Marbles of weight loss - a positive way to record the journey

Yep, forgot the password (really did) have moved house, started back at a full time admin job, been thrown out of our house because of asbestos contamination.... you name it, its happened so far this year.

But this is a glass blog, so I wanted to get some ideas down for a start.

I need to get onto murrini making and now that I have moved my lampworking equipment over to my Mum's temporarily I am starting a new project. I know, I know, I have many MANY half done projects, but I have an idea, it will get me back in the swing of glass and murrini making and should be fun and sort of functional.

I have got to take off some weight (the story of many fellow sufferers of those of us who happen to love eating - a LOT). 
I have quite a bit of weight to lose and I am going to make myself a series of marbles with murrini representing different weights and some just with positive messages.  I am going to make enough that I will be able to document my weight loss goal with them.

I am thinking of making them with the following messages/increments:
"1kg" loss marbles - nice ones
"1/2kg" loss marbles - relatively simple but nice ones
"5kg" loss marbles (which will be larger and more complex and probably have scenes with murrini inside)
Some small plain-ish ones that say "good try" or "nearly"
A couple that say "oops"

I want to pop them in a large bowl or vase and then slowly move them over to another bowl representing what I have lost. I am thinking this will provide me with a visual measurement of what I have achieved (ie. getting to see the build up of marbles in the "lost" bowl) and give me the satisfaction of moving them around each week and take a minute or two to think about my goals and achievements.  I am probably sounding completely crazy right now, but once I start I will show how I have gone.

This weekend will hopefully see the start of my Marbles of weightloss collection :-)

 

Iiiimmmmmm Baaaaaccckkkk

Yep, after a shamefully long period of time I am back and want to try and blog my glassy journey once again.  Its not a good excuse, but I honestly could not remember my password to google - I really am a lazy bugger!

Since my last blog entry, I have been absolutely insanely busy with my glass.  I often struggle to keep up with demand, but to be honest this is often a combination of factors the most common ones being:

1. Genuinely busy with glass work and family stuff
Yep, sometimes I have a hugely long list of things all those lovely people want from me.  I am a devil for saying yes to nearly everything, I really do need to start saying no or putting some sort of caveat on taking the order (eg. it might be 6 months and you will have to remind me again).  I have three girls and a husband and it can get really insane running around for the kids stuff, I often scam off for my glass, but I really do have to participate in my families lives sometimes!

2. Being distracted by other ideas
Very very often I will be working on something and come up with some mad idea that quite frankly, MUST be made or attempted immediately - not next week, not tomorrow, not after I have made the things I should be doing ..... RIGHT NOW!!!!!

3. Lack of inspiration/self discipline
Oh dear, very very often I get asked for a particular glassy item and even though I might really love making that particular thing, suddenly I don't really want to make it any more.  Its not a performance anxiety thing and I haven't really worked out why my brain is being such a massive pain in the butt, but I nearly always need to make the thing that someone asked for immediately or I end up slipping it to the end of the list repeatedly.... usually once I actually make it I enjoy the process and wonder why I was being a pain in my own butt!

The self discipline issue has been a big one.  Particularly whilst I have been off work (admin office work that is) and have ALL DAY to saunter out to my torch and fiddle fart around checking the TV channels and maybe occasionally even do some housework before I finally light my torch.  Many times I have turned the kiln on and then not even lit the torch.... shameful (bad for carbon footprint too).

Now that we have moved house back down to Canberra (a house we actually own) we are shortly building me a brand spanking new studio.  Unfortunately I have to return to the admin work full time to pay for it... but I am hopeful that a reduction in available time will result in me being much more disciplined and encourage me to utilise my time more effectively when I can.  I THINK it is likely that I will be getting more hours at the torchface than I did before and hopefully in a more organised fashion .......  Wish me luck kind people!!! 

I will leave you with a pic of one of my borosilicate glass dongle necklaces.  Glass chain with a short rod holding a small marble at the each end.  This one has a mix of colours and shape murrini, some are commercial and lots are my own home made jobs too.  I am very proud to say that this one won its section and was put into the "standard of excellence" display.  I got a second prize in the bead section too and all together a wonderful prize total from Affordable Inspiration of $250... I had fun ordering a huge glass fest!

2013 Sydney Easter Show dongle necklace

 

Pocket watch fun.... and the cabochon has it!

