Layering Colors

One of the huge advantages of soft glass over borosilicate is the enormous variety of colors. There is a huge palette of transparent and opaque colors along with reactive silver glasses and the more temperamental opalino styles.

To give you even more options, along with mixing colors, transparent colors can also be layered over opaques to make a new look. The amount of colors that can be created is really almost overwhelming.

That is what I've been playing with in the past few weeks. I love transparent colors, but they can be a little problematic with my scrollwork designs because you can see through the body of the bead. You can also see the bead hole. It's not a bad thing, just often times not the look I'm going for. That's why usually I would work in opaque colors or I would etch the bead for a frosty look.

This last bead in the picture above is an example of a transparent color layered over white. You can see how it makes a very vibrant color and it hides the bead hole.

The only problem is that encasing an opaque color in a transparent takes a bit more time. Most opaque colors are softer, and the transparent colors are stiffer, so it is less like wrapping an apple in liquidy carmel and more like wrapping an apple in a stiff thick fudge. It can definitely be done, it just takes a bit more time heating the transparent and shifting it around, without letting the core become too hot.

That's why I've generally avoided too much encasing in the past, but I'm broadening my horizons and getting some very juicy colors in return.

New Lampworking Toy...er...Tool

Buying a new tool is always so much fun for me. I'll research it for weeks, trying to justify the money I'll be spending on it. I look at other artists' work to see what they've done using that tool, trying to think of how I would put my own spin on it. I order it and hound the poor mail carrier. It finally arrives and it's like Christmas!

This month I bought myself an Ameritool Flat Lap machine. I love it! With this tool, I can create windows into the core of my lampwork beads. Here's a few examples

Glass Week on DeviantArt

For those of you that are on DeviantArt. The group ArtisanCrafts is hosting glass week. Take a look at some of the interviews and featured glass pieces

http://myntkat.deviantart.com/journal/34300684/

Hey everyone! Hope everyone's enjoying the end of Summer before school starts back up and Fall begins. I've been playing with a new shape this week among other things. It's called the Kalera long and lean by Zooziis. It's a perfect flat canvas and makes a fantastic focal for a pendant. Here's a couple focals I've made with this new press. Let me know what you guys think.

Gathering 2010!

Hey there everyone. I just got back from the ISGB Gathering! It was fantastic to meet all those amazing artists. So much of the work I saw on Saturday's Bead Bazaar just blew me away. I wish I could have been there the entire week. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the entire week off. Darn day job.

On Friday I saw a bunch of demonstrations. It started with Margaret Neher's beautiful boro flowers. They were so realistic. She had a table at the bead bazaar and she really does have some amazing work.

Next I shopped for 15 minutes and then back to a presentation about painting with enamels. Bronwen Heilman showed us all how she paints designs using enamels, heats it back up and then fires it. After seeing her presentation and a few other folk's beads in a similar style, I bought a bunch of enamels. I'm looking forward to playing with those.

After some lunch, Leah Fairbanks showed her amazingly detailed floral beads. I don't make a lot of florals, but I drooled over her beads for a long time before I was able to set up my studio. It was even better seeing her beads in person. She demonstrated her florals, but also showed us a bit of coldworking to make facets. If there had been a lap machine available for purchase in the vendor's area, I probably would have bought it.

Next Wesley Fleming showed his tiny detailed soft glass insects. I didn't even know you could sculpt like that in soft glass. I found that presentation very interesting. I wanted to buy one of his spiders at the bead bazaar, but they were so realistic I was a little creeped out.

Last but not least was Eun-Suh Choi. Her sculptures were made entirely of clear boro glass. They were so incredible. It may sound simple since it's all clear and a repeating pattern of branches, but they are amazing. When showing some slides of her other work, she mentioned a piece in the Corning museum that was 13 feet high. I am going to have to look for it when I'm there next.

I think in the end I was sad to go, especially since there was so much more to do on other days, but I was so packed with information I think I might have exploded with much more.

Oh, and I bought a little something for myself. This is a cored and capped big holed bead from Hayley Tsang.

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Happy Summer Friday!

Hey everyone! Sorry for the lack of update last week. I was on vacation from work and laziness just kicked in :) You know how that can be. This has been a great summer so far, but it's not very good for motivating me to get to the torch.

Anyways, I've got tons of scrolls this week on Ebay. Ebay is becoming a more regular place to find my lampwork beads. You can always click above on available work to see what's ready to buy.  Here's a small sampling of my Ebay auctions.



I've also been posting sparkling pixiedust sets on Ebay. Pixiedust is always so much fun.



On Etsy, I've been on a pandora bead kick. So if you have a bracelet you need to fill up with pretty beads, stop on by. My favorites lately have been these striped beads.

