Torch trip

Lampworking has to be one of the harder things I have tried. So much to learn but the rewards or many. I love the way the different colors of glass melt into one another. I'm still using mapp gas with my HotHead and I get such short amounts of time with all of the canisters that I still have. I'm lucky to get one bead out of each canister. Today I sat them all on the floor and worked my way through them one at a time. As one canister flame would go out I would change to another one. What a pain! Here are some of the results....

New Year, New Journey

As I start the new year have only six months until I can retire. And, I had to start working five days a week. They needed me in another area to train some folks, have to impart knowledge so I can go. How do people work five days a week? I don't have time to do any playing at all except for the weekend and that makes Jan a very unhappy girl. Not to mention the fact that the two days off go by light lightening. Not enough time for all the things I want to do. This weekend was my first and I felt like I was running all day to get all the things done that I wanted to do.

I got four new beads made. Not photos yet, they are still cooling. For now, I will share a slumped plated that I made for my mom. This will be her Mother's day present. I used a really pretty celery green swirly glass with four strips of lime green dichroic glass on top. After they were all fused together with a clear cap, they went back into the kiln to slump into a mold. I love the colors. I sure hope she does.

For those of you who work five days a week, I really feel for you, up to now I have worked a 4-10 shift with Wednesdays off so that I never worked more than two days in a row. I don't know how you do it really. One foot in front of the other I suppose.

Seasonal Colors along the journey

Remember the story, I think was an episode of Dick Van Dyke (boy is that aging me) where their son was only painting picture with black paint and the teacher brought the parents in because she was concerned that there was something wrong with a kid who would only paint with black, they discovered they he was so short that black was the only color he could reach. All that to say I feel like that kid, when I got my torch kit it came with a nice assortment of glass rods but I ordered another "special" selection of rods that ended up being yellows, oranges and browns. So, all of my beads are in that color set. Not my colors at all. Its not that I don't like them I just don't go for the warm colors. I love the turquoise, blues, purples and greens. I'm using the "fall" colored rods to learn lampworking. I guess maybe that way when I'm done I can make a bracelet with the beads that I make and they will all be color coordinated. Lucky me. Of course, I won't have anything to wear them with because I don't buy those color clothes either....LOL

More on the glass journey

I'm beginning to discover that glass is more than what we look through from a warm house out into the cold harsh world. I got myself a small lampwork kit to try making glass beads. I love to watch glass go from its solid or as I am now learning "super-cooled liquid state" to soft molten flowing state. There is just something so mesmerizing about it. I'm made a few "globs" as I call them and am finally starting to make something that almost resembles a bead. One of the pieces I was in the middle of making, all of a sudden, had a heart in the middle of it so I stopped what I was doing, let it cool and called it done. It looks like a little bear holding a heart and is my favorite piece so far.

With glass fusing there is always blood, you can't work with glass, cutting and breaking it without cutting yourself. With lampwork its a bit more serious, yes I've burned myself. My lip and thumb. The lip was an interesting thing, You heat two rods of glass and pull them apart slowly to make what they call "stringers" very thin rods of glass for decorating your beads with find dots. Well was I was pulling the two rods apart, my first try I must mention, one end popped off the rod, swung around and popped me in the lip. Boy, is that stuff hot. No blister but it sure smarted for the rest of the night. Now the thumb was another very interesting lesson, I had created a small bead and was heating another colored rod to add to it, you have to balance keeping the bead warm with one hand while heating the rod evenly with the other. Kind of like playing the piano, which I was never very good at, without the notes of course, anyway, I had the bead too far from the flame and it cooled too fast. When the outside of the molten blob cools faster then the inside it fractures, it popped in three pieces, one of which landed on the unprotected wooden surface of the table. I had to grab it with my thumb and forefinger to put it back on the protected surface. Hence the burn, again no blister but a learned lesson. Fusing glass is a lot easier than working in the flame with molten glass. But it sure is fun. I have no idea what I think I'm going to do with these beads, luckily the little kit wasn't too expensive so I don't have to justify to myself that I need to do anything with them.

Why is it that we always have to justify what we get. I know I can sell the fused glass pendants. Much like the polymer clay, which, by the way hasn't been touched since I got the kiln, but the lampwork beads are less likely to ever see the light of day. I think they are more of a therapy session for me, no thought just concentration on something completely foreign to my every day life. As for the polymer clay, I still love and and as soon as the new Jana RobertsBenzon DVD gets here I can guarantee that I will be back in there playing with it again.

Well, enough for now, the mapp gas tank has probably cooled enough for me to go back down there and give myself another therapy session.....(yeah, right!)

Tootles........

The new Journey

I finally got a kiln and have been fusing glass every chance I get. Glass has this alluring quality that I just can't explain. I have loved the look and feel of it for years and finally decided to give the fusing a try. The polymer clay has been put aside for awhile until I get the hang of the fusing but I haven't given it up completely. I am also interested in lamp work and hope to try that soon. These are some of the cool pieces I have fused so far. (I have put some of them on my Etsy site for sale).