Swinging from the trees...

Sorry it's taken me so long to return to my blog. That vacation I spoke about in my last posts got the better of me and it has been hard to get back into the swing of things. But never fear, dear reader! We'll be swinging again soon enough.

Baby Emma is in preschool now. Well, she's not a baby anymore, exactly, but I think I will be calling her that forever, like the girl in Dirty Dancing. She, Emma, had her third birthday a couple weeks after we got back from vacation, and then there was a wedding I was focusing on making a gift for - an elegant white, silver and blue lampwork bead bracelet for the bride. And then the plague visited my household for the last couple weeks, but now I'm all better!  So, back to your regularly scheduled program!

I've been thinking about my blog titles recently, and I'm a big fan of alliteration, so I'm gonna take a little blog planning advice from Handmadology and rearrange my blogging schedule and redo my titles.  We will then have the following line-up: "Monday Madness" - a regular spot to showcase my weekly "Monday Madness" Etsy sale; "Treasury Tuesday" - displaying the weekly treasury I make featuring items I've found on Etsy made with lampwork beads; "Wordless Wednesday" - this will be my own treasury, of sorts, sharing images -  sometimes beads and jewelry, maybe sometimes not - just a few images that strike my fancy; "Pretty Palette Thursday" - ok, not so alliterative, but I want to get back on the wagon with playing with color and using Design Seeds palettes for inspiration... each Thursday will introduce the palette for the following week and show off the beads I made with the previous week's palette... not necessarily in that order :); And, last but not least: "Friday Fireworks" - the day I discuss my week in lampworking... I'll probably discuss all sorts of lampworking related topics, from featuring other lampworker's art, showing off techniques I'm using at the torch, sharing the glass I bought on vacation, etc.

So, seeing as how it's Wednesday, and this is supposed to be "Wordless Wednesday", I will now leave you with some images, and the only words I'll add are these - this is the bracelet I made for the bride, for the wedding I attended the night I was dying from the plague, but had to attend because I couldn't get ahold of anyone to grab the bride and groom's champagne bottle so I could make some commemorative beads out of the glass.

Packing for vacation...

Next Tuesday we board a plane to fly to Portland for two weeks and I am really excited!  Two whole weeks to spend with family, seeing the sights of the Pacific Northwest, and, most awesome-est, going to the International Society of Glass Beadmakers Gathering in Bellevue, Washington for a day.  I'm not gonna get to go to the Gathering for the whole week, but I will get a taste of the fun on Saturday the 29th by attending the open-to-the-public Bead Bazaar and then the Gathering Banquet that evening.  I just hope I'm bringing enough "trade beads" to share with all the friends from the lampworking internet community I'll meet in person and all the new friends I'll make while I'm there.

My blogging calendar tells me today is TGIF Treasury! day, but I'm a little busy packing and getting my day job ready for my absence, and just so excited about the trip that I can't concentrate on any one thing for longer than 30 seconds.  The rest of my regular blog features will also be put on hold - did you notice I never got around to posting pictures of the beads I made with this week's palette (CRAZY BUSY).  But, never fear!  For the next two and a half weeks I'm going to convert this Lampworking Blog into a Vacation Blog and take everyone on my vacation with me.  I've got my camera, my data cable, and my netbook and charger, and my goal is to post at least once a day with tons of pictures.  Yay for unattainable goals! :^)

So, keep your eyes open for the posts, 'cause this is gonna be a WILD ADVENTURE! (Cue Wild America theme music.)

(Late) Wednesday Lampwork: Tuesday's Pretty Palette Bead Reveal

Sorry for being a day late with my promised Wednesday blog, but this issue is bigger and better for the delay!

If there's one thing Tuesday's palette has taught me, is that I need more colors in my glass stash. But don't tell my husband, who would have to start giving up his sections of the bookshelf where I keep my glass. :)

But seriously, I couldn't accurately match several of the colors in my glass supply, and when I got down to trying to match them at home, on the living room computer monitor, the first color shows up as more of a green and the second color shows up more of a beige.  The next two colors are pretty identical, the brown is chocolaty brown and the fourth is a deep mauve which I don't have except in transparent (so tempted to use my last remaining stringer of a glass color we call EDP - more on that in a future post), and the pink was much lighter, very faint.

