More beads

Hello there. How are you?

This week has been different for me in that I've felt far more in control of the housework which has allowed me some guilt free shed time.

Wednesday with the children home went well. I managed to get my chores done and P very much surprised me by deciding to tidy the cutlery draw. He quite showed me up. It was a bit of a mess before but I was used to it and a tidy wasn't even on my mind. He made it look like this:



When I open it I think of him and marvel how someone so young can do something so helpful just because they feel like it. He and A then moved onto the cereal cupboard which they emptied, sorted out and put back in again.

Yesterday was a strange day because I stopped on the way to school to restart the car because some lights had come on. Once I'd stopped, I couldn't get going again so we started to walk. Very fortunately someone from P's year spotted us and we ended up with a lift. Turns out the car needs a new alternator which is several hundred pounds. What an incredibly boring thing to spend lots of money on.

I'm now waiting for the children to be dropped home by a friend. Today has given me much more time pottering about because I've not done the school run at all. It's actually been quite nice. The Ocado man came with my shopping which included one ball of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino so that I can work a few more rows of my blanket. The day has also included the making of a couple more squares for my scarf.

I cleaned and photographed the beads from yesterday's shed session. I did better with making the sizes the same:

These are that Sea Foam colour and I didn't realise some of them were different colours until I took them out of the kiln this morning. Some glasses look different depending on how long and where in the flame they are worked:


The sizes aren't bad are they? A bit more work on it is needed I think but this is definate progress.

Next is a colour called Mulberry that just looks black in this photo:


I took another picture to see if you can see the colour better. It's an improvement but not great:


I don't know if the one on the left is Mulberry worked differently or a different colour. The other three are black:


I decided that the bead method from Corina's book that I liked the most was the disk one (that's the method I'd used in the past and it suited me) and I had the idea that, if I could make the same size disk each time, this would result in same size beads. The theory is good but sometimes the circles of glass that make up the disk are thicker than other times. I made these from some wire I had to help me attempt to make more even beads:



I'm really pleased with this idea. When the bead goes in the kiln I can know if it's the size I'm after without attempting to compare it with one that's already in there.

I also made a few other beads just trying out the dots again but they aren't that great:



That cobalt blue which made the bumpy dots is a lovely colour I think.

This bead I really like:


I need to work out what colours I used so that I can add the photo to my Pinterest colour board. Haven't the colours mixed together beautifully? I think they look amazingly interesting.

Then I moved on to something a bit trickier:



Corina calls these 'Rainbow Beads' and has a step-by-step tutorial in her book on how to make these beads. There's a photo for every step. There's more work for me to do on this technique but it's not dreadful for a first try.

I decided I wanted to try amber and very dark amber:


The one in the middle isn't bad. The one on the right I tried shortcutting and thought I'd be clever and just swipe the colours around rather than dabbing them on as dots. It's doesn't look nearly as good does it? I need to practice these beads some more.

If Sunday is Mother's Day where you are then have a very enjoyable one. I am very much looking forward to breakfast in bed. Hopefully a bagel and scrambled egg - yum.

Have a lovely weekend.
Sally
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Another Lampwork Lesson

Hi everyone

I managed a few shed hours yesterday. I had the genius idea of taking the baby listener out with me so I'd hear the postman knock.

I'm fairly pleased with the results. I've made progress on how to make beads similar size but I want to have a conversation with Big D to see if he has any plumbing tools that would help me with my plan.

Here are some bead photos:



The colours here are Maraschino, Adamantim, Halong Bay and Honey Mustard Limited Run. That red colour I like very much it reminds me of some sweets you could get when I was young. They were called Spangles. Do you remember them?

I had a try with dots again:


I wanted to try some raised dots. They aren't bad but more practice is definately needed. I feel very enthusiastic about getting out there and practising now that I have a plan of what to do.


This one was weird. I wanted to try the new goldstone stringer that I'd added to my glass order. I need to make this bead again but I am almost certain that this bead was made with a base of Maraschino with Goldstone swirls but what the heck has happened:


A very unexpected result there.

I remembered the buffer dots that Corina talks about. They did help a lot. The dots were a fairly even size:



I used some transparent amber on a base of yellow. Again the buffer dots did a good job:



The amber dots were put on top of white. I think it could have looked good with a much darker base colour.

This one I like but I would have liked to have done the buffer dots not in black. I'd forgotten that I'd read that black spreads. The amber dots are made from a twistie of the two transparent amber colours I have on top of white. I think the use of two colours adds interest:



The next one is dark amber on yellow:



And the last one is streaky denim with red dots. Again, more practice needed:


With my glass order I added some filigrano which I've wanted for a while. I made this bead:






The bead was really hard to photograph. I would have liked the white to be denser and am keen to try this again.

Once I'd packed away my light tent I found this bead again I used the filigrano:


I'll take a better photo next time my light tent and proper camera are out. It looks a bit better than this photo shows.

