Death of a plate..... but tried again with success!

Sharks vomit plate 1 with hole

Oh yeah..... there is no question, I killed my plate using Sharks Vomit 1 when I tried to slump it into the mold.  It is mostly due to the fact that I totally forgot that I needed to slow down the ramp up heat rate and so when the plate hit about 350deg C there was a muffled clang...well to be honest multiple clangy sounds and when I peeked into the peephole, there it sat.... in MANY parts.  I was not happy, indeed I was rather upset, but as they say... you learn much more from a mistake than you do from getting it right the first time.  I decided that because it was in pieces, I might as well ramp the temp right up and see if some of it will fuse back together.  In fact it did fuse back quite a bit, but left a little hole that I have decided would be a good spot to sit a marble ( I put a circle around the hole zone on the above pic).  The glass also somewhat dripped down the sides of the plate mold and I will have to grind that off.  I am still toying with the idea that I should re-fuse and then try slumping this one again.... just toying at the moment, but if I have to look at it too long like this, it shall feel some heat I promise you!  LOL

Being a big one for getting it right at least once, I decided to spend 4 hrs of my time yesterday to make up another fusing plate using my murrini again.  This time I tried to stick with half decent murrini (ie, not too many clear inclusions etc.) although they are still my rejected ones, I made sure they were as tightly packed as I could get them.  I even pulled some little stringer sized murrini to pop down the gaps and it really paid off.  The glass did not move around very much at all and the fuse came out lovely.  I slumped it late last night and got this beauty out of the kiln this arvo and now have a cute little square plate..... I love it!!!!

Sharks vomit 2 slumped into plate -  sweet success

I have now got a kiln full of  "testers" that I will see how they look when they come out before I think of using them in a larger plate size.  The handy thing is that I will be able to glue on some bails and voila.... instant pendant.  Hopefully they won't be too ugly to be worn and if they are, well I will keep them or donate them to someone who seed beads cabs or something fun like that.

Testers to see what happens in the kiln!

Have a fabulous week, this week is getting things done week for me....... YEAH!

Off my back, on my feet and murrini-ing!!!!!

Oooooh, that feels so good to get back into some serious murrini-festing around here.  I have been so focussed on making stuff for my etsy store and getting side-tracked with some experiments that I have let my murrini making slide a little.  I have a whole lot of stock I need to get down to Kerry at Affordable Inspiration and in my defence I have been getting rather organised (ie. making large murrini and leaving some in component form for the next time rather than just making enough for right now).

I have also been really crook this week (that ill for those non-aussies) and have spent nearly a whole week in bed with no voice and whinging about the sore throat (mostly silently to myself to be sure) and having the frustration of needing to yell at my kids and only having a completely unsatisfying tiny squeek come out!!  Well, the antibiotics have now kicked in and the kiln is hot and its time to murrini. 

I have three constructed canes I am doing today, first off is the dragonfly cane final assembly (ie the two halves).  this is dragonfly cane number two I have made (the first one is back in the archives in this blog with some notes on how I came up with the planning for it).  The wings are a little fatter on this one and I will admit that I was not quite so anal about the graduation of colour, which I might add barely shows on the smaller diameter stuff once pulled down.  This one was made to restock and therefore, is still very nice, but not perfect.  I am hoping to avoid the "bum cheek" dilemma I had last time by making the body just a streamlined straight line.

Here is the second cane I will be putting together.  This is some more monarch butterfly cane, the last one I did I had a scare from one of my girls and accidentally put the two halves together off centre.... I am determined not to make that mistake with this one!  One thing to keep in mind with using the oranges and yellows in canes like this is that they are a bit unstable and rather prone to cracking.  Usually once they are pulled down this issue seems....er... less of an issue, but I always anneal even my final small diameter pull fully just in case.  To be honest it also makes the canes very nice to chop up neatly which is always a good thing!

And finally, I have decided that I should revisit my efforts at a kaleidoscope cane.  I am going to put these three together and fill with some other colours into a triangle shape which I will make into another component cane.... hopefully by the time I pull this out a couple more times you don't completely loose the detail, but considering that I found this one particularly ugly, I figure it can't hurt and I can keep my fingers crossed for a pleasant surprise anyway!

Half is better than none!

Well after the disaster yesterday morning with the butterfly murrini wing, in a fit of stubborn bloody-mindedness I went back for round two last night (about 10pm) . I sawed the remaining wing in half to give me two sides once again, ramped it up slowly and made my white/green butterfly. I got to bed about 2am but felt a bit less cranky about the whole thing. Its extremely irritating that I have ended up with half of the volume of cane, but that is much better than none at all....... I will admit the need to repeat this to myself each time I look at the cane! I also had to pull it rather smaller diameter than I would have liked because of the small volume at 1.5cm, but they will still be quite usable.


