Lampwork Lemur bead

Here is an end-of-torch-session-mess-around-bead. Meet little Lemur bead. Or as my youngest daughter 11yrs and collector of Furbies calls him,..a Furby bead.

Because I don’t yet have a kiln to anneal my beads straight from the torch (buuuuut,..I’m finally picking up a kiln tomorrow yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!),. I’ve never attempted to make anything sculptured or anything riskier than the snowflake beads simply because they most likely would not survive and would crack during the vermiculite cool down. The other night at the torch however, as I trying to choose some colours for my last bead for the session, my 15yr old daughter was wondering around the studio chatting to me as I worked and I said to her “I’ll make you a mobile phone dangly, what would you like?” She chose to have a black bead with ‘Watercolours’ Frit Fusion.

She left the studio and I had a brain snap . I thought,..I might just surprise her with a little black and watercolour frit kitty. Whaahaahhaaaha…yep little Lemur was suppose to be a kitty ROFL@myself. Ok,.. well it was my first sculptured bead and maybe I overdid the eyes just a little LOLOLOL. Anyway,. I thought, if I keep it small..it might survive like the snowflakes did, and I will anneal it when I get my kiln,..so little Lemur was born,..all of 15mm high. My daughter loves him, and even my hubby likes him,.. he took him to work, (for three days grrrrr) to show him off *giggle*.

It is hard to see in the pic, but he has a pink and blue fritty body.

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Latest Lampwork bead set

Here is my latest set. I was not quite sure what these beads reminded me of as I was making them and it was really annoying me,.. I was thinking maybe kind of tribal but that still wasn’t quite it either. As soon as a dear friend of mine saw them she said Batik!,..and yes that was exactly what they remind me of,…gorgeous patterned fabric, created using hot wax masking…. oh wow that brings back some scary,..yet fun memories of my teen years. I can almost smell the beeswax.

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Blue Lava set

This set was made up over sessions 4, 5 & 6 back at the torch after my break. Except there is that olive bead from session three. The set is a result of quite a few uh..huh moments I had, both at the torch and away from the torch as memories suddenly came flooding back.

I decided to stick to a technique over a few sessions to see what I can do and what I can learn from doing it that way, as opposed to doing one of these, then one of those.. kind of thing. I really enjoyed this technique and process when I was making beads before so it was a no brainer to start with these and make a whole set of them. I love the effect on these beads with the turquoise, brick red and spiderweb reaction of intense black.

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At the torch again

Third session back at the torch since my 20month break and my aim was again to get rounds and also see if I can get a nice olive shaped bead. I also wanted to play with a colour that I used to love playing with because of it’s colour reactions in the flame. The brick red & turquoise comes from the same rod of ‘turquoise’ glass. A reducing flame causes the copper in the turquoise to come out.

While I was having fun watching the interesting effects from the reactions,.. I forgot to make sure my ends had nice puckered holes, silly moi, so the holes in the olive shaped bead and one hole in the bead on the left,.. could have been better. *smack*

Here is the result of my 3rd session back at the torch.

Back at the torch

Back at the torch for the 2nd session since my return to beadmaking after a 20 month break *gasp*. Before I even lit the torch, I decided to first imagine what it feels like to get that molten glass blob to flow and find the balance on the mandrel. I was determined to get round beads again quickly and I think that thinking it through first actually helped. Practicing dots was also on the agenda for this session.

I was relatively pleased with myself after this session. I got the round beads that I wanted, and by the third bead, I got that ‘feel’ for the balance back again. The dots were meh,..not great but pretty much up to the standard I was at when I was making beads before, so I was happy with that.

Here is the result of my 2nd session back at the torch.

Lampwork Beads

Very recently I lit up my Bobcat Torch,.and tried to calculate how long it has been since I was last at the torch. It felt like a while and I guessed it would be about 10 or 11 months,.. but to my horror when I checked the date of the last beads I made, I discovered it was actually 20 months!!! .
Where did that time go? How could it have been so long? I know I have been busy as usual but gees,.. I feel ripped off,… like 10months has been stolen from me or something.

Anyway,.. so I continue my beadmaking journey 20months later *snif*…… The first session back at the torch after such a break left me thinking OMG,.. I have to re-learn everything,.. I couldn’t even get a round bead whaaahaahaha. I left the torch feeling like,..hmmm it’s not like learning to ride a bike then,..I had forgotten how to feel the molten glass and get the right balance of glass on the mandrel, the implosion bead was like an imploded implosion with carbon scum inclusions because I forgot how to adjust the gas and oxygen to get a neutral flame,.. why I even thought I could do an implosion bead in the first 5 mins back at the torch when I couldn’t do them well before is anyone’s guess phrrrt!,..so all in all, it was disastrous and I was a little disheartened after that session. I think I suffered a case of overconfidence and underskill,. probably due to the excitment and fear,.. followed by relief of actually lighting the torch again without blowing the studio up.

Here is the result of that first session back at the torch. Don’t laugh….oh alright..you can laugh,..I did.

Trip to the USA

It’s official. I will be traveling to the USA in OCT. I know we will be going to California, most likely staying in Los Angeles. Am 99% sure I’ll be there on the 10th & 11th of OCT and attending BlizzCon in Anaheim. At this stage, I’m not sure yet what other days we will be there, or for how long, but I’m pretty sure we will get to do lots of fun touristy things while we are there. That’s all I know for now,… and I am very excited. Whooooooohooooo! and nervous at the same time,lol.

Bead loop dangle lesson

I have recently added the first free lesson to the Beginner Lessons section of the website. Check it out here Bead loop dangle.