I'm really keen to get some more mandrels so my sessions can yield more beads. I should have added them to my order. Next month I can hopefully order again and get some then.

To summarise my progress. I can make good beads with nice puckers.
Next to work on - more dots and even sized beads.

I hope you have a good day. School is shut so I have company today. So far no one has helped me clean the toilets. There's some Minecraft action on the XBox at the moment. P's friend is here helping him learn new Minecraft related things.

I'd better go wash up then iron. After that I want to add to my lampwork board to help me know what the glass looks like when it's made into a bead. I'm going to make a rule that I can't add any beads unless I can name the colours used.

Sally
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I made some earrings

Hello

I should have been going to bed early last night due to a 4:30am start to my day - P worries on a Monday so he woke up too early and we needed him to sleep some more. I went into his bed but couldn't get warm and cosy so couldn't sleep. Anyway, last night, when I should have been in bed, I decided to make these beads into the pair of earrings I had pictured in my head. These are the beads:




I used sterling silver bits and bobs from my messy craft shelves and made these:




I'm ever so pleased with them and am wearing them now.


I tried a photo on a black background but couldn't get a good picture:








Here's me wearing them:



Right, better crack on with the washing up, ironing and the washing machine just beeped at me.

I have a cheeky glass order coming today which I'm very excited about. I didn't go mad, it was more of a slight restock. I want to go out to my shed but I'll miss the post person so can't till he or she has been.

Have a lovely day.
Sally
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The results of my first lesson

Hi everyone

As you know if you like to read my babblings, yesterday I had a few hours out in my shed and took the opportunity to get started on my lampwork lessons.

Firstly I did some reading up to the point Corina gets to making beads. I started with black, CiM Tuxedo. Lots of people start with black because it's a stiff colour. Here are my beads:



Some ended up in the bin because the holes weren't right. I need to work on a method of making same size beads. There's quite a variation here isn't there.

Then I moved onto using some different colours. From left to right the colours are: and this is where I realise I didn't write that first colour down, I think it is dark transparent turquoise. The next one is pearl grey then French blue:


These are nice shaped beads but again, they need to be the same size.

I then remembered to add my poison apple bead:


Then I moved onto spots. From left to right we have,
sea foam with honey mustard limited run dots,
Silver plum with mermaid dots
Pale emerald green with daffodil dots
Count von count with glacier dots
Turquoise blue with oz dots
Medium red with charcoal dots
Charcoal with medium red dots
Milk chocolate brown with Phoenix dots



That Sea Foam colour is gorgeous. I definately want to use that more.

Here's another view:


I used a load of colours to make a twistie when I ran out of 2.4mm mandrels. The use of a load of colours was a bit of a waste. These were the colours: pale emerald green, electric yellow, damson, dark red and either cirrus or marshmallow:


I also made more beads in these colours which I very much like. I need to work out the colours:


Lastly, here are some polymer clay beads I made a while ago. I don't think I'll bother to sand them because I'm not sure what I'd do with them:


For my next lesson, I think I'll work on making the sizes of beads more equal and use different colours.

Sally
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Lessons 1 and 2 done

This back to basics thing I'm doing is a great idea. I am a genius.

I've finished now. I have a kiln full of beads:



I've had to stop because I ran out of mandrels. I will add 'mandrels' to my glass wish list. Big D, A and P came home a while ago and I was asked to go inside to view their purchases. A zip up hoodie for Big D in a lovely blue colour, school shoes for A that are the same as her best friend's ones and Converse shoes for P. His first ever pair and he looks really good in them. He picked the same ones as Big D has which I thought was sweet.

Anyway, bead wise I got up to putting dots on and am looking forward to seeing the results of my efforts tomorrow. They have to very slowly cool in the kiln now and will be done when I get up in the morning. When I'd used all my standard mandrels I finished up by making some tiny beads with an idea for a pair of earrings in mind.

Right, I'd better go in and do mum and housewife stuff. Then I might daydream looking at desks that I can't buy. But I like a full wish list and looking is free.

Sally
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I've started

Hi everyone

I'm just saying a quick "hello" to let you know that I've began my lampworking lessons.

I'm currently on a quick lunch break. Everyone is out doing some sort of Mother's Day shopping. I hope it's going well and the £4 that's burning a hole in P's pocket has been spent so that he stops hassling about what he'd like to spend it on. That boy is not a natural saver unlike D who always seems to be flush. He doesn't spend much in the same way that he doesn't like to eat his Christmas and Easter chocolate.

Anyway, today has so far been about basic beads and it's been very worthwhile. I do tend to not make just a bead with one colour of glass and I'm finding doing that very rewarding. Normally I would be listening to some sort of podcast but today I only have the sound of my torch and, at one point, heavy hail to keep me company.

After lunch I will see what comes next in my book and I might make some more one colour beads. A lot of beadmakers seem to call these 'spacers'.

Would you like to see what I look like today in my state of heavy concentration and learning? You would. Are you sure? It's not pretty:




I love a pencil behind the ear!

