Beads, a Breakage and Mother's Day

Good morning to you. How are you? I feel like it's been ages but it hasn't.

It's the first day of the holidays and I thought I would lay a bit longer in bed and write to you.

Mother's Day was lovely. I stayed in bed until all the homework was done - there's normally a bit of crossness and I wanted to hide from it. I had a bagel and scrambled egg brought to me - my favourite breakfast. Then came presents and cards. P made me a great card at school which I love and A had made me a lovely one too. A gave me this:



When I sewed her nightie recently I would have loved one of these so I'm very pleased with this thoughtful gift.

P bought me this book:


It's a bit daunting if I'm honest. It jumps right into quite tricky stuff despite saying that it's for beginners but I did enjoy looking at the pictures and one day I might be good enough to make something from it. For now though, I need something much more basic and want to buy a pattern for a skirt that I've seen a blog about. Someone called 'Lazy Daisy Jones' is doing a sew along and it sounds like it would be a good place to start.

I spend most of Mother's Day sitting about which was most enjoyable. Then had to do stuff later when Big D's hayfever got very bad.

Bead wise I've been working on dots. I moved onto what Corina calls the distortion effect. This was my first attempt at following the book:



Absolute pants. I learnt that if the dots touch even a bit then the effect is lost and the bead looks a bit rubbish.

Then I worked slowly and tried very hard to have good dot placement and the results improved:








These beads are Effetre black with ivory and periwinkle.

This photo is of all my efforts at the distortion effect taken in my little light tent:


This one is taken on a piece of white paper just in the light:


Not as good is it.

I was pleased with how neat some of the ends are:



I wanted to show you the disk I make before I melt it down for a bead. This one is taken in my light tent. It's Effetre black again:


This one is taken in sunlight just on a bit of white paper. You can see that black glass really is dark transparent purple:


I then moved onto a tutorial Corina has:




The bead on the right is encased but it took ages to melt down the encasing so, after that one, I decided not to bother. I wanted to work on covering the white dots and not spend ages melting down encasing. I was very pleased with the results above.

My encasing has improved too as can be seen below:


You can see the white there and you shouldn't really be able to.


I tried one ambitious bead and am really pleased with how it turned out. It's something again from Corina's book that an artist called Andrea Guarino. She calls these 'Salmon Egg' beads.










Same bead in natural light:


I also wanted to have another go at reducing silver glass to bring out the colour. I'd read a helpful tip in a book and wanted to have a go. I was very pleased with the result:




The one on the left is how it looks before it's encased. You can see me taking the photo reflected in it. The above one is in my light tent. The below one is in sunlight:


Both are Triton on top of Grumpy Bear.

Yesterday we went to the park so that A could practice bike riding. Big D and D played a bit of tennis which A was very keen to join in for. I tried to read a bit but only managed a page:



Big D loves Stephen King and I'm gradually working through this epic book but it's hard when you like making things. I find it hard to read and crochet or lampwork.

A made this card and I love the picture:



This was very disappointing:


I loved this bracelet. It was one of my favourites and looked like this before the breakage:




I always used Beadalon for stringing any jewellery I made:


A reel like this was around £18 to buy and I had always thought it was worth the expense because of how good it was.

In the breakage picture you can see how the glass and crystal has roughened up the wire so that a breakage would have been inevitable. I can only think that I will have to use actual wire going forward for my jewellery since anything else might break. I like the idea of my jewellery being made to last so won't be using this Beadalon stuff again if glass and crystal are involved. Very disappointing since I'd found great findings that I was very happy with.

I don't know when I will make it out to the shed again. The children are home now for two weeks. When I do manage to get out there I'll be doing poked dots.

Have a lovely week.
Sally
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Been a bit quiet

Hello everyone

I've been a bit quiet the last week. I'm sorry if you are eagerly waiting for the next update on my lampwork adventures or general witterings.

I've made quite a few beads recently which I've nearly finished sorting photos of. I'm looking forward to telling you all about how it's been going. In the meantime, here's a photo of some I've made and want to chat about:






I'm making progress although a breakage this week has been very disappointing:



I want to chat about that too.

Right best get cracking. The children finish at lunchtime today so I need to be getting on with my housework. We have a new hairdresser coming today too. I very much miss our old one and am probably going to go for a trim with thoughts of something more drastic possibly in the near future.

I'll write again soon. I'm looking forward to writing about what I've been up to. Nothing exciting - I don't want to be misleading!

Sally
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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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