Latest Madness

I'm sure many people become obsessed with an idea and have to flog it until it's done.  I'm just going to talk about it a lot.  Enamel.  It's a new world.  I can't wait to get other colors and will soon.  I'll play with it and write about it and I'll wish I'd never heard of it and move on.  Above is a set of purple beads I covered with oxford light enamel.  I can't get enough of the spatterware effect.

Below is a set I made using CiM African Grey and Psyche.  I love the colors it makes!  I wish CiM would do African Grey again just for me!

 I got a hold of some green aventurine frit and naturally the first thing I had to do was mix a bit with blue just because.  I love the streaky underwater kind of thing.  The bottom beads are a base of CiM Stoneground and Roman bronze pixie dust.  They're pretty, but if I wanted that look I'd get copper glass pearls.  Not doing it for me.

Now these are cool.  The same frit blend as the streaky beads above but just melted into copper green.  Does copper green ring and separate on everything.  Pretty sure it does!  I still like these and if they don't sell I'll just make them into beads for me.  Bonus!

Back in Business

I'm delighted to announce that I've finally been able to make some new beads!

Here they are

 Waterlilies frit on CiM Stoneground with silver foil above.  Below, a base of CiM Tuxedo, rolled in light Oxford Thompson Enamel, then decorated with scrolls of more Tux.  I hadn't used enamel before but I'm loving it!

 Above is Effetre dark ivory (the curdled batch) with scrolls of Double Helix Psyche.  Below, a base of dark ivory with Tuxedo and Effetre 14K, light topaz and medium topaz.

 I made a couple cupcake beads and some Caribbean type beads with CiM Freemen, Effetre blue aventurine and Devardi green aventurine.

I just had to share - making beads again is wonderful!

Found Treasures

The thermocouple on my kiln was damaged when I moved so no new beads until next week when the new one comes in, which has me down in a big way.  I did manage to find a few sets of beads that I hadn't listed yet when I moved, so I can have some new things.  I'll ration them out, I think.

My favorite, made with Devardi Aurora frit on CiM Peace.

I really like the delicate color on them.  It's a tough call which I like better, the Aurora on copper green or Peace.

The Effetre streaky denim spacers and indigo hollows I blogged about last week, and I'm not looking forward to trying to get some usable photos of the hollows.  They are lovely and I was going to make them into earrings for myself.  I still might.

I have a second Etsy shop, Fire in Ice Baubles, for handmade findings and non-lampwork jewelry and I made some very cool beads for earrings to demonstrate some dark silver plum headpins I made.  I'm really digging the way the beads look with the copper head pins and end caps.

The beads are a base of Effetre Spring Willow with Double Helix scrolls.  I thought the spring willow would do that wild orange thing it does but apparently this time it decided not to.  It didn't blush much either.  I love the unpredictability of this color!  I made these beads the same day, with the same rod and some blushed and some didn't.

Check out the first spacer to the right of the focal.  Half went orange and the other half pink.  So cool!  If anyone knows why it does what it does, let me know, otherwise I'll have all kinds of fun trying to figure it out on my own.

Mostly Beads

 Fall is in full swing and I've been making lots of beads with fall colors, which for me means using a lot of silver glass and the colors that fume with them.  These were a base of Vetrofond biscotti with DH Psyche.

I've also been gearing up for the holidays with lots of red and green and I can't stop making heart beads.

I liked the way the Reichenbach iris orange reacted with the Vetrofond mauvelous in these.  More of a dusty rose and more mauve than self beads.

 More Vetro biscotti, this time with layered dots of triton and silvered ivory.

These just turned out too cool.  Stringer of DH Psyche and biscotti on Effetre Marmorin.  I love the way the psyche and biscotti together made a kind of wine and cream combo.

 These were just too cool.  Base of Effetre dark ivory with CiM Canyon de Chelly and Psyche stringer, a little silvered ivory thrown in too.

 Did I mention Christmas is coming?

 I've been making quite a few hollow beads too.  I'm looking for the perfect bead caps to turn these into ornament baubles.