So, here are the colors I chose for this palette from Design Seeds:
1) Creation is Messy Celadon
2) Creation is Messy Butter Pecan (sorry, don't remember which unique variety, I think the -5)
3) Vetrofond Brown Dark Special
4) Rubino Oro (this was a gift so I don't know which manufacturer)
5) Creation is Messy Chai Unique -3

This palette is far removed from what I normally come up with on my own, and I really enjoyed challenging myself with it.  Usually I stick to blues, greens and beiges, which can be a VERY limiting palette, but, considering how few beads I've actually made in my life, I do think I still have a lot to say with that palette.  THIS palette on the other hand, was a push for me.  I didn't want to just make flowers, like the orchids that inspired the palette.  I wanted the colors to speak to me, sort of just let myself go, and I started by winding a few rounds of the butter pecan glass onto the mandrel and then winding on some of the brown dark special right next to it.  I melted the two glasses together into a rounded doughnut, and suddenly I saw, please don't laugh, a chocolate covered doughnut sitting on my mandrel.  (My friends would laugh because they know my lifelong obsession with chocolate doughnuts, and it's ironic because I'm REALLY trying to stick to low-carb right now.)  Once I saw that, I had to add more frosting (celadon) and some sprinkles (rubino oro).

Oh, I'm so hungry right now!!!

Then I decided, heck, if you're gonna have doughnuts, you might as well have ice cream!

Don't you just wanna lick it?

Once I made those two beads I made an army of spacers.

The brown looks SO dark in this picture!

That was Tuesday night.  Ten spacers and two fun beads does not make for a very interesting blog post, so I decided to make more beads on Wednesday night, and I came up with a bunch of adorable glassy cuties!

Big-Hole-Bead Worm, with badly applied lipstick. :)

A couple rubino oro encased lentils and a round butter cream bead with chai over celadon over brown layered dots .  Look at the chipped hole on the lower rubino oro encased lentil, that's never happened to me before! So sad! :(

Then I decided that a flower or two wouldn't be so bad, as they're one of my specialties.

Not too partial about the mint chocolate look, but doesn't that
rubino oro stamen dot look like a pink diamond? SOOOO pretty!

 All together now:

Not pictured separately are a couple other big hole beads (upper left and bottom right),
and the chocolate lentil with green scrollwork and some dots (bottom center).

See?  Wasn't it worth the wait?  Since I have a week before the next blog post, I'll get started on the palette and the beads now.  Sometimes, the only way to combat procrastination is to go completely the opposite direction and do something WAY too far in advance.  Next Wednesday is 4th of July, so everyone have yourselves a safe and sane holiday!  (Oooh, maybe I'll just make 4th of July beads instead of randomly picking a palette...)  Either way, I'll announce the next palette on Tuesday!

Making a practice checklist...

Like every skill, lampworking requires a crap-ton of practice. It's actually kind of an in-joke in the Lampwork Etc. community. Whenever someone asks if there is a tip or a trick that will give a newbie the key to unlock a particular technique the invariable answer is, "PPP!" which of course means "Practice, Practice, Practice!"

When you start lampworking, and you make your first few wonky beads, you become addicted to the melt of the glass, the heat of the torch, and the way that just turning a molten blob of glass on a mandrel can create work of art. It might be a crappy looking, lopsided work of art, with sticky-out, ragged holes, but it has the potential to be something breathtaking, and it calls to you to keep trying. You see the work of other glass artists and you really can't believe that you will someday be able to make straight stringer, or perfect dimpled holes, or even an even bead for that matter. But after a few hundred beads, without realizing it's happening, your holes are dimpled, your stringer is straight, and you can make an even bead in your sleep. And if you compared your 100th bead with your 1st bead, you wouldn't even recognize that first one.

