The Honey dipper story :-)

OK, so the local lampworkers here in Australia are fairy well aware of my penchant for making honey dippers.  But..... for everyone else I thought it would be interesting to hear how they came about and where I think they might be going LOL

Honey dippers started as a bit of a mad idea.  My Dad's mate (aka Uncle Geoff) and is a woodturner and I am sure everyone has seen the gorgeous wood turned honey dippers available all over the world, they work wonderfully well and look lovely.... so I thought... hmmmmm, what about the same thing but in glass.  Off to the torch I went and after a couple of failed experiments (if there is such a thing, nothing is a failure that teaches you something in my opinion) I had some sweet success  YAY!

Here is one of my early honey dippers.  It is boro, which I think personally lends itself best to food and perhaps a little dishwasher abuse more so than the soft bright italian glass.  I made a quick and dirty honey bee murrini I could inert into the top handle in a round marble shape and used some colour on the working (dipper) end.  The design for the dipper part was a study in experimentation for me.... make an end, cool it.... drizzle honey with it....DOH...... make another.... cool it.... drizzle (you get it I am sure) until I hit on just the right base shape and distance between stringer wraps.  The real trick was actually to make sure the end where the honey drips off is just right and pokes out a bit... that gives you the ability to write on your toast with the neat pour of honey!

Early honey dipper design

After these first clunky ones I decided that I did not want any glass colour near the food (just to be sure everything was all safe etc.) so they became all clear with just the fancy top.  With the epiphany of approaching the honey dipper top a little like a bead (and on the same scale) it all went smoothly from there.  Justin Rossi, fabulous bloke and brilliant glass artist showed me the helix twist and so I started applying that technique which looked much classier I thought.  I also started making cute but slightly cheesy christmas honey dippers.... ;-)

Helix twist and christmas themed honey dipper tops

After struggling a little bit on the shape and balance of these honey dipper tops I started on the floral themed ones.  I used some Momka commercial cane for the flowers and added some of my murrini bees for good measure, they came out nice and I started to see more of where I was heading with these dippers.   You might see the lump of clear glass on the top of the dippers and that was really firstly because I thought it looked classy.... and secondly because it helped me line everything up nicely...  I got over that fairly quickly when I realised that it was distorting the view of my work underneath LOL

Floral bee honey dippers

As you can see in the above pic, some of them I got a bit heavy handed on.....after all, how many flowers could I fit nicely in a honey dipper.  I resorted to asking for some feedback from my critique group..... my Mum Faye and my hubby, who when really pushed will tell me the truth (no pushing required for my Mum though LOL).  The consensus was that just one bee and just one flower was the classier look.  So I moved along, made some new flower murrini to add some extra colour and made some rather sweet butterfly murini to add in as well...... This is the latest incarnation of my honey dippers:

Latest version honey dipper with butterfly murrini.... and the odd bee!

When I was making some of these honey dipper tops I got a bit over excited on one of them.... hence, honey dipper gone wild Marble.... not so funny at the time, but I liked it when I got it out of the kiln.  I just seemed to keep adding layers of flowers and butterflies and grass etc.  It got out of hand I just decided that I would turn it into a mib.... ha ha ha

Last but not least I made a couple of sets with a matching honey dipper and jam spoon.... Here's adam and eve:

Adam Jam spoon and Eve honey dipper set

These honey dippers have been a real work in progress, they are morphing into something new regularly when I am at the torch and for that I have to be grateful for customers giving me ideas and the people I supply for allowing me the freedom to put what I like on top of the buggers :-)  I sell these at our local honey supplier http://www.bluemountainshoney.com.au/ and at the Canberra Glassworks gallery http://www.canberraglassworks.com/ .  I do sell the odd one on my Etsy store, but to be honest I have a bit of a hard time keeping up the supply, I shall have to get my proverbial finger out I suppose ha ha ha.

I will be supplying some special ones for the Canberra Glassworks gallery Floriade stall, so anyone who is visiting Canberra during floriade, please drop in and see the gorgeous glassy goodness at the glassworks or at least call into thier stall at Floriade and see my honey dippers in real life... say hello to the girls for me, they are lovely :-)

Crazytime..... but loads of fun

New style of octopus honey dipper top

Oh dear, I have neglected my blog for a few days...er. maybe a week, but I have a good excuse.... I do....er.... maybe I don't, but I have been crazy busy!  I have got stock in two galleries now....yay and my local retailers for honey dippers, beads, glass clasps and pendants are all needing more stock.......the murrini are still being done  ..... OMG

Thanks to the suggestion by a very nice customer I have been playing about a little with some honey dipper tops.... these octopus ones are particularly cute and I admit that because they are not bee or flower related I never even considered something like this.... I am having lots of fun with them.

