the diet continues

I've been working on a limited palette and having a lot of fun with embellishment. I've stumbled upon a combination that pleases me and will be making a set out onf the resulting beads. First, I am melting in silver foil and rolling in homemade DH frit blend, then applying a twstie of Psyche and opal yellow and an odd swirl or two of silvered ivory, then mashing. What is changing is the base glass. I've done Martian strata, poison apple, and now poi and pearl grey.

CiM poi is on the left and Vetrofond pearl grey odd is on the right. Both colors reacted nicely with the silver and silver glass by becoming less grey. Poi develops a warmth that wasn't present in any other combination I've tried so far and pearl grey becomes a sort of semitranslucent olive. The bubbling appearance of the sis continues. None of the pictures I've taken so far shows how the psyche struck, but I'm hopefull I'll find a way to do this by the time I have the set finished.

I am halfway through my palette with ink blue, ghee, oliva nero and slytherin left to go. Three of these colors are transparent and one's an opalino type. Can't wait to see what this does.

Hopefully the doctor will release me to return to work next week. I will have no time to torch then, but that is the tradeoff.

To see my discovery on CiM's site and find out more about this amazing color click here

color diet success

As I am beginning to get used to the color diet, it is getting easier to work the beads. The one on the left is the final, successful bead with ghee, silver foil, mixed DH reduction frit, and a twistie with copper green, Terra 2 (still striking), Triton (not striking) and slytherin, which is very thin indeed here. I finally made this one without cracking by encasing a clear core with the ghee and then decorating it from there. Everyone had to take a look at it at the demo, although it didn't sell. I could have sold it for $3, but I wasn't going that low for a bead I spent a long time working on and that I haven't even tried to sell elsewhere yet. If I still have it in August I may have reduced the price, but I don't think I'll go that low.

These are a couple of nice ones made with a similar technique but slightly different colors. The one on top has a base of CiM poison apple and on the bottom is Effetre coral Martian strata. Both were rolled in silver foil, then the reduction frit. I applied a stringer of DH psyche and yellow opal, melted it in, then applied sis. I am thrilled about the funky way the reduction frit from 2 layers down expresses itself on the silvered ivory. I know it is this and not the stringer because other beads I have used this exact stringer on didn't do it. It is kind of pebbly or bubbly in appearance but smooth in texture. The combination of silver and silvered glass really changed the color of both base glasses as well, which was a surprise. I was in such a hurry to post them that I haven't cleaned them yet, but they will be making an appearance in one form or another on Etsy.

I haven't checked out what the kiln fairies left from yesterday but I have high hopes from the pearl grey. Maybe I'll do something using a similar decoration on multiple color base glasses for a funky organic bracelet...

Heritage Days 2010

I am tired and happy after a successful sale at Heritage Days in Westernville, NY. It was a Revolutionary War reenactment open to the public and the customers were fantastic. Both the reenactors and the public were genuinely interested in what I was doing and how it related to the time period, and they asked intelligent, considerate questions. This means so much to me as I start out and I can't wait to do it again.

No pictures yet because I didn't take any pictures and Joe doesn't use the camera. OK, he has used it before but I've never been able to use any of the pictures he's taken. A friend has promised to email me what she took but she is very busy and I won't hold my breath.

I did learn a few things that I would like to record for next time.

Don't torch outside. Whether it is sunny or overcast, the flame is invisible in natural sunlight and can burn you badly if you misjudge where it is. My fingers will eventually heal but I have deep 2nd degree burns on the first 2 fingers of my left hand where I actually stuck them into the flame because it was windy and I couldn't see where it was. The worst part was that I was demonstrating in front of a couple young kids and didn't want to alarm them so I couldn't vent the string of profanity I would have at home. I just casually poured the water from my quenching jar onto my hand and carried on torching.

Set up your shop at home in a space similar to the space you will be using at the show. This way you can tell if it is going to look bare or cluttered. You can also see if your display ideas will be practical.

Have all your merchandise priced before you leave home. This way you don't have to remember prices for all your different items when you're busy. It also prevents underpricing and bartering. I had nothing labeled and a dozen people hit me at once while I was setting up.

Have everything ready to roll before the show opens. This way merchandise isn't placed in the wrong place. I was using a very simple system where everything in one bowl was one price, everything on another rack was another and it worked well once it was set up, but I couldn't leave even for a moment because Joe didn't know which items went in which bowls and customers love to pick things up and handle them before they buy them and can't be expected to remember where they got them.