With as little time as I have in my schedule for torching, I become frustrated with how many techniques I want to learn and practice and the fact that I'm also trying to make beads for sale that use the techniques I've already learned. And, the more techniques I learn, the more varied and interesting the beads I put up for sale will be. The problem is, I barely have enough time to make 10 beads a night, let alone practice a new technique at least 10 times so I can consider it added to my repertoire. So tonight's blog is about making a list of the techniques I want to learn, and planning to set aside 1 or 2 torching sessions a week to strictly practice the new techniques. What I feel I've been doing up 'til now is just flailing around, making a nice bead I can sell, then feeling guilty that I'm "neglecting my education" and trying out a technique I don't have down yet, then feeling guilty that I'm not making sale-able beads, and so on. You get the picture.

I started my list on Lampwork Etc. by taking a poll. I posted this earlier today and I already have 27 responses:

Raking?		1	3.70%
Making cubes?		0	0%
Lentil shaping?		1	3.70%
Twisting dots?		2	7.41%
Making twisties?		2	7.41%
Raised stinger work?		2	7.41%
Layering dots?		1	3.70%
Encasing?		9	33.33%
Raised flowers?		1	3.70%
Melted flowers?		0	0%
Layered petals?		1	3.70%
Fine melted stringer?		0	0%
Shaping tubes?		1	3.70%
Consistent sizes?		4	14.81%
Making color sample beads for my swatch bead box?		2	7.41%

There are a few other techniques I could list here, but I figured this was a good start.

As you can see, the overwhelming majority favor encasing as the first technique I should practice, so, as soon as I started noticing that trend, I turned on the torch and went to it.

Now, I only made 4 or 5 encaased beads out of the dozen or 15 that I made today, but I think I made a couple great strides, figuring out how to preheat the rod for about 2-3 inches to give the melting end a head start, how to wind on from right to left instead of left to right so my hand isn't blocking my view of where the rod is laying down the glass against the encasing layer that's already there, and I'm figuring out how to melt the sides of the encasing layer so I can prod the glass towards the mandrel but not actually touching it, so that my encased bead holes can have the not-yet-famous perfect Aimee pucker.  (My pucker was the first thing I got perfect, and I've always been kinda proud of that fact. :^)

The first two of those tricks I listed (the preheating and the winding from right to left) I actually figured out on my own.  I've never heard anyone talk about them, so a while ago I shared the right to left winding thing on LWE and was met with approval and thanks.  The reason I'm saying this is 'cause I believe that it's very important to share back with a community that has shared so much with me, and I want to encourage anyone who comes up with a new technique or a new trick to share it around instead of hording it just to make a few bucks on a tutorial.  Yeah, that's me, on a soap box.  I'll get off now.

That last technique I mention, about prodding the encasing layer toward the mandrel, I learned from watching Laura Sparling's YouTube video on encasing. Her video tutorials are really the cream of the crop, with precise instructions, great video, decent sound, and a friendly, well spoken instructor.  You can see my blog post about Laura here.

So, now all I gotta do is practice that encasing another dozen or so times and I'll have it down enough to start making encased beads to sell.  Only problem is, the clear I currently have sucks.  I'm not gonna bad mouth a particular glass manufacturer, especially since the first batch I got of this brand was fantastic, I'm just gonna direct you to Lampwork Etc. where you can read all about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to clear. To make a long story short, all I have to encase with are the colored transparents.  Which, when you think about it, isn't as bad as I am making it out.  I just love the look of a crisp, clean, clear encasing.  I just have to wait for my next order from my favorite glass merchant, Frantz Art Glass.

Oh oh! Oh oh oh!  Frantz is currently having one of their 70% off Vetrofond glass sales!  You gotta check it out! How many exclamation points can I use in a sentence?!? Apparently, A LOT!!! :^)

The management would like to apologize if you are reading this blog post after the Frantz sale has ended.  That's part of the problem with media. But don't worry, Frantz's glass sales are like the weather here on Kauai.  If you don't like it, wait five minutes and it'll change.

Oh, and since I have that great new camera I talked about in my last post, tomorrow I'll show off pictures of the encased and non-encased beads that are currently cookin' in the kiln.

After midnight, time for bed.