A fishy success!!!!!

Here she is:

Thanks goodness, when I got the large diameter murrini cane out of my kiln this morning and then sliced it into nice little bite-sizes (read pulling out smaller sized) I was happy to see that it looked like a fish, indeed much like the fish it was supposed to look like!  It is by no means perfect and the body shape is not quite right and the top yellow fin was too small compared to the large tail fin and I didn't get the stripes quite right and the face..... well you get the picture!  I do still have another face came component and might go back and try again when in the mood, but for just now I will pull some of this cane down to bead sized and cut into slices for Affordable to sell for me if Kerry is happy with that.... or, I will pop them into some containers for the flame-on freebie bags..... hmmm not sure, maybe both!

Last night I decided that whilst I was waiting for the kiln to heat up to component cane temp I might as well throw a couple of boro things in there..... here are the marbles I quickly threw together.  My hubby Leo is rapidly collecting a rather nice line of mibs for on his office window sill at work and he really quite likes them.   He is quite proud of my glass stuff and gets all puffed up when a visiting person asks about them. I love that he is so supportive of my glassy endeavours, but it sounds suspiciously to me like he never grew out of that boys and marble fetish thing lots of young men have, but geeze, I like them too!  Still, if a few marbles keeps him happy and cool with my buying glass, he can have as many as he likes!!!

Filling the bowl..... My husband earns his wife-taming stripes!

On Saturday my husband was rather excited and leapt out of bed at about 7am.  Why you might ask? Well....not only had my parents given him a bag of money (change in gold coins of about $100 worth) there were a number of local garage sales on......aaarrgh!

Now I have been on a mission to try and get rid of extraneous stuff (mostly not mine though, I am quite emotionally attached that! LOL) and when Leo comes home to swap cars so he can go back and collect the BIG thing he bought, well.... I didn't exactly have a tantrum, but I sure made my displeasure felt about the whole situation in no uncertain terms!

It turned out to be one of those times where I should have bitten my tongue!  He came back with a very nice wooden corner cabinet for the grand total of $3 that fits beautifully into the dining room and fits all out board games perfectly!  It does need a rub back and re-varnish, but then so does nearly everything in the house...sometimes even me!! 

If you have a look he even popped a lovely large glass bowl and thats when things got interesting!

Leo made the suggestion that I fill that bowl with all my rejects, orphans and experimental beads!  He said it would look really "cool" in there and that guests could fossick amongst the beads for fun.  My first reaction was that it is an inspired idea and how thoughtful he was about my art and how lovely that he would make a place for it....etc....etc... until he said those dreaded words..... "now you don't need to leave them on the kitchen bench".... which of course totally ruined all the warm fuzzy feelings I was having towards him for his kindness and realised that when nagging me not to leave my beads and stuff on the kitchen bench (in the most annoying place I do admit) he has had to resort to giving me an alternative.  10 Points to the man who has changed a womans habit without argument!!!

Here is my old bead storage area, between the kitchen sink, the phone and the coffee machine (oh, and the kids slushy machine which is too cold to use right now anyway)

Of course I shall still have to remove the mandrels and clean them and stuff, but at least I won't be building up a massive pile of odd's that slowly spread out over an ever increasing area!

Best of all....... I am now on a mission to fill the bowl!  Everyone's happy!

Nat :-)

I'm in the Bead Soup Blog Party...whooohoooo!

It is possible that many of you are far more observant than me and have noticed I have a button with link to the Bead Soup Blog Party over at the bottom right!

I have joined up because to be honest it sounds like a real Hoot!  Plus I am thinking it will get me making some actually jewellery again (I have been very slack for quite a while now).  I think it sounds like great fun to make up a set of beads to send off over the ocean (unless I get an Aussie in my swap, possible but not likely I am sure).  I was on the torch today and thought I might make up some beads to send off, but then after lots of thought, I decided that it would probably be better to wait for my swap partner name and then do some sneaking about on thier blog to see what colours they are into (or anything else sort of special they might like).  I will be making a marathon effort to get my beads off really quickly given that the reciever will have the maximum time to make up something with them and I am hoping my swap partner does the same sort of thing.  As it turns out I will be off for two weeks in the beginning of September working as Loren Stump's Technical Assistant (soooo excited, I loved working with him last year), but this will be leaving me with very little time to do the making part of my swap.  I figure if I can have mine all finished up and photographed then I will have it all ready to upload on the party day (day to post up the finished article then go around to everyones blogs and drool over the all the loveliness!!!).

I have my half of the kaleidoscope murrini cane done, last bit tomorrow....YAY!  I have promised some more marine life murrini to one of Kerry's lovely customers and will get some of the components done for that too if I can.  Even though I am catching up on my TO DO list, after adding in some more, it seems that it is the perpetual to do list.... always something more to do!

Nat :-)

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!

I'll have a slice of lemon and lime with that ......

I thought I would pop on a quickie post about how my citrus murrini are going so far.  I made the lemon component first and after pulling it out and thinking about it a lot more, I decided to approach it a little differently on the Lime slices.

I made the lemon component as a triangle to sit 3 together for half of the lemon slice and tried to mix in different transparent yellows with some clear in there too so it looks like that little those membraney bits.... didn't really work out the same as the picture in my head, but ok I suppose.  I mixed some trans lemon with some of the CIM ginger to use as the colour for the pith and then straight cim ginger for the pith around the outside of each section before putting the together.

When I made the lime one I decided to pull a little smaller and to also make the triangles a little slimmer so I can fit four of them into a half circle.  I also decided to forgo the membrane effect and just graduated the transparent colour from light on the inside to a darker transparent green at the outside.  I did the pith the same as the lemon. 

Tonight I will put them together, stick on some more pith and pop on some bright opaque rind..... I am looking forward to seeing how it comes out.  I also reckon I might make an "orange" as well just for some fun and to make a nice mix of murrini chips to sell via Affordable Inspiration.

I can just see a tall glass of water with some lemon and lime slices floating in there as a bead!