I can haz..... the flu! :-(

Yep, I have got it.... those dreaded lurgs that seem to be all over Sydney - aka influenza.    I don't want to spend my time blog whinging....(is that called Blinge-ing? LOL) but I have found it fairly difficult to get out onto my torch and actually melt some glass.  Interestingly enough it is not just due to incapacitation by illness.... it is my frame of mind and how being sick effects my creativity I think...... needless to say I have spend a fair bit if time in bed with the electric blanket set on 2, my ipad to play words with friends and pondering the great wonders of the universe... or my navel, whichever comes first ;-)

I thought I would share my experiences of lampworking when in different frames of mind.... sounds weird I know, but trust me - there appears to be a pattern here!

Good mood, kids well behaved and feeling fit
This is a conchatenation of ideal circumstances for me... I am happy and excited to be working, feel like I have almost unlimited patience and like to make really complicated objects de glass!  You can see from the examples below that I tend to use a lot of murrini when I am in a good mood:


aquarium focal bead



Back of burlesque bead

Feeling a little "out of sorts"
Hmmmm, you know that feeling when, well, nothing really excites you.  You feel fine, but just not terribly enthusiastic about anything in particular.  I often feel like this when I have an order to fill, I think the fact that I am somewhat constrained in what I will be making can sometimes stifle the fun out of the process.  I tend to feel this way EVEN if it is something that I really enjoy making, I am sure the psychologist types out there could easily research into what causes this particular reaction, but for me, it is just bloody annoying!  I do find that once I have made a start then it is all sweetness and light.... but 'till then, think Marvin the Manic Depressive Robot goes to work on the assembly line and you will have a closely matched thing to me walking out and lighting the torch!



Frog pond focal bead



Very badly shaped vomitus focal

Cranky or angry
Well, this is not the time to be torching for me, nothing good and NOTHING nice comes out of torching when I am in a bad mood.  The only advantage of Cranky torching for me, is that is can get the bad mood out of my system, unfortunately it is from punishing the glass somewhat though....ouch!    When I am in a bad mood, I slap the glass on, I try to force it to do what I want, when I want and how I want.... of course, it is an epic failure as a result.  To be honest when I cranky torch I could almost just get everything out of the kiln in the morning and throw it in the reject bin sight unseen, not because I am still cranky, but purely because it is ugly, unbalanced horrible stuff!

Cranky torching = beads barely safe for human eyes LOL

Distracted mood, is really thinking of other "stuff" not glass
Yep, I have torched in this stage and to be honest it is another one of those regrettable incidents that is only evidenced by more items in the reject bowl.  I have put eyes where eyes do not belong.  I have picked up the wrong colour and used it in the worse place (think murrini faces with a big birthmark) and have totally forgot to shape the base bead which means the end result is .... disturbing!


Fish..... sorta

Butterfly..... sorta

Sick... unwell.... think I am on the edge of death sort of thing
Oh yeah, most lampworkers have done it, and probably better than me, but when I am sick I am just incapable of taking any joy in melting the glass so I don't do it.  This is when I break out the dead bead graveyard  - clean off the shitty old soft glass rejects and whack then into a VERY hot kiln walk away and they into little puddles....voila, cabs!

Dead bead graveyard - cabs

Well, the only problem I can see with this journey of self discovery is..... how often am I actually in a good mood for glass.    Thank goodness I am usually in a good mood.... probably 6 days out of 7 I would say.... phew!  

There is one true exception to these observations of myself.... that is when, some middle of the night or heat of the shower bat crazy idea strikes.... all bets are off.... glass is melted in a frenzy - "things" are made!  LOL    All said and done, I think a positive frame of mind and approach to the glass will result in better work by yours truly.  I admit that it shows a distinct lack of self discipline, but that is how my crazy brain works and I like to operate on making interesting stuff... not production line work (even thought that would pay the bills, I hope my hubby Leo is not reading this one) !

Bad.....er..... slack blogger !

Well, finally I have got my finger out and blogged.  I have spent MONTHS saying that I need to update my blog and yet, as the uncrowned queen of procrastination, I have managed to put it off!

