The 104coe murrini fusing experiment..... SUCCESS!

Well despite my concerns about fusing the miriad of murrini (I quite like how that rolls off the tongue... Miriad of Murrini.... yeah!)  I opened the kiln lid this morning to some sweet success!  Both sides of the piece were really cool with the bottom side maintaining the integrity of the pattern where the murrini sat against the clear glass:

And then there was the top side where the different glass sort of moved around a bit an squidgied the top of the pictures.  Green and Blue glass seems to be really prone to this moving around in a very viscous (not vicious) fashion, I am sure the techno-types out there would be able to say exactly why, but for me, sometimes I really like it and sometimes ....er.... not!

Here's a pic of the top side and you can see the distortion to the pics, and yet I still think it is pretty damn cool!

The next job will be to try slumping this into a plate mold, which I am now a bit nervous about given that I do not want to ruin this glass now its worked out so far.  I could be conservative and try with some other glass first...... but NAHHHH I will stick my neck out, scoff at the danger (danger of buggering it up that is) and dip my foot into the slumping waters...... ok, now I have slightly scared myself!

Have a wonderful day everyone, its sunny, warm and fabulous here in Sydney right now..... I am loving life!

Back from Crazy month... with a bit of sharks vomit !!!

Ascidian bead experiment

Yahoo, I am glad to say that I am home after a literal marathon of glassy goodness.  First off I was on the committee for the 2011 International Flameon event here in Sydney and whilst it was Motza fun.... it was also very exhausting!  If you would like to see some photos of the event http://www.flameondownunder.com/flame-on-2011-photos.html  or of course would like a chance to bid on some of the items of art created and donated for Spinal Cord Injury Australia then try http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/flameondownunder/m.html?_nkw&_armrs=1&_from&_jpg&_trksid=p3686 for the full listing of lovely stuff to drool over and maybe even buy.... LOL

 After spending a crazy time at the flame on with Robert Mickelson, Chris Arnold and of course Loren Stump (plus heaps of other lovely lampwork peeps), I then got to help out at the studio for Robert who is a really lovely bloke and a great teacher.  Unfortunately I didn't get to stay the whole time (friends wedding in Victoria) but the students were producing really amazing things!

After all my travelling around and being away from my own torch I have been rather desperate to melt some glass too and since I got home that is just what I have been doing.  I spent some time today on my first ever fusing project to give my new (and much larger) kiln a good run.  Here's a pic of the project before it went into the kiln.  I had some 104 sheet glass laying around and decided to use a whole lot of the knobby ends of old and crappy murrini pulls with the odd lump of "other" also all in 104 COE of course.

Sharks Vomit - Pre fused

I have decided to call this "sharks vomit" because it is basically a mish mash of all my scrappy ends and bad murrini pulls.  It had great potential to just all smoosh together and looks really foul, but then again... it also might come out rather fun!  If it turns out at all I am going to slump it into a greenware plate mold I bought a little while ago which I think might look rather funky!

Oh..... on a VERY happy note, my work has been accepted by the wonderful people at the Canberra Glassworks Gallery........YAHOOOOOOOO!

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!!!

Murrini-ing on and more sea themes!

Well I am now definitely back in my usual swing.  Which is in actuality a little crazed given that I have just got back from working with the lovely Loren Stump and are on the committee for the first ever International Flame-on Downunder in less than two weeks time (and things are hotting up in more than one way..... LOL) see http://www.flameondownunder.com/ for info .  After the flame on I will also be working as Technical Assistant to Robert Mickelson, boro flamework legend and then driving for 10hrs to attend a wedding where my twins are flower girls.......aaarrrrggh (run away, run away....)

I need to make some murrini to add to the give away bags at the flame on from Affordable Inspiration who sells my murrini for me.  But.....I have been making some absolutely horrible murrini over the last couple of days!  Just lazyness or throwing them together and hoping for the best which is an option that NEVER works out well for me.  I knew there was an issue with my blue striped fish when my kids commented that they looked like the offspring of a budgie and a fish.......hmmmm, could have shaped them better.

And here is the clownfish with the large eye and the weird mouth......doh!

I did knuckle down tonight and popped a little angelfish murrini (large diameter first off) into the kiln and hopefully something nice will come out for once..... cross your fingers and toes for me if you can, I will show the results even if shameful!



My brain is bursting with ideas.....

Well, after returning from working as a tech assist for Loren Stump for two weeks and standing and watching the students all melting glass (well, not just standing there of course, but you get the gist I am sure) I have got home and have gone into a glass melting frenzy!   I have been making murrini and beads like a steamtrain......  Some have come out ok, some NOT!  Its interesting that when you are working and not a student you really do miss out on some of the finer points of how to do things, I am of course wishing I had done the course as a paying student right now, but appreciate Gail at Goglass (www.goglassart.com.au) letting me work with such a great bloke and being exposed to a miriad of new ideas.  I feel frenzied to melt glass and try out new idea's .... always a good thing I am sure!

