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 :-)

Buy one thing at the bead shop.... I DONT think so!!!!

Yes, I am quite ashamed of myself this morning.  I decided that I just need a little touch more "stuff" for my bead soup recipient and so I went for a little drive to my lovely local bead store.  Its a fabulous shop which has just recently moved premises and expanded into clothing as well in a very large store space with the beads and findings well organised up the back.  Fortunately for me I got to chat with the owner Lenore who is a very lovely lady who was extremely helpful and even offered for me to put some of my lampwork stock in there too.... gotta love that!  The only problem was, Lenore was a bad enabler... ha ha ha.  When I asked if she has any sterling toggle clasps in stock she excitedly told me she had quite a few left over from a buying trip about four years ago and she got them out of the cupboard for me......ooooooooH WOW!  They were gorgeous and quite cheap.  She explained that she hasn't bothered to weight and reprice any of them so they are a price from 4 years ago... which was quite apparent I have to say.

In any case I went through the containers like a rat up a drainpipe and managed to spend nearly $200, only narrowly avoiding the massive and fancy $60 each gorgeous ones (might have to sneak back after payday I am thinking).  Here is a handful of some of the ones I got, the little purse one is particularly cute, but the teapot and a spoon for the toggle is just so cute I could eat it up.

I think I might be in danger of becoming a toggle clasp 'ho if you know what I mean.  I have ordered many nice ones from Bali before now, but I am already feeling the pull to go back into the bead shop for more.... soooooo nice and sooooo cheap!

One thing I did pull out of the kiln last night from yesterdays torch session was this boro fish pendant.  It is not the prettiest fish I have ever made and to be honest it is a little large for a comfortable pendant (unless you like large pendants of course).  I was trying out some ideas for fish scale effects and slapped the rest together sort of spur of the moment.  I think it looks a little like a blue guppy.

My kids absolutely loved this fish pendant, but then again if I put a bit of dogpoop on a necklace, they would probably love that too!

Fish murrini rescue success....... YAY!

Yup, I have been having an absolute ball melting glass lately. I just can't seem to get enough time at the torch although that then leads to the evils of NOT ENOUGH GLASS..... he he, not really true for me at the moment, but a gal always wants some more glass hey!

I decided that I hadn't done any decent murrini for quite a while and thought I might make a random bodgy sort of fish.... Really stupidly I decided to temp fate and make a fairly plain stripy one pull fish.... predominantly yellow (for those who aren't bitten by the lampwork bug, that was the stupid decision, to go with Yellow). Yellow it is commonly known amongst murrini makers is a naughty little bugger who loves to crackalack a lot after encasing in clear once pulled. Needless to say, I finished my pull (which incidentally was a beauteous thing to behold, one of those rod pulls that goes smoothly and evenly). I will admit that I had buggered about somewhat getting the resulting fat rod into the kiln and when I checked the next morning there was more "crack" than you'd find on a plumber....... it was pretty much completely crazed and cracked all over, yet still sticking together... mostly.

At this point.... thank goodness the kids had gone to school, but holding that cracked log of glass in my hands was a bit soul destroying after investing about 2hrs into it and about a lb of glass to boot. I ALMOST binned it or threw it on the ground in a huff, but fortunately decided to conduct a small experiment instead. I wondered if I carefully sawed it into bits then preheated it in my kiln at about 630 C (regular annealing temp for me is usually 515 C) then reintroduced it to the flame, cap it, heal the cracks and pulled to about 5mm diameter if my bodgy fish could be resuscitated at all....... YES indeed it could as it turned out. Pulling some murrini cane into 4-7mm diameter worked very well, they chopped up nicely and I now have a baggie of many, many fish murrini which is fine with me, if not the usual way I like to keep my murrini. I like to store my murrini in rods of about 4cm diameter then slice it up later and pull smaller if I want some bead or marble making sized slices

Here's a pic of some of the small slices I got off the cane, like I said it was a very simple slightly ugly fish murrini that was straight out of my brain as I went with no planning on shape or colour at all..... fairly obvious I am sure!

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!