Coppery Black?

 I've been whiling away the time waiting for my new annealer to come, but the excitement has kept me making some beads.  I was attracted by a new glass available from Devardi, supposed to be usable only by hothead users and rendering a finish similar to the very expensive silver glasses, only in copper, not silver.  Why not take a chance and order some?  Here's a link to Devardi's site and Golden Coppery Black is about 1/3 of the way down the page.  There's even an instructional video showing how to bring up the lustre.  It looks so easy, doesn't it.

 What I got was a slew of black rods, one with a tag bearing the label "golden coppery black", and another with a suspicious spot of color change, distinctly silvery.  You can just see it in the rod in the above picture.  I've included a loop of copper wire in case my picture didn't come out well.  After making quite a few beads with the suspect glass, I believe that the rods were mislabeled.  I tried the rod with the label on it as well, hoping that at least that would be the color I ordered.  No luck.

In the photo above, the bead in the upper left, still on the mandrel, was treated as I would CiM gunmetal, and I got a  very similar effect.  The paddle on the end of the rod was simply mashed, cooled and flashed in and out of the middle of the flame like the video suggests, as were the rest of the beads, except for the one on the right with the DH Triton bumps, where I was trying to reduce it to see if that would help.  The center bead, right next to the copper ring, is made with both ends the Devardi glass and the middle CiM tuxedo, and nothing doing here at all. 

I'm very disappointed by this glass.  I really don't need any more gunmetal, which is what this seems like it's going to be, not to mention I was looking forward to a new glass color just for me as a hothead user.  Devardi glass is less expensive than Italian glass or CiM, but it is shocky and boils and pits if it isn't worked cool enough.  I've received rods that were mislabeled before from more than one source, so unless something miraculous happens to my technique I'll assume that's what's happened.

In the meantime, my annealer was just delivered and I'll be spending the next month trying to figure out how to program it.  Directions so simple a child can program it.  Bah!  Anyone got a child to program this thing, cuz I'm having VCR flashbacks?

10/29/10  Devardi glass wrote back and explained that I've been doing it wrong.  I have to make the bead, turn the gas up to rocket and flash the bead in and out of that once it's cooled to no longer glowing.  I'm not used to working with so much gas, since I'm pretty stingy with the MAPP fuel.  I gave it a try with the labeled rod this morning and will post a picture of the resulting beads.  I definitely had some golden irridescence going into the kiln.  Apparently, MAPP gas gives you a golden hue and bottled propane gives a coppery one.  I wonder if I'll have to get a tank of propane just to see what it looks like.  And I'm still not sure about that rod with the silver smudge.

New Jewelry and Hope

 It's been a couple months, but I finally have something to say.  I have made the odd spacer or two, for my own consumption since I don't feel comfortable selling beads that may crack.  I haven't been enjoying lampworking though since my lack of a way of annealing them properly and the loss of some really nice beads has put a damper on my creativity.  I've also been getting used to working with a pair of diddys.  The soda flare never really bothered me but I talked to an eye doctor about torchwork and she scared me into buying a pair.  I don't know whether it's the lack of the cue of the soda flare or being rusty, but suddenly all my beads were coming out lopsided and I was having the devil of a time with all kinds of other basic issues.  I've finally worked out my shaping, heat control and stringer placement issues and produced the necklace, bracelet, and earrings above.

I lost some weight and my wardrobe needed an update, and purple is one of my favorite colors, so I needed some nice jewelry to go with the new duds.  I like the way these colors come together and have always favored many different shapes in one color group.  The set is made up of CiM Thai orchid, Effetre silver plum light and dark and a few violet transparent.  For decoration I mostly used black metallic with some CiM tux, which has a different kind of reaction with the Thai orchid I used it over.  I restocked headpins and finally got some that will work with 3/32" holes.  I didn't have them when I made this pair of earrings, hence the wirewrapping, but will have them when I get back to beadmaking for real next week.

I still have a bit of time for benchwork because I recently had minor surgery and am able to sit and torch but not walk around for extended periods or lift more than 10 lbs.  I'll have to have Joe set up my new annealer when it comes on Thursday.  I'm so amped.  It's brand new, straight from the factory and hasn't been ruined by anyone else first.  It says it can't be used for PMC but I think if I place a ceramic shelf that's all that is usable from my old kiln in it, it will work fine.  ANYONE WHO HAS ANY FEEDBACK ON THIS IDEA, PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT.  After waiting so long for a proper annealer, I don't want to mess it up.  I haven't done PMC yet and can put it off indefinitely if it means I can make beads that won't crack.  I stole this picture of the chilli pepper I'm getting from the Heritage Glass site in my links.  They have some really good prices and ship really fast.  I had thought about the small Paragon due to its firebrick sides and floor, but decided on the extra bead space, since I can't see making only half a dozen beads and quitting for the day.

So, to sum up, I've been pretty busy.  I lost some weight, started taking better care of my eyes, had to relearn how to torch, had surgery and am looking forward to a new annealer and glass.  I even caught up on some of my housework.  Hope can give you so much energy.  Right now I'm hoping I can get a little momentum with the positive changes I've made to tackle some more of the stuff that's holding me back.

Miscellaneous Work

Time for the awful truth:  My kiln is dead.  I put this bead in it and left it alone, figuring it would do its thing.  What it did was allow the bead to soak for an undetermined amount of time then essentially air cool, without even a fiber blanket to keep it warm.  Its performance has been so so for a while, I think, but this time I caught it.  I'm holding the bead together here.  It was merely cracked, but fell apart in my pocket, cutting my hand as I tried to retrieve it.  I am particularly angry with this bead, since it really was pretty before it cracked and then it went and bit me.

