Another Focal Bead

I made several pendants this weekend using Double Helix colors.  Here is another.  :)  

I really like the red that came out in it.  And hints of deep, royal blue.

I have pics uploaded for other posts on my glass colors and thoughts are brewing on how to answer Erin's and Tari's questions from last week on how I come up with ideas.  I just need more time to sit down to write it all up.  I'm struggling with blogger's new way of composing/editing posts, so those are on hold until next week.  Also coming next week is a post on Dylan and many of the things he has thieved to the backyard.

This week is passing quickly as I try to wrap up loose ends with work, finish all the laundry and cross off items from the Must Do list before we head out to Phoenix this weekend.  I'm so excited!  We'll be staying with my in-laws who escape Minnesota for two months, as well as visiting with my aunt and uncle.  The ASGB rescheduled their monthly meeting and I'm thrilled....now I can go with my Aunt Gail, instead of missing it by one day!

Todd is in Denver for work this week, so it's on me to get it all done.  Kids.  Laundry.  Dylan (he's starting a two week doggy boot camp tomorrow to mainly get over his severe crate anxiety that has allowed only one night in seven weeks of quiet).  Taxes.  Laundry.  Soccer practice.  Work.  Did I say laundry? :)

I will be closing my shop Saturday morning since I won't be taking my beads with me on this trip and I don't feel it's fair to make folks wait on me to ship out purchases.  If you've had your eye on something, go ahead and get it now so I can ship it out right away.

Really looking forward to a week of downtime.  No work blackberry.  Limited parental responsibilities.  Family.  Warmer temps.  Torch time.  Catch up time on blogs/photo editing. No stress!

Sneak Peek of My Weekend Beads

Here is the first kiln load from yesterday morning and last night.  

I thought I was done with nuggets, but I took off in a new direction with sparkly golden cores.  I can't wait to finish cleaning the batch I made today so I can etch half of them and then get them listed!

 

This is my favorite focal bead from last night.  I only used Double Helix Ekho on ivory.  This glass has a very high silver content, which caused all the dark veining over every bit of the ivory.

Beads n Mandrels

The latest two torch sessions have yielded these beads. I've been working with Double Helix Kronos for a special order to replicate previous beads. The first time on the torch was last week after more than a week away. The second time was yesterday morning/afternoon.

As you can see, I sometimes make two beads per mandrel when using the same colors. After four years on the torch, I still have problems with kiss and dents on my beads when annealing at 940 degrees if they touch within the first hour of being placed in my kiln. I'm not sure why. I make sure the 'glow' is completely gone from the beads before placing them in the kiln. And 940 degrees is at the lower end of the annealing scale for soft glass. I don't have problems with my beads cracking or breaking after coming out of the kiln. But if they touch....ooooh, I just know they're going to be ruined and unwanted!

Since I was a child and read Cheaper By the Dozen, I've always been obsessed with efficiency and working smarter, not harder. Yes. I have always been a nerd. It even translates to how I decide to squeegee the water off my shower doors (vertically, rather than horizontally is faster for me. I'm not saying this is right for everyone). It's a sickness. I try not to impose it on others.

Anyway. Making more than one bead per mandrel helps me in several ways. I do not spend an extra minute heating up a mandrel for each mandrel. I do not spend an extra minute cooling down a mandrel before putting it in the kiln. It also allows me to eyeball more accurately the beads I make to get them more evenly sized. Sometimes. The beads are still handmade, people.

I'm not a production line. I'm not a Phillippino twelve year old in a factory without proper ventilation or eye protection churning out beads for ten hours a day, six/seven days a week. I have very limited time on the torch each week.....working full-time for the phone company and being a wife and mother of a five and seven year old does not leave much free time. So when I do get on the torch, I want the time to count.

Normally, I work for an hour making beads and filling up the kiln. Then I let it sit for 30-60 minutes before I fire up the torch again. At that point, I can move the mandrels around in my kiln so the beads may possibly come in contact with each other. They will certainly come in contact with the floor of the kiln (previously, they've been floating, held up in the air by the mandrels resting on a fiber blanket). But I can breathe easy that the beads will be safe from being marred by each other or any pressure from the floor. Which gives me a much higher success rate for every mandrel put into the kiln will come out without any problems.

