first. It’s a bit frustrating, because it takes me a couple of hours of staring at components and trying them before I start to get anywhere, and then it’s bed time! That’s without distractions.

Oh, I’m also designing myself some more Moo business cards: if you sell on Etsy they have an offer where you can get a free pack of 50 full-size business cards (with Etsy logo on) free, and Moo are also having a 30% discount this weekend and I fancy some of my own-branded stickers, because wouldn’t that be awesome? Anyway, the DTP package is out (I use Scribus, it’s open-source, free and pretty good!) along with yet more photo editing. Am very happy with the way some of my photos look at full res, though! Much love to my camera: it’s a Panasonic Lumix TZ6 and a fab little worker.

That’s enough waffle for right now, I think!

Beads, buttons and ring toppers for sale!

My Etsy shop is up and running: HeatherKellyGlass on Etsy. I’m adding a new item each day, so check back often!

Currently up we have an autumnal focal lentil, a decorative button in blue and green, and a bright orange-pink silver glass interchangeable ring topper.

The ring toppers are great – they have a small nut in the back that will screw onto a 2.5mm threaded screw. You can get rings in sterling or stainless steel, pendant backings and cufflinks that you can screw the toppers on to. So you can have one ring and dress it up depending how you feel on the day! You can collect little wearable bits of glass art from your favourite lampworkers and show them off.

Sabine Little of LittleCastleDesigns has the rings in stainless and sterling, pendant backs in both, and cufflinks in stainless steel.

George Harper East (mizgeorge.co.uk, mizgeorge on Etsy) makes sterling silver adjustable rings for adults and children – these are fab, I have one and it is incredibly comfortable to wear. She also takes commissions if you want something a bit different.

I went for adjustable because my fingers change size quite a bit through the course of a day depending on how hot they get! I didn’t wear rings at all before this, now I can wear my own toppers (and the advantage of a ring topper over a necklace, say, is that you can see it yourself all the time!).

I’ve started a glass-related Twitter account: GlassByHeather where you can keep up to date with new listings, and also see me wittering on about glass in general.

Off-mandrel hearts

Serendipitously, Holly of Holly’s Folly Glass posted this off-mandrel heart tutorial and I thought “Ooh, that looks interesting” so I went off to have a go.

First off-mandrel heart

First try! I used a thick rod of transparent pale blue for the base and added twistie ends in neutral and green. I twisted the centres, shaped the heart end and added a loop in baby blue (tricky!). Then I held the heart in my reverse-action tweezers, not the loop, in case it might shock. I took off the rod and heated the end to round off, then tried to put the heart into my kiln… but the tweezers wouldn’t let go! So I stuck it in my annealing bubbles to cool down. My tweezers have very thin pointy ends, and one of them had got embedded in the glass. I hadn’t put them in the flame, but I most have got them too hot anyway because it was well and truly stuck. In the end I just bent off the tweezers, so now one of the points is shorter than the other, and the remains are still in this bead… After this, I used my needlenose pliers instead and always hold the loop!

I made heart 2 (the blue one below) in the same way, without the mishap. Then I read Mr Smiley’s heart tutorial (there are pics later on in the thread) and I made more… and more. They’re fun and rather addictive, but I still find the loops tricky!

Blue and pink off-mandrel hearts

Blue heart: pale blue with a blue twistie and a green+brown twistie.
Pink heart: Reichenbach mystic pink mixed about with Lauscha soft clear. Goldstone ribbon on the surface and encased. The shape has a bit too much on one side for my liking.

Citrine twistie heart

This heart is Lauscha citrine with my red roof tile twistie. There were a couple in between the pink heart and this one, but they’re off to the Valentine’s swap so I won’t show them yet. The RRT twistie hasn’t been a great success – basically it may as well be RRT and hades only, because those are the colours that take over.