No freebies. A little kid had been hanging around my booth all weekend and had her eye on a particular bead, one of a pair. One of them sold but not the other, so I finally relented and let her take it, since it didn't take long to make and was made of cheap glass. She immediately left to get her brother, who selected a similar item. I had no problem letting him have one because he had bought 2 or 3 beads at regular price earlier. I did have a problem when she came back and asked for one for her cousin. I have sucker written all over me in letters kids have no trouble reading.

Plan ahead for promoting yourself. Have a closed in area (buying an EZ-up with sides is on the agenda while I still have my profits) and a nice-looking sign, business cards and mini portfolios available. I had a handout that was very useful but wound up using Joe's cards, which was less professional than I could have hoped for. The handout doesn't fit in a wallet and not everyone cares about the craft and history.

Have plenty of packaging material and findings. I had a couple sales that I wouldn't have had otherwise because I was able to make earrings right there. I also brought the findings and some ribbon to tie beads together as an afterthought and was glad I did. I sold several beads at a time to some people and it was helpful to have them strung together. I would have liked to have small plastic or paper bags to make a bulkier and less easy to lose package. Also, next time, cloth gift bags. What does it take, a yard or 2 of calico and drawstring. These I have in abundance. Time to make them less so, but I can't bear spending $4-5 for only a dozen bags.

Bring more fish. When I first started making beads, I made about 50 of them. I brought home 8. Kids love them and parents are even bigger suckers than I am when it comes to spending a buck or 2 on their child's whim. I even custom made a few of them at the site because customers wanted colors I didn't have. I even made a couple penguins and a frog. This won't be an option at the next show, but knowing what to expect is a huge plus.

Have a receipt pad with carbons. Not for the customers' sake, but mine. The only way I now have to calculate sales tax is to take my total sales and do the backwards math to figure out what the sales tax should have been. My calculations won't be tough, because I did fairly well in math, but I should have planned ahead for this as well. If the IRS audits me I'm up a creek.

Remember the reason you are there. I was there to have fun first, sell stuff second, and promote the craft and historical knowlege third. I think I managed all 3 and this is what made this a successful event in my book. I have another show scheduled in August and this one is just a craft fair, so goal 1 will be sales. I plan on rereading this post prior to the show to remind myself of what I have learned.

there's good news and there's bad news

The success I had on the blog yesterday left me anxious to try the bead again with modifications, namely making a DH reducing frit blend, substituting Triton for the reducing glass and Terra 2 for the striking glass, and replacing the sis with plain ivory. I managed all three and even got better striking on the Terra 2 and the silver foil/frit underneath to show a little (the frit blend on top of foil pits a bit, by the way). What I forgot is that sometimes encasing yellow glass causes the bead to crack.
The bead was successfully made and annealed and removed from the mandrel. There were no thermal issues. I was holding it in my hand preparing to clean it and I felt and heard a pop. I was then holding 2 pieces of bead, cracked not along the hole but diagonally across it. I then remembered that yellow glass and opalino are both notorious for being difficult to encase. Ah. Back to the drawing board.

I did have one small success. Giddy with the good luck I had the day before striking Terra light, I decided to make a bead out of Terra 2 and see if it would strike. And it did! It's the one on the right. The one next to it is the end of the rod I made the twistie from, as a way of doing something interesting with the glass and leaving a clean end for next time.

color diet day 3

I would like to thank Melanie Graham of the Mind Melt blog for getting me involved in this challenge. I have so far found my level of creativity being stretched and my technical abilities as well. It is said that a poor workman blames his tools and I am very ready to assign my lack of expertise to the beginner setup I work with. I have a HotHead torch and use 1 lb. canisters of Mapp gas due to the limitations of working at home, but as witnessed by Sarah Hornik, among many others, this is not an excuse for producing lousy beads.