 For Christmas ornaments you need red and green, right?

I just love the colors on these.  The purple is CiM simply berry and the amber is Effetre med topaz.  The iridescent bead is DH Clio.  The glass struck the same amber as the orange rounds.  How cool is that?

I'll be honest, right now I'm going through a bit of a tough time and torch work is therapeutic so I have more to make than I have to say.  Hopefully things will improve and I'll be less of a hermit and come out of my virtual cave soon.

Another Weird Reaction

This is one I did quite by accident.  I thought the rod I picked up was CiM Canyon de Chelly (even though it was clearly labeled CiM African Grey) and proceeded to make a twistie of it and Double Helix Psyche.  I went on to use it on a rectangular tabular bead  with matching plain spacers, only instead of the silvered ivory I usually use I tried Effetre intense black stringer.  For whatever the reason, Psyche just came alive!  In addition to the usual reduction rainbow I usually get, the Psyche fumed the African grey and also the Psyche seemed to have struck!  I've got all kinds of wild  color development.

 The bead looks even cooler than this in real life and I'll be using this myself.  To be honest, the spacers didn't turn out to match.  I think I'll use African Grey as a base color.  I can't wait to try it on my other silver colors to see what it does.  I'll also try it with some more intense black just in case, but I really think it's the base glass and not the decoration on this one.

 Unless it's something strange with my torch chemistry lately.  I've noticed some more reduction than I usually get and have been wondering if it's time for a new orifice.  I could be working lower or hotter than usual too.  The speed my poor old hothead achieves is not what I would call breathtaking.  I'm trying out different places in the flame to try to get the d4mn glass to melt and I don't know if this neat effect is a result.  Probably not, but more tests are in order for sure.

Play it Again, Sam

Ever have to make a bead/set similar to one you've made?  Ever forget what you used to make it?  This one was easy, because only two glasses look like this, CiM Canyon de Chelly and Double Helix Psyche.  I never tried to get such a thin layer of Psyche to reduce but the biggest effort was not to get too much gold/green in the spacers.  Canyon de Chelly is so easy to strike...and unstrike!

 This set, believe it or not, was a little more difficult.  Please forgive the difference in pictures.  As we brace for Irene, the clouds were rolling in faster than I could take pictures.  I was pretty sure I used CiM Smurfy for the base turquoise since I hate that grey thing Effetre does, but I'm not sure.  I decided to go with the CiM anyway, because I hate that grey thing Effetre does.

So what have I been doing?  I'm not sure it's a good practice to get into to list the glass I used for each bead/set in my listing, but when I'm saving to my hard drive and publishing to my facebook album, I'm listing what I made everything of and any special processes.  This way if I ever need or want to repeat something, I can.

After a (not so short) break...

 Yeah, it's been a very long time.  I haven't been entirely away from my torch but I haven't been at it as much as I'd like.  The above set is the result of a couple weeks of doing a couple beads here and there.  The base glass for this is Creation is Messy's Canyon de Chelly, one of my absolute favorite glasses to use.  Not only does it play nice in the flame, but it does some pretty cool stuff with other colors and techniques.  It is a striking color that changes color depending on whether it's just heated and cooled or heated, cooled, and reheated.  And then there's the size of the base bead, which makes a difference.  It's easier to get it to do the neat stripey thing on a large bead than a small one.  Shaping the bead with metal seems to give better effects, so the rapid cooling and partial reheating is key, and sometimes after the color strikes it unstrikes again, but unpredictably.  It doesn't seem to change color in the annealer, which I really dig.  What you see going into the annealer is what you're going to get.

The earrings on the right were my first stab and combining CDC with Double Helix Psyche.  I don't know how evident it is in the picture but there is a reaction on the CDC where the silver laden Psyche touches it that doesn't occur with DH Triton or silvered ivory.  I call that neat.  The central beads contain only CDC and Psyche.  The border on the dark Psyche is the reaction from the CDC.  It has to be melted in and superheated.  Notice in the top photo and the vessel that it doesn't always do this.

