Returning To The Old Things

This we be the first post in a series of two or three post I will be writing about combining techniques. This post will have no photographs but I will post photo examples in my next two posts.

I started out in glass art doing kiln work. I had no interest in glass beads at all. In fact I would absolutely say that when it came to beads, I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t understand what all the hoopla was about those round little bits of glass. I wanted to make sushi plates, candle stands, platters and slumped, fused glass art. I was well on my way to understanding the process and starting to make some pretty decent fused pieces.

Then, one day at the museum glass co-op, someone brought in a Hot Head torch and some glass rods. I wasn’t really interested in lampworking but I thought I would give it a try. Maybe I could incorporate some lampwork elements into my fused projects. If nothing else, I could at least say I tried it.

So, I sat down in front of the torch, stuck a rod into the flame and in just a bit, the glass I was holding actually started melting and moving. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look at that glass I thought, look what it is doing! Those first couple of minutes on that Hot Head torch changed my entire outlook on glass. I knew then that I was going to be a lampworker from that point forward.

I gathered the tools needed to do lampwork and started in like a mad scientist experimenting every day and working into the darkest hours of the night. Unfortunately I didn’t have anyone nearby to teach me lampworking so I decided to jump into it and teach myself as much as I could.

I completely stopped doing any fusing and slumping. The only thing the kiln was for now was annealing. I had forsaken fusing and slumping and dedicated myself to the torch. I am not a fickle person by nature but I had completely changed tracks in no time at all.

Fast forward several years now and I was out in my studio in the wee hours of the night working on teaching myself a new technique, new to me anyway and then it hit me. Hey, this would look good if I combined it with some fused work. Could it be? Did I actually say that? Yes, this piece would look really nice if I combined it with some fused work. So now I have to figure out how to do it. I am hoping it will turn out as nice as I think it will. When I get it worked out I will post photos of it.

It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that each and every artistic media, technique or style I have ever learned, even though I may not have continued with it can always be combined in a totally unexpected way. I know most of us have worked in other media. I would encourage you from time to time to sit down and think about the different techniques you used and how they may be applied to the current media you are working in now. This can really help you think outside the box and possibly point you in a new and exciting direction.

Otter is a glass artist that blogs from the Pacific Northwest.

Warring States~people pass the dots~Dzi inspiration part 2

Here are all the views! This was a fun bead to take pictures of. Continuing from my last post; creating warring states dot/eye beads with people on them. I am creating Dzi style beads with the same style of dot/eyes. As I strived for perfection; over, and over again, trying to have straight, defined lines. Wanting each dot to be centered…the people in relief, no bleeding colors between the layers. Most of the parts of this bead are very defined, and perfected. Here is a stage of my progress.

Hm…that was a patient one….This is a one of a kind. The pedestal the bead is on is copper plated, and will someday be finished (when I get around to it).

The people remind me of cave paintings thousands of years old, and the design is ancient as well. The two together makes a good story.

Taking the time to be objective about my work has allowed my brain to take it this way. Thanks to this team blog.

You can learn more about me at my website. I currently have auctions at E-bay, or you can visit my fixed price shop at Etsy (with new marbles and my Largest DZI bead).

Adventures in Metalsmithing — Insomnia Talisman

At last, the final installment of the adventures of my weekend metalsmithing class!

This project was actually the second piece I made, but I saved it for last because it was the most complicated, and the one of which I’m the most proud. This is also a piece that I’ll never sell.

I sketched out a design ahead of time — a shield with a stone bezel set in the center.

For a stone I ended up with a round piece of blue dichroic glass, about the size of a dime, but tall, and I decided that the blue would look best with all silver, so scrapped the copper/silver idea.

I was a bit afraid of the saw, so instead of sawing the shield out of 20 gauge silver sheet, I cut it out with shears. That meant a lot of heavy-duty filing. And we weren’t using any power tools whatsoever in this class. Hand drills, hand files, (and of course no pickle) — all elbow grease.

(I think next time, I’ll use the saw.)