A LOT has been going on in my glassy life since my last blog, so I think I will blog about it in chronological order.... at least then it will make sense to me if no one else  ha ha ha

Gumblossom Dreams boro glass necklace

First off, some of my readers may recall that I was on a bit of a mission to get some of my work into some galleries.   Well, not only do I have work showing at the Barracuda Gallery over in Perth and the Canberra Glassworks gallery I was invited to participate in an "invitation only" flameworking event at the Craft NSW gallery in George Street in Sydney.  The "In Nature In Glass" exhibition was fabulous and at the same time SCARY AS HELL.  I was participating with a raft of big names in glass and felt a little like the tiny little tiddler in a pool of sharks, but I figured as long as I do my best, well that is the best I can do.    It was a really big thrill to see my work displayed beside the likes of Chris Arnold and Laurie Young, Peter Minson, Al Usher, Bernie Stonor, Jo Wu, Justin Rossi, Carol Marando and the lovely Penel Bigg!  I even braved the Sydney Train system (which is scary for a transplant from Canberra who is a little frightened of getting lost on the trains) and went into town for the opening of the exhibition by the gorgeous and talented Marina Hyasat.

Well.... you get the idea, it was crazy fancy and I am a bit of a bogan, but after leaving the crocs and moccies at home, I rubbed shoulders with the big guns and it felt really great!  Here is a pic of one of my entries, Gum Blossom Dreams.  Unfortunately it didn't survive the transport and didn't end up being displayed, but I have since fixed it and donated it as a raffle prize to a lovely Canberra Textile group (ACTTA).



Year of the Dragon bead set 2012 Sydney Royal Easter show Entry

I was also happy to participate in the Sydney Royal Easter show again and W O W was the competition hard this year.  It was so great to see the diversity of styles and the large number of entries.  for a competition that was losing some of its support by the local lampwork bead artists, it has turned right around and now a large number of people enter in support.   I was EXTREMELY lucky to get a third with my dragon set this year and to be honest, there were some sets of beads that utterly deserved a prize and yet missed out.  For local Aussies who want to see what is at the edge of the envelope in glass beads go along to the Easter show and have a squizz (might want to take a notebook to write down the names you might wish to contact afterwards too).

Well, I don't want to just write a novel on this one blog entry, so I shall continue on very soon with more glassy musings :-)

Glassy confusion

Yep, I have to admit totally that I have managed to confuddlate myself lately..... I have a big long list of stuff to do and I have been working though that (thanks mostly to the whyteboard list which somewhat keeps me on track, well a bit anyway), but I keep getting distracted by other stuff.  I have been working on odd ideas, things to try out and just plain "stuff" that is not on my to do list and yet I feel the burning need to put these ideas into practice, not tomorrow or even an hour from now......... right NOW!

Is it an obsessional thing, like OCD although mine would be called OGD (Obessive Glass Disorder) or is it just the nature of the artistic beast?  Who knows for sure, I just know that if I don't follow through on some of the stranger ideas then I feel very unfulfilled and unhappy.  The main thing is that I would not worry even the tiniest bit if this didn't affect other people, but it does!  I have poor buggers waiting for things for months very patiently, which I know deep down I could have finished thier items off and had them back at least weeks ago, and I just haven't done that work.  I am equally annoying myself and having fun, like the kid at the fair who feels a bit sick, but still keeps eating the fairy floss.

Bugger.... enough of that D & M stuff.

I have been ticking a couple jobs off my list of to do's and in between making some murrini components I have been making some beads using my new lentil press (interestingly I have never ever liked presses, not even a little tiny bit, but I like this one from Peter G in Melbourne and made to my specs).  I have been on a listing fest on the Etsy store to try and get the total number of items over 100 which I have been told is the "magic" number for interesting people to have a look, so I thought I might as well try.


The other job I have been attempting to get done is to restock my honey dipper lady at Blue Mountains Honey with some christmas themed jobbies..... I have done one lot last night and have the kiln hot and ready to go right now for some more.  I am going to try and get at least 30 out to her next week and Leo is making another cute little stand for them which will be cool too.

Oh well, the re-purpling of my hair is ready to rinse and the kiln and glass are waiting for me.  Have a FANTASTIC week everyone!

My brain is bursting with ideas.....

Well, after returning from working as a tech assist for Loren Stump for two weeks and standing and watching the students all melting glass (well, not just standing there of course, but you get the gist I am sure) I have got home and have gone into a glass melting frenzy!   I have been making murrini and beads like a steamtrain......  Some have come out ok, some NOT!  Its interesting that when you are working and not a student you really do miss out on some of the finer points of how to do things, I am of course wishing I had done the course as a paying student right now, but appreciate Gail at Goglass (www.goglassart.com.au) letting me work with such a great bloke and being exposed to a miriad of new ideas.  I feel frenzied to melt glass and try out new idea's .... always a good thing I am sure!