Per Jed at Double Helix, I shouldn't be able to strike non-reducing colors of DH glass with my HH without reducing them to mud. I have always found this to be the case. Just as I am getting the barest hint of color, the bead turns all tan or grey and stays that way. Perhaps because of the small, thin quantities of glass involved, but more likely because of the colors that are surrounding it, I got a blush out of the Terra light I used in this bead. It is most visible at around 1 o'clock on the top photo of this bead. This bead was made using the suggestion from Melanie's comment 2 posts ago. I made a twistie of copper green, slytherin, Terra light and Psyche and used it on a base bead of ghee that had been wrapped in silver foil and aurae stringer (I have to make a DH frit blend). Neither the silver foil nor the aurae shows much except for flashes of metallic lustre amidst the stringer. I think I'll use Triton to make this stringer with next time rather than the Psyche, because this is difficult to reduce and I'm already fighting to avoid reducing the Terra. Most of the Terra used in the stringer did reduce to mother of pearl, which gets lost in the photos. That is how I can tell that the blush of ruby was the Terra striking and not the Psyche really thinned out. It is mother of pearl on all the edges and creeping into the center of the reddish area.

Next time I make a similar bead, I will use less sis or do it in a different manner. It is just too out of place the way it looks now.

Another thing to note is that the Slytherin actually gained some transparency and shows green rather than black when made into the stringer.

Yesterday I blogged about a bead which I over embellished. Here is how the bead should have turned out. Well, I managed to smear the floral under the encasement, but I love the way the progression of colors on the petals looks and the Aurae dot in the center struck beautifully. It looks like a little galaxy in the center of the flower.



Finally another picture to show how daylight affects the appearance of the bead when photographed. I am beginning to think that if a bead has any degree of red on it at all, I need to photograph it in natural sunlight.

Second day on the diet

OK, this diet has lasted about as long as anything I've been on involving food. Surprisingly enough, I actually had an idea! The name Martian strata inspired a spacey kind of theme for this bead, and I think it worked for a change. The lower half is Martian strata with CiM ghee and black olive spots, and the top half is ink blue wrapped in silver foil, which was melted in, then a 3 petal poke flower in ghee, pearl grey and poi was applied, twisted and elongated a bit, and the top half of the bead was encased in Effetre super clear.

What in life ever turns out as you originally plan it? This didn't either, but I can't say I'm not nearly delirious with how it did turn out. It looks so much like some funky alien weather phenomenon I'm just going to say I planned it that way!
I think I would have liked this second bead if I had left well enough alone and not gone and messed with it. The copper green dots over the encasement were just so over the top that they ruined what would otherwise have been a very interesting bead.

I started out with a base of CiM slytherin, then applied silver foil and melted it in. Two 5 petal flowers with pointed petals with the following dots in order: white, ghee, poison apple, pearl grey and poi. Encase the whole thing in clear and I'm looking good.
Decide that it's boring and put some polka dots on with copper green, and by the time I'm on my fourth dot, decide I don't like the way it's coming out.

Decide I can't quit now or it WILL look like a mistake and finish going on the same theme. It wasn't a mistake, it just wasn't a good idea.

I've already made another bead which is essentially the same and will find out what it looks like. Hopefully lots better.

First Beads on the Diet

This is going to be a great challenge for me because it is stretching my efforts beyond my comfort zone. I generally make very simple beads, focusing on one technique in one color scheme. Now I am trying to play with color more and simultaneously keep basic skills under control, such as shaping. On the first bead, I obviously still need work on this. Using the photo editing software is something I thought I had down as well, but while there may be a way to combine 3 or 4 images into one uploadable block, I haven't found it.

This first bead is a base of half Vetrofond pearl grey and half Effetre ink blue, with some overlap. On the top half of the ink blue I applied silver foil which was melted in and encased in Effetre super clear. I have Vetrofond clear and CiM clear, neither of which I am fond of. Instantly forgetting that CiM poison apple loses its definition under encasement, I attempted to make a flower from it and the result is that strange item you see on the bottom of the bead in the second picture. 2 simpler flowers (CiM ghee doesn't work well for this, does it?) and voila! My first learning experience on the color diet.

My second bead still didn't come out exactly as I envisioned it, but at least I like the shape. It is a base of ghee, which went brownish for the first time since I've been using it due to the amount of time I spent working it. I applied a very thin stringer of CiM slytherin, which I believe is always going to look a slightly transparent black, and then it got all arty and stuff. I wanted there to be a purple layer to the poke points, made with CiM poi, but used too small a dot and wound up with a line of indeterminate color. Opal yellow was the next layer, which I thought might work well with the ghee, and then CiM poison apple, which I planned to look transparent. The final touch were flowers, made with poi stringer encased with ink blue for a little more complexity and to shield any potential reaction between the poi and ghee. My flower shapes seem to be a shade better.

So, what have you learned, Grasshopper. I still have an awful lot to learn.