I made myself some of the 3D clownfish Loren showed the class and boy did I wish I had actually stayed to watch how he did it.  Mine look a bit more like a squirrel fish (those ugly ones with disproportionately large eyes) and then I forgot the mouth and adding it afterwards... well its not recommended lets put it that way!

 One good thing is that I have decided to make more beads using my own murrini.  It seems mental that I tend not to use them myself and yet I see the lovely stuff my customers make with them and drool...... doh!   The frog in the jungle bead above is the first bead I have used this particular leaf cane  on and I am quite happy with it - although the frogs legs are not very well done, it did give the green leafy jungle feel and after all that is what I was going for.

This bead is where I have moved on a little from my frog on a lily pond beads I had started on before going to work with Loren.  This one I applied a bit of yellow rose cane as a waterlily and popped a dragonfly slice on top of that.  I am loving the green growth on the side at the right too (based on ascidians, water filtering animals in the ocean) but I need to do more work on the koi fish on the bottom layer and are thinking I might make some koi murrini for them rather than a swipe of white with some orange and black spots.

I am still trolling my way slowly though the gorgeous work at the Bead Soup Blog Swap and there are some fabulous and inspiring pieces of art to drool over.  I figure it might take me a week or so before I get though, but I will read all of them.  I have tried to comment on them, but either through my own stupidity or the internet systems some use, can't work out how to have a say..... sometimes I make myself wonder I tell you! 

And... the Bead Soup is served!

Yep, thanks to Niky from Silverniknaks ( http://silverniknats.blogspot.com/ ) I recieved the most gorgeous purple-y bead soup and with a fabulous array of beads.
The focal is a wonderful lampwork glass dichro bead made by the talented Barbara Metzger of Basha Beads http://www.etsy.com/shop/bashabeads

The cutest little daisy clasp by Daisy Chain Extra who makes lovely stuff http://www.etsy.com/shop/daisychainextra

Some lovely lampwork beads by Laura Sparling http://www.beadsbylaura.co.uk/BBLBeadsToOrder.htm and http://www.chameleondesigns.co.uk/FocalBeads.html

Niky also included some fabulous seed beads and lovely sparkly crystals along with some striped agate,  gorgeous pearls and sweet little silver lined rocailles.  The colours Niky chose were inspired by Peacock colouring..... rich green, blue and purple.

I simply strung the necklace together on some tiger tail first and then went back through with the needle and thread to add the extra seed beads to soften and give some movement.  I created a drop beneath the focal as a bit of a feature in the front using the lovely rainbow basha bead.

I really hope I did Niky proud.  I am not the best jewellery designer, and yet I really enjoyed making this necklace.  I will use some of the rest of my bead soup for some other projects which I will show on my blog.

Chained up on Maille.... all in glass

I know... I know.... I have ten million other things I should be doing right now.  I should be getting some stock for the local shop, making murrini for Affordable and packing to go to the glass studio for Loren Stumps classes, but nope..... none of the above!

I am feeling guilty and a bit naughty too, but I have had an idea perculating about in my head for quite a long time and decided to try it out..... Glass links Chain Maille.  I aware it has been done before (a lady by the name of Kim Edwards http://www.lonetreestudio.com/chainmail.html does some absolutely bogsmacking work in this style) but I wanted to try out some byzantine chain rather than my usual dongle-y ones.  Here it is... it worked quite well and was made in boro (because I am too much of a lazy slug to try this in gorgeous italian soft glass).  I just used 3mm glass stringers to make the links.... some closed and some open that I close in the flame after putting the pattern together.  It was fun, but fiddly as buggery as you can imagine.  I don't think this will be a common thing for me to work on to be honest, but at least I can know I tried it.... its all about the fun.

 On a slightly dissapointing front, my kiln has been playing up quite a bit over the last few days and after trolling about online and finally downloading the manual for the controller I have discovered the thermocouple thingo is stuffed....... aarrrgh!  I am really hopeful my extremely handy and helpful husband Leo can wave a magic wand and fix it up, or worse case go to the electronic shop and buy a bit of wire or something to sort it out, but we will have to see.  Lucky I have my new kiln to collect in about a month......YAHOO!

I have been playing about a LOT with my bead soup.  It is so gorgeous that I don't want to bugger it up and are probably trying to get a little too fancy rather than think about the form of the thing...... I am going to zen out, watch bridesmaids (the movie) and see what comes of some random beading then.....  Nat :-)