They look like cute little tigers and I've been creating them in multiple bright colors like aqua and lime.  I haven't decided if I will be offering these on a made to order basis in the future. Either way, they're super cute.

Anyways, see you all next Friday :)

Lots of Scrolls for Sale

So this week has really been a scroll week. I have a lot of scroll weeks though. I do think they're my favorite style of bead to make. I love the curving lines, the raised texture, and the precision of the stringer design. It's taken me a lot of practice to get good at them, but I think it's been worth it.

I've also been back to giving ebay a try. Long ago when I was making beads on a hothead in an apartment, I sold a handful of beads on Ebay. Since then the fees on Ebay have gone up quite a bit, but it's still fun to have an auction style listing.  So here are some of the bead sets I have on Ebay now, or I will be putting them on Ebay this week.





I do have a lot more too, but I don't want to bombard you guys with too many pictures. Just check out my ebay, etsy or facebook. I can reproduce any of these sets as well, so I will be adding pairs of each of my newest sets up on Etsy as a made to order listing. When I finally get beads available to buy on my website (I'm slacking with this), They'll be available here as well.

I'll be updating you guys on more beads for sale next Friday, til then I hope everyone's enjoying their summer.

Jolly Rancher Discs and Sparkling Cheerios up on Etsy

So this week, I've really been focusing on the simple beauty of transparent colors. Nothing against pastels and all those beautiful metallic glasses, but when we all think of glass, the first thing that comes to mind is transparents. I replenished my glass supply last week, so I had to reacquaint myself with transparent colors.

This week, I put up disc pairs in my Etsy store. Each of these handmade discs is made with a transparent color and embellished with a stripe of either silvered ivory or Psyche glass. These beads really make me think of jolly ranchers.

Silvered ivory is a lot of fun because of the unique organic look. The longer ivory is worked, the more crackly lo0oking it gets. When fine silver is added to it, it gets some beautiful striations.

Psyche glass is black or dark purple before being hit with a propane rich flame. Once the glass is worked in a propane flame, blues, greens and purples bloom with a metallic sheen. Pretty!



I've also been playing with a lot of pixie dust beads this week. I always have pixie dust spacers available, but I've recently created pixie dust big holed beads for Pandora and Troll bracelets. They're very sparkly and a perfect splash of glimmering color for your bracelet. I've left them uncored to keep them inexpensive. I can't help but think they look like sparkling cheerios though. Lol



These will be available to order as many or as few as you want. Feel free to stop by my Etsy or contact me

Ocean Lentils, Aqua Beads and Sparkling Pixiedust Pandora Spacers to Share

Lots of freshly listed goodies up on Etsy and Ebay this week.

I particularly like this set up top. It's made of half blue and half teal with sparkling green aventurine mixed in with the teal. The two colors are divided by waves of silvered ivory. These beads are pressed into lentils which are perfect for bracelets. This one is up on ebay



These ones are a bit similar. I think the warm weather this week was making me think of a soothing sparkling beach. These have been pressed into the nice lentil shape and made with cool aqua glass. They have stripes of metallic glasses that have been raked across the surface. These are always such a fun style. These are listed up on etsy.

Last beads I'll share with you today are these pixiedust spacers for Pandora bracelets.



These are perfect for if you just want a splash of sparkling color for your Pandora or Troll bracelet without breaking the bank. I've been making these in various summer colors with different colored pixie dust sparkles. These are all going up on Etsy and once these first sets sell, can be made to order.

Thanks for looking everyone! Talk to you next Friday.

Lampwork Beauties!

Lampwork Beauties!

Here's a new treasury I just made on etsy of some amazing lampwork beads by various artists.

Purple Pair with Green Metallic Scrolls

Fresh Beads up on Etsy :)

Propane Problems

Hey there everyone! Sorry there haven't been as many beads listed on Etsy the past few days. I've been having a fun (not really) struggle with my propane. It's been going on for a few days now and I finally just ordered some new parts.

It started on a cold snowy evening of -1 degrees out. I'm all ready to start torching! I get my boots on, my coat and scarf and head out to my backyard through the snow to turn on my propane. I go up and down the icy snowy porch steps, trudge through a foot of snow, get inside, take off my winterwear and head to the studio to get some work done.

I turn on the propane of my torch and I get nothing. Hmmmm...this can't be a good thing. I put my winterwear back on, trudge back through the snow to the propane tank to see that the gauge is on zero. I notice that the little arrow on the gauge is frozen and not moving. I carefully listen for the familiar sound of propane rushing into the hoses as I fiddle with the knobs. Nothing....sigh. My propane must be out. That sucks.