New Blog Format & Pre/Post-Philly Beads

So. What do you think of the new blog format? Do you like it? If not, why? Is it too busy? I've been wanting to have three columns for several weeks, but it took me that long to find a template I liked and the nerve to try switching over. The widgets all disappeared, which is normal. I was glad I took the time to copy/paste much of that information on how they were set up so I could bring them all back.

I wanted to have more of the link to other blogs, posts within my blog and many of the other features closer to the top of the page. I already had issues with pictures being too big to post side-by-side, so I didn't think I would lose out on anything by narrowing one column to make room for another one along the side. What I like best is that if you click/drag your browser window to expand the width, the columns also expand accordingly.

Here are beads I made Tuesday night after coming back from BeadFest filled with inspiration.


These are black base beads covered in spirals of Kronos and then dotted with clear. I love the ocean blues!
Beads I made before going to BeadFest. I just love the purple over copper green and how it separates the colors and forces brighter outlines.

A new pink frit that I just tested out. The sun really makes them bright.

Lorelei asked for this color combination. My faves are the green on opaque yellow. Really love how the green reacts and separates.

I made a twisty of black and some Gaia before wrapping it around a core of clear and then encasing.

Tear drop beads with transparent cores.

A focal bead with dots on dots on dots. I like the colors, but the coral didn't keep very definite lines, which wasn't really the look I was going for with this bead. I'll try again with different colors for more finite separation.

What Came Out of the Kiln This Morning?

I'm having a hard time turning this calendar page....I'm a sucker for flags and really anything patriotic. This little ferret with his hard hat has been watching me melt glass for the last month and I'm going to miss him. But it is probably time to move on to August.



Here is my torch all fired up from last night. A trusty little Mega Minor burner with a torch-mounted graphite marver for helping shape my beads. Lots of clear rods on the torch table. I try to have them all cleaned before I start melting glass because it seems I'm always using clear on whatever I make these past few months.



Here is everything that went into the kiln last night and I'm pleased with how most of it came out. The butterfly is the second one I have made and it was easier than the first. I have shied away from butterflies in the past because in the Beads of Courage program, they are given to the parents who have lost their children to cancer. But a customer asked that I make a butterfly for her and it made me realize I shouldn't let my emotions prevent me from making something that could mean so much to others who have lost their children. I'll keep tissues close by if I start thinking too much about the purpose of the bead.



I like this worry stone that I made last night. It has a combination of Gaia and Cezanne under a thin layer of clear. While my fingers like the bumpy side better, my eyes like the smooth side the best. There are lines of silver wrapping around the bead that I love.




I was playing around with Double Helix's newest color named Ekho last night and combining it with clear. The purple is the best reaction, but I'm still learning how to control it.




The clouds started moving on me over my lunch hour and blocked out the sunlight just as I was finishing taking pics. I thought I'd aim my camera at the sky for a couple of shots. I may start including these with my Etsy listings just as a fun way of showing what kind of lighting I had when taking the pics. :) I thought it would be cool and isn't anything I've seen other Etsy sellers do (although, I do enjoy seeing pics of their feline Quality Control Inspectors). Think that's a stupid idea? If you do, then tell me why. Just soften the blow with a compliment on my kids. Or you can tell me you like my hair.




Owen lost his last wiggly tooth yesterday. This is the fourth tooth that has come out. He is proud to show off his toothless grin, so it is easier now to get pictures of him. Wondering how long this will last.

Pics from the New Camera

I am having fun playing with my new camera, but it is becoming painfully obvious to me that I have much to learn about how to use it. Thankfully, until I learn how to use all the features and the difference between ISO and f-stops and white balance, it has an auto-focus mode :) It was a rather spendy camera, so I figure I owe it to myself (and the camera) to learn how to use every button and dial (omigosh, there are more dials than I know what to do with on it!) before the year is out. A photography class is likely in store for me.

The girl child and I took a walk this morning before our guys woke up. The sun was shining, but it was hidden from us during our walk on our nature trail because of all the tall trees. While we walked, we enjoyed hearing the crickets sing to us.



My Beanarina at the top of the steps leading down to the nature trail at the bottom of our street.



Cool lichen growing on one side of a little tree stump.



