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 :-)

Experimenting with japanese print inspired style

First off, it has to be said..... no I did not do a class with Anastasia recently (or ever), but I suppose there is only so many looks you get with enamels on a base bead and some stringers thrown on!

Well, I have a burning need to make some beads lately, both for monetary reasons and for creative satisfaction.  I have been playing just a little with some enamels and these top two are the results of that playing.  I made them both on a base of devardi glass and used some thompson 104 enamels in two different tones just laid beside each other to give me a sort of interesting base.  It has to be said also that once the enamel is melted in, it felt like it gives a nice surface for some stringer work to me (now that was a pleasant surprise).  I have been working on a series of japanese print inspired beads and wanted something reminiscent of cherry blossom branch pattern.  They don't look japanese I am sure, but the effect was nonetheless quite nice and I was happy with the colour and form of these.  I really think that next time I need to use some of the gorgeous reichenbach porcelain white for the blossoms to give the really dense bright white and allow for really fine tiny dots too.... shall add that to my cart with Affordable for sure :-)

After these cherry blossom brances I tried something a little more strange again..... some bamboo stringer work..... I REALLY don't like how this came out, but I do admit that if I used a base of white and just kept the bamboo a little simpler and took a little more time to make the bamboo finer it still has some possibilities.

Now this third one I made whilst thinking more about Japanese prints and was a very quick and dirty job (please excuse the bad pic too).  I decided I wanted a cherry blossom effect which I was quite dissapointed with as it bled quite a bit (shouldn't have used that intense black now should I) and the blossom dots were clunky and I didn't take much time with the shaping, but hopefully you can see where I was headed.  I wanted it to look like a japanese print on a wall!  I also masked off a branch shape at the top and the centre feature area, then etched this fella.... Definitely needs to be sorted out but once again its a start.

This was one of those days when nothing turned out how I wanted it to turn out, and yet was not a complete dissapointment either.  I have loads of ideas for some new directions to try out now and that sort of inspiration is always welcome!