My glass cabs glued onto the little pocket watches

Well, whilst conducting my usual late night "surf the large chinese supplier website because I can't sleep yet" internet use, I came across some really cute little pocket watches with rather cheesy porcelain cabochons installed on the front.   I thought to myself that these would look so much better with a nice glass cab on there and decided to dip my toes into negotiating with the chinese supplier to get something custom made..... little did I know that about 1 million (prob only really 50, just felt like more) emails later, it looked like they have made up exactly what I wanted.

So I paid, stalked the postage tracker until they arrived into my hot little hand......... Cute, great.... but not exactly what I wanted.  The big issue I had was that the surface of the watch where the cab gets glued is not exactly flat.... not even a little bit flat... bugger!

The domed surface for the cab to go onto

Well after some brain storming with a lampy friend Darcy we came up with the cunning plan to remove the front from one of the watches and try using it as a push mold on the back of a hot glass cab to give the perfect shape to cab for annealing and then later gluing on... it was a plan!



Watch I "killed" to give me the cab mold

So, even though i was still feeling a little bit under the weather, I fired up the kiln yesterday and tried out the idea using both borosilicate glass and then some soft glass.  I used the boro first (because the kiln was ramped up hotter to start with this, then I ramp it down later to the soft glass annealing temp).  I made up the cab using a slice of my recent boro butterfly cane in a large diameter... the cab was looking nice, so I heated the backside up nice and hot and plunged it onto the "mold".  First off there was some really nasty smells.... then a spitting sound and then when I lifted the cab up, this is what I found!

melted mold after first use

There is no doubt.... I killed it!  Clearly not made of stainless steel, but probably zinc or something.  In any case I was grateful for the good ventilation in my workspace thats for sure.

After this cab, I ramped down the kiln and resorted to plan B..... shaping the back of the cab by hand and just using this mold as a guage for diameter.  I tried using the stumpshaper (the curved bit) to make a concave back..... nope, not neat enough.  Then I tried using the back of a teaspoon and .....yahooo, it worked.  This option works, but is not completely ideal I do admit.  I am thinking of getting myself some graphite and sanding it into the shape I want and using that as a mold which would be MUCH better I reckon.

Some of the tips I got from this first batch other than shaping the back for gluing.... keep it slightly smaller than you think.... heat the back of the cab quite hard and then press down to give slimmer sides which sit nicely on the watch front.   I am thinking there are a complete raft of interesting things that can be done with these watches.... it has been a difficult track to run, but worth it in the end!

Butterfly cab glued onto pocket watch front.... this one was a little bit thick around the edges as my first one

Two kilns heated and life is goooooood!

Yep at the moment I have two kilns.... thats right, my new lovely big girl I have dubbed Penny (Penny Paragon) and my old, but VERY useful Aim kiln that goes on a trip to Canberra to stay forever more with my little Sister Amanda... sort of sad to see her go, but she is well needed down south and I know my sis will give her some love for sure. 

At the moment I have my Aim set up for the fusing (hence all the fusing related postings this last week...he he he) and it is currently full of glassy goodness once again, only this time I have mixed some dichro in there with the murrini, it'll be interesting to see how it comes out for sure.    Here's a pic of the sheet I threw in with just scrappy bits and pieces on it (twistie, murrini and lumps of "other") and it still sort of came out fairly cool..... I still don't know what I am going to do with this one, maybe stick some rubber bumpies on it and use it as a butter dish for visitors or something like that..... LOL

Scrap canes and murrini fused sheet

I had some interesting results from my fusing tests on small bits of sheet glass.  This one using some clear centred cane came out really interesting, although I am finding that I often like the back view (that has less murrini distortion) much better.  I will show both sides of this one, which I am going to glue a bail to and wear as a pendant I am thinking!  I am actually re-fusing a couple of these tester cabs upside down (now with the clear sheet on the top) to see if that clarifies the integrity of the murrini pictures and maybe adds some depth and magnification too.... I will be keen to check the kiln when they finish for sure!

Rear of cab

Front of cab

 On a non-fusing front, I have been madly making up murrini for Affordable (geeze I am a shocking slacker with keeping up the stock, she might need to take a stick to me I think!)  mostly because I have misplaced a whole lot of my stock murrini (some of which I had even bagged up...doh) and therefore I must pay the price of making extras.... I have really annoyed myself I tell you!

I haven't made any complex murrini for a little while now and the bug is starting to bite..... I have some plans afoot as you can see......