Here is Chloe walking up to the footbridge. It is just at the edge of our little forest of trees after we walked about half a mile under their cover.




This pic better captured the floating water bug than it did my reflection as I leaned over the footbridge where we turned around to come home.



I thought this was a neat leaf with cool spots. Pretty spider on the underside, although I kept a safe distance. I do better with vertebrates than arachnids or some of the unpredictably jumpy insects.





Some quick fancy footwork helped us jump over this guy on our way back home. He was almost as big as my index finger!



Newest beads using Ekho from Double Helix



Here is the same glass encased in clear. Love the purple that comes out! Need to play with this glass a little more :)



My Owen boy is feeling 100% again after being on antibiotics for over 24 hours. He tested positive for strep throat Saturday morning when I took him into the pediatrician's office. They looked at me like I had three heads when I told them my Wendy treated six cases of it on Thursday (strep season starts as soon as school is back in session). But the quick strep test that normally takes 5-10 minutes to show the results turned Owen's little throat culture back in less than two minutes. Poor guy...he just had strep in February. Although, I'd rather it be strep and get antibiotics to feel better in less than a day, than it be a cold virus and treat the symptoms for a week or more.



And the other good news is that the union for the Southeast did not walk out on strike when their contract expired at 11:59pm Saturday night. Which keeps me at home with my family and not climbing phone poles in Northwest Georgia or Oklahoma. Soooo thankful!

Now if I could just kick this sore throat that I picked up on Friday!

Double Helix & Etching

These two are not friends. I learned this the hard/unfair way. Went from this pretty cool, metallic worry stone with the shiny, metallic and bumpy top




with this pretty cool back with great color variations




to this blah, matte black with ridges on top (sniff, the metallic, mirror-y blue is all gone & won't ever come back)



and this muted back



I suppose it's not that bad, but it is still a disappointment because I felt the original was so much cooler. Guess that's what happens when something sits too long in front of me without getting listed right away in my Etsy shop. And this one sat for a second attempt at a photo session because the first one seemed to show nothing but dust on the top of this bead (a routine problem I seem to encounter with most black beads that have not been etched).

Christmas in June

UPS brought Christmas in June for me on Friday of last week!

A thank you note, candies AND goats poo!

Ten pounds of glass all wrapped up in two bundles with saran wrap.  A little frit in some baggies.  And more mud (YAY!  I was running low!)

All unwrapped & ready to be put away in my glass cabinet for replacement colors and next to my torch for the new colors to try out!

 

I bought several new Double Helix colors that I haven't tried before, but I only played with Gaia.  She is pretty!  In rod form, she is a dark transparent green....but get her in the fire and she does all kinds of fun things!  Below you can see what she does on top of clear, on ivory and encased under clear.

And on a black worry stone under layers of clear.  This one took me close to 45 minutes to make.  It is bigger/heavier than any of my others and I really like the shape, as well as the rainbow texture on top.  

Can you tell I was in heaven playing on my torch all of Saturday afternoon while Todd watched the kids?  Wendy even came over and played on the torch with me, which was really nice to have her company!

I spent all of Sunday morning & most of the afternoon at Wendy's making jewelry.  Pics/blog to come of that later!

New Eye Candy

Pics of the beads I made last night. I had fun playing with some of my Double Helix and TAG (Trautman Art Glass) colors! Striking (heating, cooling and then repeating a gazillion more times!) and reducing (eliminating the oxygen for a fuel rich flame) techniques were used to bring out colors much different from the color of the rods.


This is Terranova 2 (a DH color) which looks dirtier than our Chattahoochee River in rod form. Just a murky, muddy almost transparent brown. But melt it over clear to let the light shine through and then work it in the flame for awhile and voila! These awesome reds, blues & purples jumped out!!!



Next is Zeus (a TAG color) that is clear in rod form. I swirled it over Red Roof Tile and worked it for awhile to get these really deep blues & purples.



And these are my favorite....I want to make more, but in different shapes...nuggets, cubes, maybe some lentils. This is Aion 2 (another DH color) that is also clear in rod form. The rumor is you can get pearly whites out of this, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the blues and greens. The metallic/mirror-y finish that outlines this glass where it touches the black is another cool bonus.