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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