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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Cab me up scotty! but throw some beads in for good measure!

Yup, I have made cabochons before, but mostly those cheating puddle of glass which I generally refer as my dead bead graveyard.  You know the ones where you clean your dodgy old beads really well then ramp the kiln up to "puddle-ising" temperature and then ramp back down through an annealing cycle.  Well, on my list yesterday was to make a few off mandrel more complex boro cabochons.  I figured it would be MUCH easier to make these off mandrel than to use a cabochon mandrel and then have the buggers fall off.  Generally speaking I find that working with boro is hard enough on the bead release and mandrel let along expecting it to cling precariously onto a flat surface... plus it is not really necessary.

I thought I would make a couple owl cabochons first off and after making the first one realised... woah, how would someone cab around the ears and head?  So to help out I popped on some clear in those areas so the back of the cab was basically oblong and at least rounded off somewhat but left the  owl sort of raised up a bit.  After this first one and the fiddling about with the clear, I figured I might as well try making a small flattish owl and then applying that to a flat disc of clear and see how that works out.... much better and easier to do as it turned out.  The large blue owl (with the slightly smudgy eyes after all my buggerising about with the backing) was the first one and the little white owl is the one I applied separately.

The other cabochons I worked on which could be fun for the seed beady types to play with was some eyeball cabs.  They came out well and were rather easy to make, but I am getting dangerously low on that lovely iris cane, so I might have to give them a break for a while I reckon. 

Here is a pic of some of yesterday's efforts, cabs and some beads.  I have popped a couple beads onto beadable pendant bars for selling at our local florist (someone I have been promising some stock to since May..... BAD Nat!) and since that is on my list of to do's I am starting to get them ready for her.

Have a lovely week everyone,

Nat :-)

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