I will be doing ear wires next.

Beginner Lessons

I have recently added a new section to the website. This section will contain free jewelry making lessons for beginners. These beginner lessons will all be free, and viewable on site, not via downloadable files. I will be adding new content to this section at every chance I get, however as nice as it would be to have these lessons available for you now, unfortunately I’m very low on time and there is not much I can do about it, so getting these lessons done and uploaded to the website will take a little longer than I would like. I’ll get there though.

Drop by and have a look at the Beginner Lessons section. Please comment and let me know what you think, or suggest some more lessons that would be useful for beginners.

My mother’s pendant

Here is a closeup of her Birthday pendant.

Birthday present for my mother

Here are the little gifts I made for my mother the other day. Happy Birthday Mum!
The pendant is a woven sculture pendant with a large faceted ruby, smaller ruby beads, a garnet bead and swarovski crystals. It is GF wire and is 1.5″ from top of bail to bottom of pendant and 1″ wide. She loves it! Phew!
I also made her this pair of earrings, not matching the pendant though, because I have previously made her a nice pair of garnet & GF earrings that will go very well with the pendant. I love this design of earrings,. it’s a simple/neat design but very stunning IMO. This earring design is something that I would love to wear myself. I am not sure who thought up this design, so if you know who it was, please make a comment and let me know and I will add the designer’s name to this post.

New Rings

It’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to play with wire,..it’s not that I haven’t wanted to,..it’s simply because other things (like being a mother to three) have taken up all my time. However,. last week.. I decided to organise myself and my messy workbench and I pulled out my pliers and had a blast making these rings.

I’ll post some more pics of these up tomorrow.

Meet ‘Lucky’.

‘Lucky’ crawled out from under the bonet of our car after we travelled 100k. He was a little shabby from the experience and had a couple of little burn marks on his head. He came from the Queensland Hinterlands, but as he was in need of care, we were also not in an area suitable for his release anyway, and because we were continuing our travel home the next morning we decided to buy a travel tank, some crickets and nurse him back to health. We also got advice from wildlife who advise us NOT to release him in an area where he was foreign to. So by default… we had a new pet. We have had him since 2004 and I have to say,… he is very cute. More about him later.

It’s been a while….

It’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been very busy as usual (being a mother and partner) and I’ve not had much time spare to play with wire or fire :},.. whenever I’ve had a small chunk of time… it’s usually very late at night and I fear that if I were to play with wire or fire that late at night, I’d most likely poke an eye out or burn my head in the flame as I nod off.

Recently however,. things have calmed down here somewhat and I’ve been able to get back into the swing of things. I made a dangle bracelet for my son to give to a friend for her 15th birthday (forgot to snap a photo and only remembered after it was wrapped). I haven’t played with my Bobcat torch again yet… but I visit it now and then up in the studio and fondle the glass rods a bit,lol.

I can’t wait to get back to playing with hot gooey glass on a rod again. I need to find myself an affordable annealing kiln first, because I cannot help myself,.. I just have to make those big fancy beads (I’m a wannabe fancy lampwork bead maker hee hee) and they will just crack in half if I don’t anneal them in a kiln. So,.. I’m looking for a kiln,..but not looking too hard…these things are expensive and I don’t really want to find a kiln that I might love,..and I cannot not get it,. and it will cost me and arm and a leg.

In the mean time,… most of my free time is spent upgrading (read re-coding) my website. Ok,..I feel the perfectionism has crept in and is holding me hostage in XHTML and CSS code, validating it and removing errors. Oh but wait… what’s this for a change,… I have upgraded and made some changes to this blog today and aaaaaaar it’s PHP. So anyway,.. I’m still working on the first three pages I started a week ago,lol but am almost done with the home page. It’s looking good,..(and I mean the code is looking good) and working well in several browsers. The other two pages that I have started on already,.still have a tonne of recoding and validating to do, and look a little untidy in the browsers as the links and texts have lost their uniformity etc and I have to go back into those pages once the conversions a complete and fix up that uniformity again. I have a long way to go, to convert the rest of the website from HTML to XHTML and CSS, but I think just knowing what I do now,.. the rest of the pages will be easier and quicker.

A quest for fresh coffee.

Perfectionism is a trait I have and is most often my downfall,.. as those who also have this trait will understand,..it can, and does very often work against you. However,.. this trait has led me to develop a strong desire to be able to make myself the perfect coffee at home, consistantly,.with only the flavours of the beans and different blends giving a varied taste and interesting appeal.

I used to drinking instant coffee at home blerrrk!,.and at the same time became more and more dissatisfied with the coffee I was having when out and about, so developed my thoughts and desires of being able to make the perfect coffee at home.

So,.. with perfectionism taking hold,.. the persuit for the perfect coffee at home came at a price and I now have an espresso machine, a grinder to ‘grind on demand’ just enough for the cup/s,.. 10k+ of green beans (they last for over a year in this state when stored correctly) and a little home roaster. I’m currently making another roaster so I can roast larger than 100g at a time. I also have a tonne of other coffee making paraphernalia and a dedicated coffee cupboard phrrrt.

I now pour the perfect coffee at home,.way better and fresher than I have ever tasted in any cafe,.. but as tempting as it might be to try out my latest roasts/blends all day long,. I stick to two coffees in the morning,. and usually one or two in the afternoon/evening. So just because I have gone so far as to roast my own green coffee beans and ‘grind on demand’ to obtain the freshest possible coffee,..I’m not a coffee guzzler by any means,. I just desire ultra fresh coffee when I do have it.

I will talk more about my coffee obsession and discoveries and maybe you might be converted too,lol.