I have chopped the cane in half and thought I would slice one half up into slices to tumble to application to beads and leave the other little bit for pulling into small bead sized diameter later if I feel like it.

Next project: a Pink/purple and white butterfly with some playing about with edge colouring etc. and to stop being a wuss about starting the face of my complex fish murrini. The scales and the eye is done, but I keep putting it off.... just don't want to ruin the work so far I think!

White butterfly disaster has struck!!!!!!!!

Hmmm, well I had better come clean on here when things go.....er...... astray too!

I have been thinking about the butterfly murrini and colours and stuff and thought that I would make a white butterfly with green lobes.... hopefully it won't look like a moth dressed up as a butterfly, but it would be worth a play around at any rate.

I made the graduated green lobes which was fine and they came out really nicely. I dedided that I would put yellow surrounded by some clear for the small dots on the wings to try and make it sort of "delicate" and that turned out quite well. I made a couple blue/green dots for some extra oomph and they came out ok..... see for yourselves, this pic taken this morning just before attempting to put together for the final pull!

Being lazy and yet, in a bit of a hurry, I decided to ramp my kiln up very quickly and to avoid some crack-a-lacking when introduced into the flame put it on 560C. Well, rather than let the components soak somewhat at this temp I just couldn't wait and as soon as it it the top temp I got my first part out......... Crack time.... yep, huge big splitting nearly in half nasty cracks with bits falling off and completely ruining one half of my cane. Needless to say I was grateful for the kids all being at school, because there was some nasty swearing (even the FG one - F#@ Glass).

Once I had killed most of that side of the butterfly I was then left thinking..... what the hell do I do now? I decided to pop it back into the kiln and see if there is some decent slices to be had off the cane for fusing or polishing and left the other intact cane in there and put the lot back through a long annealling cycle. I am going to cut the one good half in half again and try putting those together in a more measured and careful manner.

Remember folks..... the murrini never forgives and is a card holding member of the Murphy's Law of cocking up!!!!!

NOT HAPPY!!!!!!

Tumbling on..and on.......and on a bit more!

I thought I would update on the progress of my tumble polishing experiment. You might remember that I was flat-lap impaired (a flat lap is a flat polishing machine that uses a largish rotating disc and you polish down against it) and decided to use some of the equipment on hand - specifically, my handy dandy you beauty rock tumbler!!!



First off I put some rough sliced discs of glass murrini into the tumbler with some 80 grit which is quite rough and really ground down the edges nicely over about seven days of tumbling. One thing to note is that rather than using the little plastic bead tumbling medium I used some home-made heavy leather offcuts my dad had cut up for me and it worked a real treat and was far better for tumbling the glass with. I then moved across to some 120 grit and after about four days moved across to 250grit which is quite fine and used for pre-polishing. Now I have bunged the first lot into the cerium polish and hopefully that will finish them off to a high polish and I can use them as they are for making some jewellery using PMC or can preheat in the kiln and insert them into a lampwork piece without having to worry about a huge volume of scum caused by a rough surface.

Here is a pic of a couple pieces just before I put them into the cerium for polishing. I am a bit worried about how the polishing will go as I am told that Cerium really needs friction and warmth to work properly. If the tumble polishing doesn't work I have bought myself a set of polishing bits for my dremel and will do some by hand..... may have to try that just to see the difference anyway ;-)

Mama's got her new lapidary blade and she working it!

Back again so soon and EXCITED! I actually got some more use out of the wet tile saw this morning and I am very happy with the results! I left the evidence on the tray so you can all see I did use it.....

First off, I had all sorts of strife getting the arbor size right on this thing, Leo bought me a lovely new saw for my birthday which I then rudely took it back and swapped believing the info on the internet that the Ryobi one had a 5/8" arbor which would nicely fit the most common sized lapidary blade (arbor is that hole in the middle of the blade)...... nope, it did NOT!!! Unfortunately Bunnings only stocks saws that have 7/8" (or 22.2mm) arbors so then I had to find a solution - I did not want to take this saw back as well it was driving me NUTS! Fortunately for me after some hunting about I found a lapidary supply place that had 1" arbor with a bush to suit the 22.2mm in 7" actually made to suit wet tile saws....... and the love story begins!!!

Knowing that I was sorting out the saw situation I started making myself some murrini components over the past few days and here they are all sawed up and ready to use. I finished the top half of a butterfly's wing last night (out of the kiln this morn) and made the leaf cane which is mostly graduated transparent green with opaque pistachio coloured veining yesterday too. The fish scale cane I made last week and I am really keen to try putting them together like Loren Stump does his fish scale cane..... hopefully I won't bugger it up!