Opalino raku heart

I really like this one. It’s a white opalino base with coe 96 raku frit. I didn’t strike the frit properly, though I did get the opalino hot enough that it’s started displaying faint black spiderwebbing in places. Neither of which I mind – I think it gives it a delicate look, and the muted colours go well with it.

Necklace for Carys

This is a necklace I made as a Christmas present for my boyfriend’s sister Carys.

Necklace for Carys

The lampwork beads are transparent mid blue, and the lentil focal has white stringer scrolls. I also used small blue-clear Czech crystals, Greek silvered ceramic spacers and blue silver-lined seed beads. With sterling silver findings and one of Diane’s silk strings.

Necklace for Carys - detail

I kept it simple and I think it worked really well.

November Colour Challenge Swap

We had a Colour Challenge quick swap on FH. We formed groups of 5, and each of us picked a colour without knowing what the other people in our group had picked. We then all had to make beads using our five colours and only those colours. It’s an interesting challenge!

My group’s colours were CiM heffalump, dark transparent turquoise, ivory, coral and periwinkle.

Colour swap trial beads

These were my trial beads, just seeing what I could do with the colours. You can see that I leaned towards making the dark transparent turquoise my main colour (it was the one I chose!). It’s interesting to see what the rest of the group did differently.

I decided that the heffalump and periwinkle were a bit too similar for my tastes. They aren’t the same colour, but they are a similar kind of tone in this application. Heffalump colour-shifts from pale pink to lavender blue, and periwinkle is bluey-purple – on top of dark transparent turquoise they both look purplish. On the tubular bead, it has periwinkle on the end and heffalump just past halfway down and they look almost the same. For this reason I mostly tried keeping one as the core in my test beads, and tended to put dark transparent turquoise dots over the other. I’ve seen some lovely things done with heffalump, it just didn’t hold its own in this colour combination. Because we had ivory, it couldn’t be used as the palest colour either.

I’d be interested in playing more with this colour combination, but I think I’d leave out the heffalump and stick to four colours. It makes planning easier!

Colour swap prototype

I made some shards and murrini, and this was my prototype for the final design. The base is dark transparent turquoise, the shards are ivory, coral and periwinkle, the murrini are periwinkle, dark transparent turquoise, coral and ivory. I added heffalump and coral dots, put dark turquoise on top and left them raised.

Colour swap beads

These are the beads I swapped. They’re tubby lentils, and I’m quite happy with how they turned out! I didn’t have as much time for experimenting as I’d have liked (no torch for a week because of a broken washing machine blocking my space).

Colour swap beads, view 2

Would I have made them without the challenge? Probably not, and that’s why it was a really good idea! I’m pleased the murrini worked, too – it’s hard to tell with so many reactive colours in a small space.

Blue hollow necklace

Blue hollow necklace, take 1

Transparent dark turquoise hollow with white stringer. It has Greek silvered ceramic curved beads and a couple of small clear triangular seed beads. I should mention that I love silvered ceramic. It lets you get substantial silvery beads that are affordable and easy to wear, while being much more durable than silver plate. You don’t have to worry about what metals it’s made up of either – the coating is fine silver. Because the beads are ceramic, the irregularities you get are very different from those in a solid metal bead (casting lines in mass-produced beads for example), and I like that. I think they suit lampwork well.

The necklace as shown here is a prototype and needs changing a bit because it is very front-heavy and the clasp has a tendency to slide around. (I used the same swan neck hook that’s on my pumpkin necklace, which is why it isn’t in this photo). That’s another reason I like knots, because they keep the beads spaced out and in the same position on the string, so the necklace doesn’t rotate.

I always get myself into confusions when trying to string necklaces like this – I like my lampwork on chunkier cords, but I also want to be able to use small accent beads, which of course have very small holes! The cord here is 1.5mm waxed cotton and is thin enough for a variety of things to fit on it, but for this necklace I think something more substantial was required because the weight in one place makes it hang in far too narrow a curve.

Redo from start, I think.