Next, I made the bezel. In my summer class, I worked way too quickly and subsequently didn’t do such a good job. This time, I took my time, took deep breaths, and got that bezel just right. Once the bezel was done, though, I realized, the glass bead was a good 3mm taller than the bezel wire. “What do I do?” I asked the teacher.

She thought that if the bezel fit tightly enough after soldering, and I pushed the bezel wire in enough, it might hold. That didn’t work. So we looked at the piece, looked at each other silently, and she said, “You know. You could put a dab of glue in the bottom.”

Thank heavens she wasn’t against glue like some metal teachers!!!! Besides, this was my piece, not something for MOMA, so who cares. ‘Tis mine. Glue it is.

While soldering the bezel to the shield, a cool thing happened — the solder “bloomed” in a beautiful pattern all the way around, just like a sun’s corona. I marveled at how that happened, and decided that was a sign that it had to become part of the design. So I took a repousse tool and deeply scratched the surface of the metal to create sun rays around the dichroic glass.

Next, I wanted to stamp the word “DREAM” under the glass, but heaven forbid if I screwed that up after all the work I did soldering and filing. I practicing on copper first, but when I tapped the stamps on my pendant, I hit them HARD — all except the E. So I got little half circles above the letters. Oh well, I thought, we’ll call those clouds.

And then I got brave.

I had some empty space at the bottom of the shield that just NEEDED something. And it needed negative space — it needed me to cut something out. That meant using a saw. So I drew a tiny heart, drilled a hole in the center, threaded the saw blade through, bit my lip, and began to saw.

And I’ll be dipped, but it worked. I didn’t even break a saw blade.

Here you have it….

My Insomnia Talisman. Blue sky, suns rays (to help me wake up), “DREAM”, to help me get to sleep, a heart for Heart’s Ease and Relaxation, and those clouds over “DREAM” because who doesn’t like to look up at the clouds?

Finishing the pendant was a challenge. I should have drilled the holes on the sides, per my sketch, but forgot in my excitement. I tangled wire up on a 16 gauge branch, thinking for some reason about bird’s nests, and finally, it’s done.

Not in the least bit perfect. But I am so incredibly proud of myself for doing something that is completely against the grain of my comfort zone, working with metal in this way, making something rustic when I normally like whimsical, and taking the time to work without power tools so I can feel what I was doing.

No idea where this will lead. But I’m glad I took the road.

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.

Studio Spring Cleaning

Last week was spring break & I had decided that its time to work at tidying up my studio. At times I tend to work in chaos with tools, beads, glass, supplies, coffee cups and such cluttering up my work area. Although this type of environment works for me at times, I do have that other June Cleaver side that enjoys a tidy work area.

To the left is my studio “Before” photo. A flurry of glass, projects in process and tools. The right side shows the “After” image. A cleaned up, relaxing work space. Nice. Over the summer, I plan a more extensive studio re-do but for now a clean up is all there is time for.

During this cleaning process I came up with a solution to the perpetual bead release mess left behind after removing beads from the mandrels. An old cookie tray! Instead of removing beads from their mandrels on top of my clean table, I remove them on the cookie tray thereby containing the nasty bead release mess to a smaller, easier to clean area. So far this has been a GREAT help to keeping my table clean of residue! How do you keep your work table clean?

Now to the beading side of my studio. This area is almost always disheveled. So, I’ll say up front….I could work on this area more. Here is the “Before” photo

What really helped with my organization on this side are the 2 glass shelves my husband installed for me. The glass shelves work great since they allow light to come thru and things don’t look so dark and closed in. On these shelves I placed most of my knick knacks that amuse me and left my other shelves (located above my bench), for jewelry/bead necessities (a few knick knacks too).

Check out that face bead…..I have treasured Cathy Lybarger’s beads for a long time. This one sits and keeps an eye on me while I work. Along with the glass shelves, magnetic storage containers are great too. They keep those little items off your table and easy to find. Organizing and keeping my work area neat is a constant work in progress. I expect this clean up to last a while!

