More Marble Adventures

So in my last entry I mentioned that I've been playing around with marbles. Since then, I've made quite a few more and I'm feeling more confident in my off mandrel work.

Here is some transparent blue over a core of white with silvered ivory linework. I've etched this to give it a glowing seaglass kind of look. I really love this glowing effect.

 This one was my first marble with a new larger marble mold. I think I might have gotten a little excited about the large canvas to work with and I completely covered it with lines.

 Transparent teal encased around a white core with sky blue linework. I really love the linework in this one. One side has a heart and the other a star. It feels like happy sidewalk chalk from childhood.

Here is my most recent one from the weekend. It's the largest one I've mad so far at 27mm. I tried combining some traditional boro styles of marbles with my stringer work. So, one side is a vortex, while the backing has been embellished with stringer that I left slightly raised. 

This vortex style feels like a slight turning point for me because of the clear. The marbles that I haven't been showing or selling aren't quite meeting my standards because of the clarity of the clear glass. Most people who work with effetre know that the clear often has quite a few bubbles and scratches in it. When dirt and oil get caught in these scratches on the glass rod, it turns into "scum" on the finished glass product. There's nothing physically wrong with it, but when you are trying to create a clear lens to showcase and magnify, that scum and bubbles can be distracting.

The marble above  has been made with larger diameter clear rods that I've cleaned very well using pickle. Pickle is a very mild acid that metal workers often use to clean the metal before soldering. The larger diameter clear also helps because less surface area of the glass rod is exposed to the elements.

I'm still working on finding the best clear for me to make marbles with. Next up to try is large diameter rods of the newly formulated super clear. After that, probably double helix Zephyr. 

To be continued...

Lost my Marbles

The past few weeks, I've really been enjoying making marbles. It started with my paperweight class a few weeks ago. During class, we didn't use a single mandrel. As someone who has been a beadmaker all of my glassy career, that can be rather intimidating, but I got used to it. I am looking forward to experimenting more with what I learned in class, but I have some tools on the way first for vacuum encasing.

Meanwhile, I started playing with marbles since I became comfortable with off mandrel work.

There was a bit of a learning curve.

But I finally got to the point where I wasn't having any thermal shocking, so that's always nice.

And now I'm working on finding my marble style.

There's still quite a few challenges. The main one I'm struggling with is keeping the transparent colors from getting scummy. The clarity of borosilicate clear is tough to compete with in soft glass. Maybe this will be what finally gets me to put some effort into learning boro.

Electroformed Pendant

One of the newest techniques I have been playing with this year is electroforming or electroplating. That is a process where metal is deposited on a conductive surface using an electrical current in an electrolyte bath. 

It starts with my glass.

combined with copper, epoxy clay and microbeads for texture.

Next the non copper surfaces are painted with a conductive paint.

Into the blue electroforming solution below and connected to a battery.

12i-24 hours later I end up with a super shiny copper formed piece

Next comes the finishing and sealing and my piece is finished.

Tada!

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.

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

Interview with Morning Star Arts

Morning Star Arts is a family business with Amy, making jewelry and fiber articles, John making copper and glass items and occasionally one of their sons listing one of their many creations. Their Etsy store has tons of beautiful necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. My favorite is their kaleidoscopes. But then again, their currency boxes are really awesome! Feel free to check out their shop here.

What do you create?

Currently, as well as the jewelry, I am needle felting and embellishing recycled sweaters; my dh makes our glass "treasure boxes" and other glass and copper items.

How did you first start your craft?

Well, I have been a stay-at-home-mom for 25 years, and a homeschooling mom for the last 17, so it wasn't as if I was looking for something else to do! But, my dh started lampworking about 8 years ago and wanted me to take a jewelry class so I could "do something" with his beads. I did, and I did, and now he doesn't even lampwork any more! But we have saved the equipment and hope to both do more of it when our boys move out and we have a little more space--too many hobbies ate up the house.

Where do you sell? What are the pros and cons about selling in this venue?

In addition to selling on etsy, we attend about eight or nine art shows per year, I consign with a couple of local boutiques, and I (just) joined a gallery where I hope to sell both jewelry and sweaters. I love seeing people enjoying my workmanship, but I am naturally an introvert so the actual selling has taken a lot of effort, and I still wouldn't say I'm particularly good at it.

What is your daily routine?

At the moment, my daily routine is in a seasonal flux; during school I address my boys' schoolwork first, housework second, and business third, but this varies enourmously depending on what needs doing most urgently; each summer is different and I don't really plan a routine, just kind of "fall into" one. The one constant is that I usually work on needle felting for an hour or so before bed; I find it very relaxing, and then I know I accomplished SOMETHING that day. I try to spend an hour doing online/etsy work each day.

What are your goals for the future?

My goals for the future are pretty simple--I'd like to be able to sell all I make. Right now I've had to put the brakes on jewelry-making a little bit because, with the economic situation, jewelry sales have slowed down, whereas the sweaters have been selling very well (though they may slow down during the hot weather months).

Do you have any tips of advice for others in your medium and other crafters?

My advice to others would be to try new venues and don't be disappointed with the ones that don't work out; I have tried one or two new shows each year for several years and about half of them just didn't work for me (I've found that my designs sell better at "art" shows than at "craft" shows, and better at juried than non-juried--this is different than many of my friends). And be organized (not TOTALLY!); don't skip from product to product without giving your ideas a chance to sell--sometimes it takes a while for people to start buying something new. I don't know how or why this is true, but it's been true for some of our biggest sellers.

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!