It was supposed to be the focal to go with some of these beads, all made with Effetre Caribbean blue.  The focal shown didn't come out as I hoped because I smeared the yellow badly while encasing and it went particularly ugly with the dark line reaction with the light sky blue of the Caribbean.

This happened a while ago.  It's just taken me a while to feel objective enough to write it down.  I've been making spacers and stuff I can do in annealing bubble, but it isn't the same and I've been doing other mediums, such as polymer clay and wire.  Above is a copper chainmaille bracelet I'm chewing up and the framework for my first effort at Viking knit.  I have to get a chunk of wood and drill some holes to draw it through.

This is the finished polymer clay tree.  I quit when I realized I would never be able to sand it past those gouges left by trying to press it out with my fingers without ruining the tree entirely.  I now own a nylon rolling pin (meant for fondant) and some toungue depressors.I'm at a bit of a loss to explain those white marks in the color.  Any answers, polymer clay folks?

I did pick up some new glass, hoping to lift my spirits while I'm whiling away the time waiting to save up for a new kiln.  The left 3 beads are DH Clio, looking as unlike any Clio beads I've seen as they could.  I don't know whether I messed up the strike or whether they would have finished striking during annealing (sniff) but the darkest I got was a root beer kind of color.  It could be the reducing HotHead, too, because even the plain bead on the left got reduced, and I wasn't even trying to.  2nd in from the left is Clio over clear and 2nd from the right is Clio reduced and encased with clear.  On the right is CiM African grey, which looks a lot like hippo.  I have to dig out my hippo beads and make a comparison.  I'll be honest, I'm really not as excited as I should be about getting the first new glass I've had in almost 6 months.  I'm over halfway there.  Another couple months and I'll be either crazy or back in business.

But Not a Bad Day

I've been working really long days and today is my first one off, so I needed to go shopping.  After a grueling session of grocery shopping followed by assembling the new trolley I bought without instructions and minus one cotter pin, during which it rained a bit, I felt too wiped out to torch so I headed back out for a walk downtown.  This is something I haven't done in the 2 1/2 years I've lived here, and I learned quite a bit.

Rome is not a large town and I was able to walk from the northwest corner to 1/3 of the way on the southern edge and then to the southeast corner and back in 2 1/2 hours.  There are some nice, old houses in town, some of them quite well maintained, and some pretty areas I wish I brought my camera along for. 

I was on a mission to find a "real" health food store that didn't just sell sports supplements (which wouldn't do me any good at all) and I found two.  Plus, I stopped in the shop that sells smoking paraphanalia to see if he carried lampwork and if so, if he had a local source (he doesn't sell beads or jewelry, just pipes and T-shirts, hmmmm.....) Then I was drawn by their window display to the local jeweler, who does carry lampwork beads, but they looked like mass-produced numbers and the salesperson was helping a couple look at rings and I felt I shouldn't wait for them to make up their minds if I wanted to be home in time to make dinner.  I then suffered a whim of nostalgia and stopped in at a game room stocking the latest in Dungeons and Dragons literature and offering Thursday night gaming for oldsters and other games for the young (Magic, the Gathering still seems to be popular.)  I was the only one in the shop other than the shopkeeper over 12.

All in all, a good walk.  I should have checked out the coming attractions at the theater (yes, it's a theater, not a cineplex) to see if any shows were coming I would want to see.  The weather was pleasantly cool and overcast but it didn't actually rain until I was almost home.  I'm already dry and the walk must have done my diet no end of good.  It's still early and I may yet fire up the torch, but I don't feel at all like I wasted a day.

Polymer Clay Tryout

I've made Christmas ornaments and things out of polymer clay before, but never anything with any degree of complexity.  This is my first effort at anything more complicated than gingerbread cutouts and snowmen and stuff.  Naturally, I had to try more than one thing at a time, in this case blending colors to fade and inlaying a tree.  I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, all in all.  It still needs the benchwork, like sanding and drilling and whatnot, but it works in the heat and can be carried on late at night without annoying the neighbors.  All the scraps and trimmings got rolled into an egg shape and will become some sort of spring ornament.  I was surprised by how much darker the colors looked after baking.  Shows what happens when you've only done a few things before.

Bus Trip

 On this one, the bead turned out exactly as it should have, if not how I imagined it.  I wrapped a core of Effetre light pumpkin with copper leaf, added a few odd twisties that I had lying around the workbench, probably involving silver glass, swirled them up, encased the whole thing in clear and swirled that, then melted and reshaped the whole thing.  It would have looked cooler if the texture I started out with had been preserved, but I seem incapable of heating just one spot without blowing the shape of the whole bead.

What I really like is the way the silver glass fumed into the clear.  That I wasn't expecting.  I should have remembered how much lighter the corals get under encasement, but oh well, the pumpkin is doing what it should do and I don't mind the school bus yellow.  Kinda cheerful.

As far as the personal stuff that's been keeping me up at night, I'm feeling a bit better and will continue to pick a household chore at random to ignore.

Beads and Bull

 The blue bead in these pictures is a core of clear with CiM lapis, then bordello around one end and silvered ivory around the other, with squiggles of psyche and a twistie of copper green, terra2, and aura.  I have so much trouble striking the terra2 I don't know why I keep using it.

Hope springs eternal and while I don't get the real color this glass is capable of, I am getting some strike and a neat mother of pearl effect rom all the reduction.

I think the base glass is a large influence upon what I wind up with because the ivory bead is  the same stringer and technique but a lot more drama.

Speaking of drama, a few weeks ago I asked what is most inspiring and I got a couple answers, and they amounted to being around other creative people.  I can say for a fact what kills creativity, at least for me, and that is negativity.  I'm trying to keep upbeat and see the good in every bad and having a rough time of it.  Hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight and wake up in the morning and see things in a different light.