Bellflower press fest!

Ok, I got my Carlo Dona bellflower press months ago and did not last a day before using it...... every short rod of glass on my lampworking desk was at serious risk.... I made HUNDREDS of the little buggers and got a real nice feel for how much glass to put onto the headpin. I have used loads of the bellflowers on my Sydney Royal Easter Show entry - along with 5 horseheads on a necklace.... busy is not an adequate word, but the lampies do look good. Even after using lots of these flowers I was still left with heaps of them. Given that, particularly in the beginning, I was mostly just practicing - they are in lots of different colours so I thought, bugger it..... lets make something gardenish and greenish and this is what came out (sorry about the bodgy inside with the flash on pic). I used chain, attached the bellflowers with wire wrapping then sewed the seed beads through the chain using fireline. The good thing about using chain this way is that the whole necklace stays sort of nice and floppy but still full of beads!

When I was making these flowers my Mum had come for a visit from Canberra and she asked to watch...... thankfully I said yes of course, because she made a whole stack of really great suggestions like - pull each ridge into a petal and add stamens etc. It was excellent and I was no longer producing the plain and simple variety which made it much more interesting, lucky the old chook is really into gardening.

The next question was, how does boro work doing this? Boro works GREAT!

This second necklace was made using boro bellflowers with stamens in pink with orange frit and green multicolour striped momka glass rod which I cut up like murrini and applied carefully to the headpin so I maintained the stripes. I kept this necklace a bit more muted in colour and is very sort of gentle and soft both in colour and feel. I used some silver balls for a bit of bling rather than swarovski crystals and was very pleased with the result.

Right at this moment I have about 30 more flowers annealing overnight in my kiln. Half are just clear boro which should come out lovely and sparkly and the other half also in clear but with a soft pink flower base. I am thinking that I will make a necklace and bracelet set out of these using all clear ab seeds, clear swarovski crystals and perhaps just a few pink lined seeds or I might go for the silver balls again....... I will have to see how it all looks together.

It'll be one of those morning when I get up about 6am and run out the kiln..........