The next day, my husband brings home a fresh tank of propane for me and hooks everything up. Hooray! I'm ready for another night of torching. I go outside into the lovely Rochester winter wonderland (blech) and turn on the propane. It's not as cold today so the knob moves to its normal setting and life is good. I head back inside and to the studio to start torching away.

Everything's good for about an hour. Hmm....why's my flame getting huge and then tiny? I try to turn down the flame to apply some stringer and it turns into a giant bushy candle. I try to turn up the propane to reduce some silver glass and my flame almost dissapears. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!

I've given up on making anything productive at this point. I shut everything off, go outside and take the regulator off the propane tank. Why is the needle on zero? It was on earlier. I've been making beads for an hour. I turn it off and dissconnect the hose and apparently the needle had gone so high that it went back around to zero. Ooops!

So anyways, my regulator is pretty much shot at this point. It has been cleaned out and then accidentally frozen to the tank because I didn't dry out all the water. I've cleaned it and left it on a heat vent for 24 hours and still nothing. My husband even took the entire thing apart and cleaned it up, but still nothing.

So I'm currently not able to torch and I'm waiting for a new regulator in the mail. Yuck!

Daily Deviation Hooray!

So yesterday I came home from my day job. I've been having a rough time with my day job lately. Yesterday was not much different. I came home exhausted from another day and started logging on to my etsy, DA, and other sites I promote my work on.

Whoa....that's a lot of messages! What did I do? Wow! A favorite every 5 minutes? What the hell did I do!?

It took me a little while to figure it out because I'm slow and my brain doesn't always function after work, but finally I did figure it out. I was the Daily Deviation for Monday January 25th! Thank you so much everyone who commented on my work. I hope you enjoy peeking at it. It really brightens my day.

Oh and be sure to visit PurpleRose on DA. She suggested my beads to be featured and I really appreciate it :)

Photographing with close up filters

So I bought a 15 dollar set of close up lenses for my Canon DSLR camera this week. At first I was pretty disappointing because I couldn't figure out how to screw them on to my camera. Of course I was doing it backwards and I felt pretty dumb. Obviously I'm not the most camera savvy person, but I've had a lot of experimenting with this camera, and I can at least take some decent bead pictures.

I'd love the have a macro lens, but those are a wee bit pricey for me, so I went with these close up lenses. I read that with these lenses you do sacrifice sharpness a little, so on to experimenting.

I took a ton of pictures to show the results with the various lenses. Each picture was taken in a light box with a tripod and given a 2 second timer (for my wobbly button mashing fingers). I had it set on f20 so each time the camera took a picture, the lens was open for about .6 seconds. I'll let you all be the judge of which one is the best.

Here is +1
Here is +2


Here is +4
Here is Macro

Here is Macro with the +1 screwed on top of that one

I'm still not quite sure which one I'm going to end up using. I think it would look different with sets of beads, so I'm sure I'll try that, but for those of you with focals I hope this experiment is helpful.

Reorganization

So when I first started selling on Etsy, I didn't really have a method of organization. I didn't really think that far ahead. I had this napkin on my desk where I put all my beads. Very professional eh?

That evolved to placing them in sandwich baggies, but I ran out of those fast and I needed them for packing my lunch, so that didn't last long. Next I bought some cute little gift bags, but they don't work that well for storage. I found that while I do sell pretty often, I sit on a lot of inventory, and it is a waste to buy fancy bags for everything when everything isn't selling.

I finally bought some simple little 3x2 inch plastic Ziploc baggies. I should have done that first thing! I really don't know why I didn't. I got a thousand of them for like 15 dollars off of ebay.

Anyways, the moral of this story is to invest a little time and money into organization when you first get into selling. Otherwise you have this....
on your desktop every day until you get some organization going.

Lots o Lentils

This week I seem to have gone back into lentil mode. I don't know what it is about lentils. They're nice and smooth and flat. They make such a wonderful canvas for scrolls and other surface decorations. I like that you can make a giant lentil without as much weight as you would a giant round bead. Maybe I'm just crazy, but I love my lentil press. If I were made of money I'd surely purchase more.

Anyways, enough of me babbling about my love for lentils. Here's some of the lentils I've been playing with this week. Scrolls and lentils do make an excellent combination. Add some gold fuming and yum :)

I've been working with a new color for me called apricot. I'm sure it's been around for a while, but fall colors are not usually what I play with. I love this warm swirly color though. Top it off with coral scrolls (cause we all know how much I love the scrolls), and very yummy.

And then there's this awesome tutorial about making "storms" in dots by Amy of AKdesigns. You can see them really well in this bead. They're multicolored and awesome. If you're a lampworker, this tutorial should definitely be in your arsenal.


Anyways, I'm off to go exercise, eat dinner, and go make some beads. Wooooo!