As I've been learning, I've been posting a few photos on Pinterest on my 'lampwork investigations' board. If you are a lampworking person, you might find it an interesting one to follow.

Nearly time to go back out - brilliant.

Sally
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Lampwork

Hello there

As you know, I make lampwork beads. I've been doing this for about five years now but don't get that much torch time. I'm now more on top of my housework and feel like I could justify a bit more time outside trying to get better results from my time at the torch. I need to sort my glass out and have a bit of a tidy.

My torch time efforts are a bit ad hock. Sometimes I make beads that I'm so proud of I wish I could have a massive sign around my neck saying "I made this - yes really". Beads like these:
















But, I also have too many that I'm not proud of like these:
















So my idea is that I have a plan. I have a bit of a tidy in my shed so I can work without hunting for what I want all the time and feeling like my glass pile will topple over. Then, and this is genius, I work through the amazing book I have that looks like this:



Did you enjoy the sight of FIFA 14 in the background? It's very popular in my house. Luckily, P has D to help him with the more complicated aspects of managing an Ultimate Team.

The book is by Corina Tettinger and she makes amazing beads that sell for lots of money. The book is a brilliant guide to lampworking. It's very step-by-step and written in a friendly not patronising way. I love looking at it but have never actually read it through and started from the beginning. I've had two lessons with beadmakers but haven't really felt like its helped as much as I would have liked.

I'm excited to go back to basics and see where I end up at the end. Whether I manage to stick to my plan and see it through remains to be seen but I think its a brilliant plan. I can treat it like a course and it will be interesting to see how much I improve by having lessons from this book.

I thought I could try eBay ing some beads as I go along. It's a bit less daunting than Etsy and, if I manage to make some money, I can restock my clear glass supply and hopefully add some other colours to my stash.

Anyway, just incase you like pictures of stuff as much as me, here are some bead photos from my last few shed sessions:

I really wanted to be able to make a heart bead. I have a heart press but I just can't seem to get a clean finish at the top where the hole is. It's much too raggedy as you can see below:



Corina has a lesson in her book to make a freeform heart which I had a go at. Mine just isn't right. I struggled with the shape. This was the result:


This was another try which was not going well so I abandoned it:


I got part way through this heart and just thought it's not going right but it looks like a fox head. Let's try adding some eyes and a cheeky nose:


The two beads below were interesting. I had a go at flowers and the colours and amount of glass used in both are the same but see here you can see the flowers in the transparent glass:


But here, on opaque glass, the same size flowers are swallowed up by the glass and almost disappear and look generally rubbish:


This bead was brought on following my great tree bead success. I thought, now I can do anything on a bead. I clearly am amazingly talented! I was wrong. Why did I pick a blue colour for the boat? That was my first mistake. Next mistake was a black mast, I've since read that black does tend to spread. The mast is far too thick. I do like the blue background though:





Here I was trying to be fancy with goldstone. I like goldstone with glass very much. I've had limited success with it though and need to properly look at a booklet Corina did on it and gave away for free on her website. The roses look good I think but the goldstone adds nothing other than ruining the overall look of the bead:


Here I was going for the more is more approach and the addition of that stringer ruined another bead that might have otherwise looked quite good:


These beads went quite well:














Here I was going for a tree branch with blossom look but again, that black spread and was too thick to look good:


This is the other side of the same bead. Same problem with the black. I do like the red and ivory very much though. The black has a silvery outline which could be used to make some good beads I think:


This was another tree I had a go at. Why can't I reproduce that great tree bead I made before but just in different colours. The frustration of not being able to led to my back to basics idea:





This is meant to be a tree but I think, if I had used a different colour for the background so it looked like a table, it would have made a great vase of flowers:





This was murrini. I like making it. I think that I shouldn't have bothered with the yellow centre for these 'flowers'. It doesn't look right and the bubble can be the middle bit instead:





The hole area of this bead is a bit dodgy but I like the simplicity of the colours very much:





I like the subtlety of these colours. I'd like to make more:


This bead is ok I would say but doesn't wow me by any stretch of the imagination:


I like putting stuff inside clear glass, which is why I really want a restock:


I got carried away with this one and just kept adding stringers and twisties:


Beads in a colour combination I really like. The photo came out a bit dark which is a shame:


More encasing of stuff but I think too much stuff so it doesn't look very good:


I hope you've enjoyed seeing so many photos of beads and reading my words is a bit interesting.

The washing machine beeped very loudly at me to let me know it's finished. I've just been handed Slinky and asked if I can untangle him and I am hoping I can have half hour to start my shed sort out. I've been to the tip today because that's how I roll. I do tip runs and clean the toilets but I do like to make stuff very much when I can.

I'm excited to try working through Corina's book. I want to see what's produced from my efforts. Are you excited to share my journey? If you are, I know it will spur me to keep going. One day, I might be good enough to feel like doing one of those giveaways I see other blog writers doing.

I hope you have a brilliant weekend.

Right, Slinky untangle time.

Sally
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