I have got myself to the point of not knowing where to start and as usual had a dream in the night (or evening after some spicy KFC) and had to try it out, so I though I would run you all through how my dongle necklaces come about.

First off is the concept, sometimes this is the colour of the chain, the size of the links, diameter of rods or murrini, twists or just plain dongles themsleves.  Today I decided I wanted something classy, something that will go with my supposedly "slimming" outfits in black.... something delicate but busy.... hmmm, its a tall order.  Essentially I have decided to make a very small diameter fine chain out of plain black (I used some very large diameter chinese black I have had sitting in my glass stash for AGES).  I pulled stringers off the black cane, made the enclosed links, joined them together with less than neat on this occasion joining links and popped some dongles on the end to see how they will look.  One trick I have recently picked up on is to make a bracelet length piece of chain and "dongle-ise" that to see how it is going to look.  None of you would be believe how many bits of chain with ugly dongles I have sitting in a hidden bag of rejects....LOL

Dongle chain evolution

Above is a fairly good pic of the evolution process.... once I finish putting the dongles on this short length I shall extend it out each side until I have a necklace of the optimum length..... thats the plan at any rate!!!!

This is it thus far...... I think it has some potential, although being such fine small chain means LOADS of more work that the big chunky stuff.  Still, I think it will fit the bill for delicate, goes with black dresses on the rare occasion I have to go to something formal and still just a little bit busy!

Have a wonderful week everyone!

The Great Honey Dipper Disaster of 2011

Christmas Honey Dippers

Oh dear, disaster has struck at my house on Melbourne Cup day in Western Sydney.  I came home early from Leo's work Melbourne Cup function to take my new stock of christmas themed Honey Dippers up to the honey lady only to find my Mum (who was up visiting from Canberra) was in tears.... not just tears but sobbing inconsolably sort of tears.  I was understandably concerned, counted my three kids were all here, checked I had the clean undies on (something that would potentially have made her cry with frustration if not), looked around to check there were no flames.... and then asked the fatal question...... "what's wrong?"

Honey Dippers on stand before floor annealing... ie. breaking into bits!

It turns out that poor Mum had been putting a bag on the table and had knocked off my whole box of honey dippers (packed and ready to take) off the table face down into the tiled floor......hmmmmm, only one lonely one survived... wouldn't you know it.... it was the ugliest simple one!!!!!!!!!

As you can see above Leo has made me a super cool display stand for the Blue Mountains Honey peeps and I am positive they will love that bit, but I REALLY want to take along some actual stock too, so the kiln is heating up right now and I will make another dent in the list.

Broken "bits" of honey dippers

I am sure there will be a little tiny bit of angst making more of these and the reality is, being borosilicate glass, they could be repaired, but it would be quite a bit faster for me to just make some new ones.  The added benefit is also that I would know they were lovely and strong - sort of like a new car rather than a refurbished one.  At least this time around I will be a little faster and probably do a better job avoiding the odd pitfall you have with sculptural glass items.

I still feel badly for Mum who has been totally distraught for two days about this..... she's still upset I might add!

I am a bit more prosaic about the whole thing, after all, no-one was hurt and really...its only sand!!!!

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!

Cheap home-made lampwork tools!!!!

I am not a tight person financially - not that I have much money I don't, but I reckon money is for using to make your life better, not to hoard away or wave in someone elses face in an attempt to prove how much better you are than others!!! Its purely a means to an end to me, probably why I will NEVER be a millionaire! But, when I have needed some lampwork tools I have managed to save a few bucks and come up with things that work really well for me (thanks to Leo my husbands help). These are definitely not professional or anything, but they work for me.

Firstly, after hearing me whinging about having no hot fingers and trying to work out a way to remove marbles from the last punti with leaving a bellybutton (punti mark) he spent a few minutes huddled in the back of the garage and then came out with these....... marble holders!!!! The marble purists wouldn't like the metal against the glass which could potentially cause marks, but given that my marbles are in no way professional I dont mind one bit. They are simply a pair of cheap stainless steel tweezers with two thin mandrels sort of soldered on with some wire wrapped around for strength at the join. Leo them just curled the ends over so they met and could hold a round object neatly between them.

The other tool he made me last night was a spoon press...... what is that you might well ask - well I had a request (from my Mum) to make a glass jam spoon after she saw my boro honey dippers and suggested that a set would look good. I tried making a spoon for the first time last night and this is what I used to make it with.

I bought two cheap stainless teaspoons from an asian supermarket and got Leo to stick them on the ends of another pair of tweezers so they could meet closely cupped togther. They worked really well, although I did have to squash the gather of glass a little to fit in between the spoons nicely.

For those wondering what the spoon looks like, here is a pic of the first one I made with the matching honey dipper. They are made from borosilicate glass (encased in clear, I don't want anyone eating off any dodgy metallic additives in the glass).

The camera battery has died, so sorry about the pic!