I have been giving some thought to how I will be able to deal with the polishing issue and think I might have a plan of action - its not perfect, but hopefully it will work with some patience. I am going to slice up quite a lot of the large cane slices and pop them into my old rock tumbler with loads of little bits of cut up leather (a trick my Dad taught me when we into fossicking and tumbling our stones) starting with a medium grit and moving to fine at which time I will use my dremel with a polishing pad attachment and some cerium to finish off. The only big pain in the arse is the wait for the tumbler, but I reckon because it is glass and not rocks it will not take weeks, maybe just a day or two for each step. The added advantage of this option is that even the edges will come out lovely and smooth and polished too which makes using them even more fun. Here's is my old Lortone rock tumbler (double barrelled!) hunted out of the back of the shed by my darling Leo again - I will have to give it a clean up, but then I will load er up today and I will see how we fare. I thought I had better make the slices on the thicker side rather than the really thin ones seeing as they will be bumping together somewhat!

What am I going to do with these polished slices you might ask? I am thinking that if I preheat them I can apply them to the surface of a bead or pendant, I could drill a small hole in the top and use that to hang off some chain or earrings or even ask a friendly silversmith to bezel them up with a bail for a pendant on a necklace....... it will be interesting to see where this takes me!

Here's the paperweight!!!

I thought I might as well load up a pic of the paperweight I made on my Loren Stump level 2 course.

First off we made the butterfly murrini by choosing the colours we liked and making the lobes which are then constructed into the top and bottom wing. Here's a pic of the half a butterfly slice before I put the two halves together. I have to admit that mine was a bit dodgy compared to some of the gorgeous work which was partly because I had made my lobes too fat and then had to squish them a lot which distorted the ends of the coloured lobes. I also managed to pull my murrini a bit smaller than I should have in the final pull and therefore ended up with a fairly small butterfly. Good thing is that I have another set of halves ready to put together and pull again if I want. I have also come home and practiced a little and have made myself the top wing tonight and will do the bottom wing tomorrow then put together and see how we go.

I am LOVING the saw n0w I have my new lapidary blade set up and it is making the complex murrini making a real joy. I am going to break out the tumbler with some small bits of leather to try polishing the slices in there seeing as I don't have a flat-lap and don't really want to go to the expense of getting one in the near future.

I made myself a complex leaf cane which I have left at a reasonably large diameter today which is sitting in the kiln as I type....hhhmmmm, I am thinking slicing polishing then drilling a top hole and installing on a necklace should be fairly cool - very time consuming, but cool nonetheless!

Post Loren Stump course Murrini Frenzy begins!

Well, for those in know I was at a level 2 Loren Stump glassworking course down in Adelaide last month quickly followed by being a Technical Assistant for his Level 1 course in Sydney...... what a blast.

For those plebs who have never heard of Loren Stump, he is (to put it plainly) a great big whopping glass legend!!! Loren does absolutely amazing things with glass that everyone had agreed were impossible. Loren's murrini skillz are out of this world, when I say I am praying to the murrini gods.... well that is actually Loren I am talking about. He has even replicated great works of art into tiny glassy slices that are mindblowing. Loren is a top bloke and rather down to earth - almost on the bogan side really, but he is a fabulous teacher who holds nothing back at all!

Last year I did the level one course and came back to a real funk, it seemed that now I had been educated in what to aim for, everything I had made earlier was fairly crappy to my own eyes and I really avoided melting glass in the fear that more crap was going to be produced. Eventually I did get myself out of this funk, but have been determined not to give into the mind games with myself this time and therefore have gone out and melted glass already!

Leo (beaut husband of mine) got me a wet saw for my birthday and this definitely opens up loads of new opportunities as far as my murrini making goes. Being able to work using larger diameter componentry will make life much easier and whilst waiting for my new lapidary blade to arrive I have been making component cane for butterfly (lobes of the wings in graduated colour) and fish (graduated scales).

When I get my blade and do some slicing and dicing I will be back to show some of it off!

In meantime, keep your torches hot!

Nat

ps. new logo for the business!!

A Bright Butterfly in glass shards

Given that I have had a nasty sinus infection for nearly two weeks and with my husband Leo away it has been really REALLY mental around my house. Lucky for me I actually managed to get a go on the torch for a very quick session today and this is what came out..... a butterfly.

After seeing a beautiful butterfly made with what looked like a decorated shard of glass applied to a base bead I REALLY wanted to have a try at my own take on this sort of technique and this is what I came up with. The shards were made from a mixture of glass and used quite a lot of reichenbach multicolour which gives it a lovely delicate hue. I actually applied four shards of a similar size after decorating a large lentil with a sort of field of murrini flowers as a background.

Here is both the front and back of the bead - notice the monkey face signature cane on the back side ;-) More and more people want a collectable bead with my signature cane on it and even my kids look on every focal bead for where it is put!