Lets hope it comes out as cute as I see it in my brain.  I am yet to make a murrini that I am totally happy with.... maybe that is just the nature of the beast, but at least I do see myself improving.  You might note that the plans for this owl murrini include using the same component as Loren Stump's fish scale.... I am thinking it will make some ultra-cool feathers YEAH!  Now off to buy a can of corn for shaping the bugger (those little cans are the trick to this shape Loren showed us).

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!

And the "eye's" have it

I have been off line over the last week or so for a number of reasons....
1. General slackness
2. Lost camera and therefore nothing to show off
3. Jaunting over to my friends glass studio to melt glass

The most pleasurable of the three was of course going to Goglass studio (www.goglassart.com.au) and melting a pile of the lovely Gail's glass into "stuff".  The other exciting thing was that Gail has not long ago returned from the GAS (Glass Art Society) conference over in Seattle, USA with loads of info, new toys and tools and even some gorgeous Momka borosilicate glass (odds, 2nds and testers etc.) that she gave me some of...... gotta love that lady!!!!!

When I have got home, first off I resisted the urge to commit some of the interesting odd rods to murrini-i-fication (anything that looks interesting at the rod end is at risk of this around me I will totally admit).  Today I could resist no longer, there were some really cool looking rods that had loads of tiny weeny little inclusions that pretty much just look like heaps of tiny stripes.... I thought.... oh, now that might make a really cool eye iris if I let the centre pull in and just pop on a black dot for a pupil then lensed in some clear..... and indeed it did!!!!

Here is a couple of the efforts from today, I am hoping they are not too strange for someone to wear and I particularly like the larger one with the fine white twisty pattern around the edge.  Sorry about the slightly dodgy pic, it was taken inside and with my daughters cheap and nasty camera!!!

This interesting cane slightly struck to a blue / green tinge and with the lense on top looks rather realistic!!!!  My husband Leo now apparently is in desperate need of a white eyeball marble!!!!!!

I don't really like those eyeball pendants with lids on them - just creep me out a little, but I can see the lure now I have a wide open eye pendant.  I thought they might be good for those who like the Turkish style keep-the-evil-eye-away type pendants.  I told the kids I would make an earring set and hang them backwards on my ears so I can say I have eyes in the back of my head...... ha ha ha ha!  I also threatened to make Leo a brown eye....... with some brown toned stripy cane of course ;-)

One upsetting thing is of course that these canes are real one-offs, they are not production and I don't think will ever be no matter how much fun I am having with them.  Here is where the hoarder in me rears its ugly head telling me to put them away safely for when I really need that special thing..... aarrrrrrrggh!

Glass clasp solution.... and the toggles have it!

I am in a good mood today, I finally completely and utterfly finished my fancy dongle necklace and even made a clasp for it.

I have spent many hours trying to work out a clasp solution for the glass necklaces and last night, thought well .... bugger it, I will try making my own glass toggle clasp.  The added bonus of making a glass clasp is that 1. it will match the necklace and 2. I can genuinely say that the necklace is completely and utterly glass in its ENTIRETY!

I had given making glass toggle clasps a bit of a rip in the past and needless to say had only limited success.  They did work, but looked unwieldy and ugly and I suppose I didn't have the experience I do now and they weren't particularly neat and round so I was loathe to put one of those ugly monstrosities onto my painstakingly made dongle necklaces....... but I have now changed my mind!

Here is a pic of the toggle I made last night for the latest necklace.  I decided to use some of the helix twist cane for the loop rather than just some clear and I think it looks great.  I used a short bit of helix cane with clear blobs at the end for the toggle bit and just measured the whole thing as I made it.  Actually I did stupidly make the toggle stick first and then had to match up the loop...... the second one I made I did the other way around and that was MUCH easier!  I also found that if the loop is more of an oblong shape then the toggle stick is easier to get in lengthways and then sits better at one of the smaller ends.  The other issue I had to sort out was how to get the whole shebang to sit nicely.  I had put a stem on the toggle stick and found that if I bent that stem at nearly right angles it sits beautifully against the neck!

Oh, you might see that I also popped my signature against the loop end too..... had to sneak in somewhere didn't I. 

Below is a pic of where I thought I would try something a bit new.... a bit "dangly-er".  Here is a pic of the start of that next experiment.......... I am obviously having some fun with these, even though they take hours and hours at the torch (the dongle necklace took me more than 12 hours of torch time counting making the chain (which I am getting much faster at) then making the components for the dongles (either murrini or helix twists) and then of course, putting the lot together.  Interestingly it is all worth it when its finished off, definitely some job satisfaction to be had there!

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!