I made myself some of the 3D clownfish Loren showed the class and boy did I wish I had actually stayed to watch how he did it.  Mine look a bit more like a squirrel fish (those ugly ones with disproportionately large eyes) and then I forgot the mouth and adding it afterwards... well its not recommended lets put it that way!

 One good thing is that I have decided to make more beads using my own murrini.  It seems mental that I tend not to use them myself and yet I see the lovely stuff my customers make with them and drool...... doh!   The frog in the jungle bead above is the first bead I have used this particular leaf cane  on and I am quite happy with it - although the frogs legs are not very well done, it did give the green leafy jungle feel and after all that is what I was going for.

This bead is where I have moved on a little from my frog on a lily pond beads I had started on before going to work with Loren.  This one I applied a bit of yellow rose cane as a waterlily and popped a dragonfly slice on top of that.  I am loving the green growth on the side at the right too (based on ascidians, water filtering animals in the ocean) but I need to do more work on the koi fish on the bottom layer and are thinking I might make some koi murrini for them rather than a swipe of white with some orange and black spots.

I am still trolling my way slowly though the gorgeous work at the Bead Soup Blog Swap and there are some fabulous and inspiring pieces of art to drool over.  I figure it might take me a week or so before I get though, but I will read all of them.  I have tried to comment on them, but either through my own stupidity or the internet systems some use, can't work out how to have a say..... sometimes I make myself wonder I tell you! 

Time for the Bead soup to be sent off!!!

I am VERY excited to be participating in my very first bead soup blog party and I now have my swap partner Niky......YAY.  She makes the most gorgeous chain maille jewellery you have ever seen, you can find her here http://silverniknats.blogspot.com/.  The only problem I am having now, is the usual anxiety associated with swapping with someone you don't know and worrying that you might send too much, not enough (not likely to be a problem, I would rather overcater for a party if you know what I mean), its ugly, they won't like it, it just doesn't inspire them or even worse kills thier mojo outright..... you know, the usual exchange/swap stuff.... Ha ha ha ha!  Next I am sure I will be worried about doing her lovely bead soup some justice, goodness knows I can make jewellery when I put my mind to it, but this isn't just slapping some beads onto tiger tail, I want to really make something fabulous...lets hope the grey matter comes to the party with me and I come up with a great job!

I have just about got bead soup ready to send and could even have it off today with some luck, but in the night I had a brainstorm and now want to make a particular thing I think Niky could really use and have fun with (as an added extra that she can use whenever she wants to down the track sort of thing).  Wish me luck everyone!!!!

I have been working hard on getting my murrini order ready to send and have come up against a little hurdle..... my Frog Song murrini which is like a swimming little frog and one of the UGLIEST murrini I have ever made is sold out.  You might think this sends me the message that what I think is ugly others can use and make beautiful, but I find it hard to imagine making more of that ugly cane.... Maybe I should look at this as an exercise in self discipline, but these murrini look more like a frog that got squished on the road by a car than anything else to me.  Maybe I should make some dead cane-toad murrini just for fun.... now I like that idea quite a bit more!

I have made a few beads lately and seeing as I have been on a mission to catch up on orders, both informal and formal ones, I made ANOTHER belly dancer bead.  Why the capitalisation on another you might ask, and well... so far I am up to about belly dancer bead number 14 and still not happy.  This one I managed to reduce the silver glass I was using as her coin scarf and discoloured the side of her belly.......aaaarrrgh!  I shall have to get onto another belly dancer bead and I am sure that when I make one I think is good enough (its for a well-respected lampworking friend) I will breathe a massive sigh of relief for sure!

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 :-)

Parrot prototype using rainbow feather murrini

Now, whilst I was in my recent murrini-fest obsession (still not out of it to be honest) I was going to make a parrot head murrini. I have in fact made parrot murrini before, early on in my murrini making career (if you can call it that) and after the gorgeous Jan Cahill showed me a beautiful bead made by the VERY talented Kim Fields I wanted to make myself a parrot bead in the Kim Fields style too. Sooooo..... rather than invest loads of time in making a parrot head (which would look rather two dimensional on a 3D parrot) I made some rainbow feather murrini which is fast and easy to make!