With this bracelet I was going for balance and similarity between the glass and the dyed freshwater pearls  I used in the earrings, since the pearls were too small for the bracelet.  The glass I used on the spacers is Vetrofond plum.  It does this neat metallic thing similar to Effetre silver plum when treated the same way, that is allowed to air cool until the glow is gone and reheated gently in the top of my hot head flame, but stays more purple, so call it light silver plum.  Note the beads three beads in from the clasp.  The base glass is yellower because it didn't strike at all, being CiM Stoneground.  I couldn't remember whether I used Stoneground or CDC on the earrings and the lack of reaction on these beads reminded me.  Hey, this bracelet is for my own use and with the weight on the clasp it stays right side up so no one will see them anyway.

 I had so much fun making this vessel I'm keeping the pictures big and showing both sides, so there.  I used a 3/16 mandrel and built the end on the end of the mandrel again so it was a pain to clean, but with a solid color vessel and not planning to sell this I went for the stability of having two base beads to build from.  This meant I had two ends to keep warm but for every flower a tear.  I didn't melt the Psyche in all the way but I was loving the way the CDC was striking and I wanted to leave it the way it was.  I also hate the way the camera washes out the reduction effect of the Psyche, but trust me, it really is there.  The handles and rim are made from an actual rod of Effetre Lace Agate I have been hoarding.  On the smaller beads I used silvered ivory, but it wouldn't do for functional handles, since I can't really pull stringers that thick.

I have missed working glass.  There have been compensations, like losing 50 pounds through diet and time at the gymn.  I hope to continue losing about 20 pounds to get back to my "feel good" weight, but the signs of diabetes that scared me, the blood clot that sidelined me and the limitations that my excess weight caused on my mobility are gone.  I recently acheived a time on a mile "jogging" (more of a fast walk, really) that I haven't achieved since I was 15.  Now I have to try to incorporate the things that I really like doing with the things that I need to stay healthy.  I'll never achieve perfection, but all I ask for is a fighting go.  I may even post a new profile picture if I can find someone who knows how to work my camera.

Inspiration in Red

OK, I wasn't exactly inspired when I made these beads, but rather was trying to make a similar bead to the one in my last beady post that turned out even and with red ends.  As is frequently the case, at least with me, the inspiration comes afterward.

I partially achieved my objective, and even more, since I believe that some copper green stringer worked its way into the project and I like the result.  I also am going to attribute the inspiration of these beads to another artist working around the turn of the century.  The way the reactive stringer and twistie fumes and reacts with the apple blush and the lines formed within and around the silvered ivory remind me of some really cool book illustrations I have.

Arthur Rackham was a British illustrator whose best known work was done from 1900 or so through the First World War.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about him.

I have The Romance of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table written around 1917 (I do not have the first edition but the one I have still has the cool art work), a framed print of Tatiana Sleeping from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a couple of smaller prints from Das Rheingold.  The picture above is from Wagner's Ring and the one below is from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  These sort of show what I'm talking about.

Hopefully the paintings and illustrations I'm showing give a bit of insight into some of my creative process.  If nothing else, have a couple pieces of eye candy.  It's totally non-fattening.

My Favorite Oops

 This is my favorite bead yet that didn't come out the way it was supposed to.  I got the shape wrong, so I can't sell it.  The ends are a bit off and the taper on the long bicone is irregular.  What a shame.  I'm just going to hate making this into a nice piece of jewelry for myself.

 The body of the bead is apple blush, covered with a twistie made from opal yellow, psyche and Terra2, CiM adamantium ends and silvered ivory and psyche stringer decoration.  The Terra2 didn't strike very well but I got a really cool mother of pearl effect and the opal yellow struck to a pinkish blush, which goes swimmingly with the small bits of apple blush visible under the stringer.  The psyche reduced better in some places than others, but I was at the end of the cylinder. 

 I can't quite put my finger on what this bead reminds me of.  Something Japanese and/or Mucha.  I have a set of Mucha prints that depicts the four hours of the day, morning, midday, evening and night that this reminds me very strongly of, but others have said that it reminds them of Japanese art or desert branches.

