Collabaration - different glass, another butterfly

Hmmmm, a great friend of mine Gail is very VERY talented at fusing and slumping and we are thinking of forming a team and collaborating to make some really interesting glassy things. I will still of course be sticking to beads and murrini as my core business, but the idea of making some larger and more unusual glass bits and pieces really sounds fabulous to me.

At the moment we need some planning time to get all our ideas down and form some sort of a priority listing so we have some goals rather than just run about ooooohing and aaaahing about our combined wisdom and mad schemes (we are both a bit the same, the crazier the better and we feed off each others enthusiasm)

My part of the "collab" will involve me making some complex murrini and small componentry in 96coe which should be compatible with the glass sheet Gail uses and to be honest a lot of the real skill will most likely be how she does her end. Thus far my only slumping efforts have been restricted to some bottles to make platters and "cabifying" dodgy beads (melting a cleaned up bead into a cabochon). In the week leading up to the move and sticking with my comfort zone I made quite a nice orange butterfly cane which I left as a graduated large diameter rod so that different sized slices can be cut..... all larger for the larger project, but some variety of size. Here's the pic of a rough slice of the finished cane. The great thing is that if I saw up the scrappy ends we will end up with some really cool fusing slices (half and quarter wings etc.).

Interestingly enough, I found it quite difficult not to pull down some of the cane for bead-sized butterflies..... Just habit I am sure!

Now..... I MUST go sort out some of my lampworking garage space and search further for beads.......aaaaaarrrrrrgggh!

House move from hell.... where are my beads gone!

Yup, my house is a little bit like a black pit of "stuff". We have been moving house over the last two weeks and now live in a massive pile of unpacked boxes! Moving from a humungous house to a smaller one has come with a large number of trials too......... WHERE ARE MY BEADS is the plaintiff cry heard more than once over the last few days!

My darling hubby Leo has tried to be very cognisant (big word for the day there friends) of the fact that I need a usable & safe space for my lampworking with adequate ventillation and no fire hazards. All this combined with limited space and trying to plan for correct storage of my rather large stash of lampworking glass is turning out to be a bit of a nightmare. I would take a picture of the carnage, but can't find my camera..... yup, packed!

I tried to limit the difficulties by leaving my lampwork setup and beading supplies until the very last, which I thought would be a "brilliant" plan so I could access my stuff quickly at this end...... no dice! I got a rather bad headache on the last moving day and had to leave it my Leo, he has managed to shove my stuff into boxes and plastic containers which are now spread all over the place - totally not his fault, I would rather have my things than leave them behind, but now I am needing some of my beading supplies and are getting rather desperate to melt some glass again I am getting slowly crankier by the day...

....hmmmmm, unpack kitchen stuff so we can have a home cooked dinner, or live off takeaway another day and continue the search for beading supplies................................... BEADING WINS!!!!!!!

Oh, here's one of the last beads off my torch before the move - I call her a Burlesque bead (think goddess with clothes!) This lady has gone to a lovely lampwork friend Trinar ;-)