I had to force myself not to look again at the bead Jan showed, I did NOT want to copy in any way, but only use the memory of the bead for inspiration and this is what I came up with (and got out the kiln this morning).I am quite pleased with the look of the bead, but feel that I can make VAST improvement on the placement of the green feathers and the colour of the rest of the parrot. You can see the rainbow feathers on the back look quite good, but I am also thinking that I need to make some feather murrini with different colour combos to more accurately imitate real life parrot colours! I do think the murrini would have looked better with the Pea Green as the end colour and therefore show more of that colour which would blend better with the rest of the green feathers!

Oh well, live and learn. I am thinking that I might try to make some pink graduated feathers and apply myself to making a Major Mitchell pink cockatoo! I was also thinking that some pink feathers would look good on my mate's (Maxine - glass by girlfriday) Pink Flamingo's.

Putting a smile on your dial

Yesterday I was having a big think about how to get a cute smile on a small bead and had a quick look through some of my collection of ex-dental tools. In there was a sort of scoopy one, so I showed it to Leo and he ground it back half way for me and viola....... a smile maker.

I have been particularly guilty about my slack efforts for the bravery beads program lately (have not been keeping up at all with my once per month parcel of beads..... its been nearly 6 months) so I thought I would use the newly created smile imprinter to make a few "people" beads. It worked fantastically!

After making quite a lot of Bravery Beads I felt inspired to see what else I could do, so I made a torso to match the head. The glass moved in mysterious ways and produced to me what looked suspiciously like a bridal gown:

After making the bridal gown I thought I should make a bride's head to match and this is what came out:

Then the next project, pretty lady goes to the races in 19th Century (don't even ask where this came out of my brain, sometimes I even scare myself) and this was the result. I was getting a bit Frustrated with not having canes premade so she was a put thrown together colour wise, but I have made a few colourful ribbon canes for my next efforts today.

I did have fun making the hat though!

Buggered if I know what anyone would use them for, Leo suggested I make a groom as well, like cake toppers. I am thinking a pirate might be much more fun!!!!

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..........

Happy Easter - the beads are breeding like rabbits!

Well, I have been thinking about Easter and the chocolate madness that always seems to ensure in my household. It is really the one day of the year where the girls all seem to manage to eat nothing but chocolate, there is sore tummies and whinging every time - but the memory is lost by the following year. I have tried NOT buying chocolate eggs ...... but then the rest of the family feels sorry for the poor things and over-compensate anyway.

I decided the the gift from Mum would be glass easter bunny pendants that I made. Leo will be in charge of the eggs, but it is a longer lasting, less sick-inducing gift that I will be giving them. Rose loves purple, Emma is definitely a "pink" girl and Grace usually likes black, but I made her one in white. I made myself one in caramel. These are all done using boro glass for a bit of extra strength and when I showed Leo what came out of the kiln this morning he reckons I should make some to sell and make some real tiny ones for on earrings. Once again I have missed the boat with timings though, Easter is only about a week away....... POOP.

Oh, you will see that I boiled the buggery out of the purple, so I am going to have to make another one for Rose.

Woah, lets bring out some bling!

I went shopping for glass recently and did a wee little bit of impulse buying (I told my hubby Leo I didn't buy much ;-) and bought some interesting garnishes of dichroic frit and some dichroic chatons to try out. I bought them from a newish glass company in the US who specialise in affordable inexpensive glass called Devardi. There has been a veritable shitfight on the Lampwork Etc forum about the evils of shocky rods and other more emotive reasons for not buying this glass, but I have to say - yep, some colours are shocky, but the glass is actually quite lovely to use once you get used to how to handle it. Its one of those glasses that you need to work cool and slow - perfect for the hothead if I still used one. One of the new products they have stocked is dichro (this has also been fairly well slammed by the purists) but whilst I am no experienced expert or anything, I have got it to work at least a bit. The fish above is encased chatons which were very easy to use, but admittedly were a little sensitive to direct heat. I liked how they came out looking somewhat like fish scales and will use this again sometime to make some nicer shaped fish in future.

The other garnish that I REALLY like is the dichro frit. I bought the dichro on black and found that if I used the tweezers and turned the bigger bits shiny side down before rolling my bead I would get a lot more bling out of it. I didn't take too much care with the heat or the shaping, but really do like the effect and ended up showing them to a customer who promptly ordered a necklace out of them.... so already sold - gotta be happy with that!

I also bought some of the dichro noodles which I am going to give a try out in the next few weeks.

My next project is a little something for the girls for easter........ think...... rabbit pendants!!!!!