BeadMam Handcrafted Jewelry
Welcome to my Musings
Welcome to my Musings
| Glass Apprentice - Week 8 |
This week the challenge was sculpture. I have not done much sculpture. Just a few leaves and some hearts. So I was worried. Then, amazing serendipity.......The Mandrel in Torrance Ca offered a two day sculpture class with Judy Carlson. She specializes in fish and sea life so we learned to make shells and fish. I spent the week after the class happily making many shells and fish....... then tragedy struck!  As I walked out of my studio with a week's worth of fish and shells I tripped. The beads flew up in a graceful arc and crashed onto the concrete. Aghhh! Only one fish survived. Luckily it was the best one of my own design and that is the one that I will send to the GA Challenge this week. (Bullseye glass, size 25.8mm nose to tail, 13.6 mm hole to hole)  Back to the torch. |
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| Glass Apprentice - Week 7 Already! |
  13.7mm hole-to-hole x 17.6mm The challenge was to use metals in the bead while fireing it. That ruled out wire wrapping, PMC, etc. I experimented with the "Barley effect" as Corina Tetinger describes it in her Spotlight on Silver booklet. The base bead is Effetre transparent cobalt encased in Vetrofond crystal clear then wrapped in silver foil. The decoration is Effetre rubino, i.e. gold pink, stringer. Then the bead was reduced to bring out the silver and heated very very hot. I put it through a few of the reducing/heating cycles. Spectacular effect! I love the contrast between the silver sparkles in the cobalt and the light edge to the red. If you look closely at the center of the spiral you can see that the silver turned golden. |
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| NEWS! I Won!!!! |
 My earrings won in Beading Daily earrings category. I was so surprised! You can check it out at Beading Daily. I made the earrings to go with the necklace I posted a couple of weeks ago (It's Warm Again). The lampwork beads are Effetre opal yellow and Spiral Designs frit Wildwood. Both highly reactive glass. I used copper wire 10 ga for the dangles and wrapped the coils with 20 ga. |
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| Glass Apprentice - Week 6 - Raku |
  This bead was made with a base Bullseye glass. I am playing around with BE because I want to do small sculptures and it is stiffer than Effetre and the other 104 COE glass I have been using. BE is 90 COE. I love this glass!!! The colors are gorgeous, especially the transparents........a real transparent purple. The opaque colors are much more translucent. They are called opals.......another gorgeous purple too. The base bead is nougat and the raked stringers are Richenbach 108 (aka Raku), dense black and purple to make the "flames". Heating and cooling the bead created the blues, greens, red, and purple in the raku stringers.(27mm x 15mm) |
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| Glass Apprentice - Week 5 - Black and White |
  This is two views of the same bead. Black and white only. (30mm x 11.5mm) I had a hard time getting inspired about this one. I love color......lots of color......and black and white only just doesn't do it for me. So I settled on form and pattern and this bead seemed to achieve both of those without being too dull. Now on to the next challenge....Raku. |
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| It's Warm Again |
  It is warm enough to work in my shop again! I finished the necklace that I started long long ago. I showed the earrings several months ago. The necklace is copper and I made the beads. The base glass is Effetre/Moretti opal yellow, the frit is Wildwood from Glass Diversions. They were pressed in a deep lentil press from Cattwalk and are 3/4 inch in diameter. The copper dangles and links are 10 gauge wire forged and decorated with 22 guage copper wire colils. I made the jump rings from 18 ga and 14 ga copper wire. The necklace is 20 inches long. I am happy with the way it turned out. I wanted to do something with my lampwork beads that was more than linking them with Bali beads or hanging them on a premade chain. |
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| CF Class Earrings |
 These are the earrings I made in Connie Fox's class last weekend. They are both the same. The left one looks darker in the picture because of the lighting. The right one is the way they both looks. They are made from 22 ga sterling sheet which I sawed out and textured with a bur in a Foredom. The stones are black onyx and are set in a split cup bezel that I soldered to the silver with a plumbers torch uxing MAPP gas. The ear wires have balls on the end that I made with the same torch and then bent into shape. That is all there is to it. |
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| Glass Apprentice - Week 4 |
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| Connie Fox Class |
| Sorry, no pics this time. I spent the weekend in San Diego in Connie Fox's Earring class. What a great class! This is the 5th or 6th, maybe more, class I have taken from Connie. I am so lucky to have her just 2 hours drive away. The class, as usual, is about so much more than earrings. We were introduced to several new techniques and given helpful advice and suggestion on our projects. I came away with my head swirling with new designs and new ways to do techniques I thought I knew as well as brand new techniques. Example; we soldered with a plumbers torch and small MAPP gas canisters. I normally use a Little torch hooked to oxygen and propane tanks. I now have a new tool in my kit because I can use the MAPP gas torch for annealing and save my expensive oxygen for the precision soldering tasks. I also came away with a new pair of sterling and onyx earrings. The next class I am taking with her is in May....cuff bracelets. I can't wait. Maybe I will take pictures at that class. | ||
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| Twisties to go |
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