With any luck the couple beads I made to match will turn out ok and I can make this into a bracelet or necklace.

Finally

I was so thrilled with how these turned out I couldn't wait to post them. I couldn't even wait to clean them, so please forgive the mandrels and bead release. They are both heavily encased and decorated in or on the encasement, and they are both on the diet! I can stick to the diet and still produce beads that I can use for a project, as long as it's the right project.

On the left is a base of CiM tuxedo, encased with CiM clear, decorated with a twistie of copper green and CiM Slytherin and a flower or two of CiM poi stringer encased with ink blue. On the right is a base of CiM poi, encased with CiM clear and decorated with dots of the copper green and slytherin stringer. I really dig the way the poi shifts by encasement with the ink blue, and also the way the copper green and Slytherin react with each other. I think the combination works with the plaques better than either color alone would have. Who knew?

For a double shot of my beads on the Creation is Messy site, and to find out more about poi, click here for CiM.

I couldn't just make 2 beads, so I dipped the clear in the DH reducing frit blend I had made and made a fritty bead with this. The glasses were Aion2, CE 352 (when it comes into production it will be Calliope), Aurae, Triton, and Psyche. The Psyche didn't reduce, but everything else did and looks fascinating under the clear. Now I'll have to make more of these, which will mean making more frit, so I can do something with them.

Confession time. This is off the diet, but I couldn't resist using some CiM Sherwood to make the beads on the right. On the left is plain, middle with a wrap of a Triton shard, and on the right is encased with CiM clear and dotted with poi. I love the way the Sherwood is still a bit streaky under encasement.

Ever notice the way your state of mind affects everything you do? Yesterday was a good day and everything went right. The beads turned out the way I pictured they would (when does that happen) I finished in time, and the weather even cooperated today with just the right amount of sun so I could take some decent pictures. I'm going to quit while I am ahead. I have a doctor's appointment today and am hoping to get back to the day job so I can buy more glass again.

One more thing from yesterday: I found a studio near me, about an hour away in Booneville. I didn't get a chance to look into much about it and, frankly, don't have the money until I go back to work to do anything about it, but at the same time, the prospect of taking my first class or two and using a proper torch is scary and intoxicating. Here's the link to their website, and they also have a Facebook page which is how I found them.CNY Glass Studio

Psychedelic Ribbons

I just listed 3 more beads on Zibbet http://www.zibbet.com/FireinIce. Not a nibble yet, but today is the third day I'm on it and I've been listing at a pace which (for me) is pretty fast. At least one of them has been pictured here before, but I was waiting to list them because I wanted to have them available for Heritage Days on June 5-6. Zibbet doesn't have that rule about selling outside their platform, so I'll cancel them if I sell them at the show. They were inspired by Pat Frantz' blog about using DH Psyche with ivory, or in this case, opal yellow and Vetro ELO. I love the way the Psyche struck in them. I had been having a lot of trouble getting neat color effects from it and these were just what I was looking for. They turned out so well, in fact, I don't want to let them go.

All three are a twistie of opal yellow and Psyche over a base of Vetro ELO, heated as hot as I could on my HotHead, then allowed to air cool until no longer glowing at all, then turning up the gas and just giving them a twist or two on the flame, very low in the cone, almost on top of the burner. The iridescent purples, blues, and greens knock me out. I was working on producing long beads for some beadable accessories, so I learned a lot making them in addition to how to strike Psyche. My shaping skills still have room for improvement, but these were definitely a start. I was having a heck of a time making beads to a specific length. I have access to a caliper now when Joe lets me borrow it (must buy my own) but it took a while to figure out to make a marker bead on each end the length I wanted the finished bead to be and then filling it in.

The final lesson I learned was in trying to publish this blog this evening. I do not like the new blogger in draft format at all and absolutely loathe the contortions I have to go through to get pictures into my blog. I invariably wind up scratching the whole thing and doing it again from the blog itself. If wordpress wasn't even that much harder to use and access, I'd be doing that instead. Does anyone know any other stand-alone blog formats?