Cheeky Frit Blends: Ferry Cross the Mersey

Ferry Cross the Mersey

Ferry Cross the Mersey

Not a full test, but I played about with this a bit. Left is a white base with silver leaf, frit on top and superheated, the ends encased in clear and then it was pressed. Right is a white base, the frit was painted on with clear, then I added some silver brown dots that were reduced and dot encased, then it was pressed. Not successful since the silver brown is the browny-ambery areas…

The bird is made of clear dipped in the frit and painted on.

Nice deep blues in this frit, and lots of saturation for using with clear.

Lampwork: week 16

[June 7-13]

This week I was trying to use red, green and blue in the same bead. It’s tricky.

Fritties: Sangre lentil encased in clear with chameleon frit. BeadySam’s Gem Surprise frit over white, then over a sangre core that was encased in clear, then over dark lavender, then over periwinkle. Dragons Candy frit over sangre (way too dark!). Dark blue transparent over white with Gem Surprise.White core encased in teal, with robin’s egg blue frit. Another sangre core encased in clear with Gem Surprise.

Fritties

Jungle beads. I’m calling them that because the lentil looks like someone twisted a jungle! The bases are sangre, periwinkle and pea green, and I used some short ends of twisties from Jolene to decorate each bead. The lentil was half periwinkle, half pea green with all the leftover little twistie ends from the other beads, and the centre was swirled.

RGB jungle beads

Another pair of tries with red, green and blue. The left lentil is a white core, half encased in dark grass green, half in cobalt blue, zig-zag and dot decoration on top. The second is a pea green base with black hair thin stringer lines, encased in teal, then med lapis, dark turquoise and dark blue transparent trails, and sangre on top.

RGB lentils

I decided after these that to use red, green and blue successfully together in one bead, I probably needed a fair amount of white in it as well. Haven’t tried that yet, though!

I had another go with Reichenbach silver brown. Here there is a silver brown core, reduced and encased in clear, and a sangre core encased in silver brown, reduced and encased in clear. The second one in particular I got too hot while trying to melt the clear round.

Silver brown rounds

Variety of things:
Pale green apple faux boro stringer over sangre, encased in clear. Hades and multicolour dark twistie over sangre. Sangre with very thin rings of MCD, encased in clear. Repeat of the first one but with more faux boro stringer.

Faux boro etc

And a matching lentil – sangre with pale green apple faux boro stringer, encased.

Faux boro lentil

In the How Not To Do It files, silver brown over sangre lentil, reduced and then begun to be encased… It was taking ages, I already suspected I’d got the core too hot, and then the fire alarm in the hall started beeping because its battery was running down. So I put the bead away as was and went and fixed the alarm.

Wrongggg

Here we have a kryptonite lentil rolled in purpur, chameleon, robin’s egg blue and granny apple green frit and the centre swirled. The middle two rounds are dirty martini with those same frits and then with a red frit blend. Finally, a rose opalino lentil with purple twisties.

Pastels

This is rose opalino and Reichenbach pink lady with SIS round the centre and swirled, plus Jolene’s purple murrini.

Rose lentil

Teal lentil with quartz grey shards. I was going to do more with this, but broke my bead release. Then two somewhat messy kaleidoscope beads from Passing the Flame. Then two tiger-ish beads. The first is a black base with a green and red twistie, SIS, some uranium yellow transparent and encased in clear. The second is a black base, SIS, yellow and red twistie and some amber on the surface.

Shard and PTF beads

A speedy post for some speedy earrings

I made these a few weeks ago.

Simple blue earrings - beads, tigertail, crimps

I wanted some purple or blue dangly earrings in a hurry, so I looked through my bead stash and grabbed these large deep blue gold-flecked vintage beads. I picked them up at a bead fair as part of a broken necklace, so I have a number in graduated sizes. I paired them with light blue glass rondelles, threaded them on flex-rite with a little seed bead each, and crimped them. Hey presto, earrings!

They’re just the right length, too. They dangle elegantly!