I hope you will visit my blog at: www.bellabeadjewelrybylinda.blogspot.com , my website at: www.lindasbellabeads.com and my Etsy shop at: www.bellabeadjewelry.etsy.com

One Necklace: Start to Finish

A while back Linda Davis, a jewelry making friend of mine, showed me some beads she’d picked up somewhere and I went nuts over them.

They were a semi-precious stone I was unfamiliar with at the time. Since then, I’ve noticed more and more bronzite on the market, but these lovely slender rectangular tab beads are still some of the sweetest I’ve seen. Not long after she showed me those beads, a package arrived in the mail — a surprise gift of those beauties! The luscious tabs lived on my work table for a while and after picking them up and rolling them through my fingers for about the fiftieth time I decided I wanted to use them in a piece. This is the story of that process and the almost-happy ending.

I took the bronzite tabs and started walking around the studio, pulling out beads, laying the tabs against other beads, digging through seed beads, looking at my pearls, and stirring through my lampwork bead cigar box. I hardly ever work in neutrals without SOME spot of color, but those bronzite beads just wanted ivory, bone, and some metallic neutrals next to them.

A return to my cigar box of lampwork turned up nothing satisfying so I headed out to the studio, picked out two kinds of ivory glass, some light transparent amber glass, and some silver foil and turned on the torch. After several false starts I ended up with this focal bead.

The large hole on the bead was a total mistake and like many of my mistakes, became a design opportunity. Because of the large hole and size of the focal pendant I decided the piece needed to be a multi-strand necklace to give it balance.

As I started the layout of the strands I found the bronzite wasn’t pulling enough yellow from the transparent amber in the focal pendant and that I’d need to add yellow somehow to keep everything singing. But by this point I’d made a commitment to a rustic necklace of neutrals. This stumped me for a bit until I remembered a strand of irregular amber nuggets I’d tucked away. Color-wise and shape-wise and “feel-wise” they were perfect. But there was still something “off”. The pendant was too fancy for the beads I’d chosen. Back to the neutrals pile and this time I fished out some pearls that echoed the silvered ivory of the pendant and added (I felt) a bit of refinement to the beads on the board. I was almost there. Something still wasn’t right. I realized that the double strands contained no lampwork at all and I wanted that focal to feel tied in to the double strands. So I zipped out to the studio (ah, the joy of being a lampworker and jewelry designer!) and made a dozen ivory beads but without melting in the glass, so that my ivory spacers would have some texture. They would echo the smooth ivory colored bone discs and the ivory in the focal, but at the same time add a subtle variation.

I was close to being done. All that was left was getting the order of the beads on the strand “right”, choosing findings, and putting the necklace together. This is the point in my design process where I can really start futzing and questioning and worrying. After innumerable arrangements, I ended up with the configuration you see. It’s at this point (BEFORE I crimp those crimp beads) that I usually leave the piece on my work bench for a day or so, to be sure I like everything about it. If someone is around I’ll ask them if anything bothers them about the piece. With this piece I was in a rush and didn’t give myself that day — I crimped away, added the gold-filled clasp, and set the necklace aside.

A short while later I was wrapping pieces up to send off to the gallery. My husband happened to walk by the table where all my beadaliciousness was on display and casually remarked that the focal on the piece in question didn’t seem quite large enough for the rest of the necklace. I rushed to check it out and with a sinking stomach saw he was absolutely right. It was not quite big enough to balance out the mass of those double strands and visually heavy bronzites. Almost but not quite.

The moment of truth. Redo or send as is? I used to never send out anything I wasn’t 1000% wildly happy about. But as I’ve gone along in this adventure I’ve discovered that: a) this tack can seriously hamper my productivity and b) people sometimes love my work even if I don’t! Someday I may have the luxury of making a very few perfect, time-intensive pieces of jewelry each year, but that’s not where I am right now. And though it made the perfectionist in me squirm, I sent it out anyway. I sent it out because I think it’s 90% there and I actually still love the piece. If that last minute discovery had made me hate the piece, I wouldn’t have let it out the door.

Terri Lovins makes glass beads and designs jewelry in her Seattle studio.