Orange Passion Pendant Renews My Interest in Making a Bead

Look! I made a bead!

Okay, so what’s so special about that, seeing as how I am a lampworker after all?

Well, I gotta tell ya that I may be the only lampworker on the face of the earth who never practiced making those 100 spacers or perfected a simple round bead. I suck at it. I discovered sculpting, my beads grew and grew larger until they became sculptures, and I rarely try to make a wearable piece any more. . .

One of the rules of marketing for an artist is to always wear a piece of your work if at all possible, so I try to keep one or two wearable overgrown beads to wear. Yesterday, I sold my favorite one, and I figured it was time to make a new one. That’s it in the picture, and I gotta tell ya I am pleased with it! It’s only about an inch long, but it sure packs a nice bit of orange-y pizazz.

Whoops, I gotta run! Gotta fit in some torching time today. . . and methinks, I’ll be making one or two beads just for the fun of it!

AngelinaBeadalina is running behind yet again and so instead of leaving you a clever message here will just say: www.angelinabeadalina.com for links to my blog, my Etsy shop, and my BeadArtists.org gallery pages.

Tool Testing (aka A Great Way To Get New Ideas!)

I was recently asked by Amy O over at www.zooziis.com if I might be interested in testing a new top secret tool for her. She said she liked the new things I was doing with Mixed Media Art and thought the new press might lend itself to things I could use in my pieces.

First of all, I gotta say… I was totally honored to be asked. Secretly, in the back of my tortured-in-high-school-always- picked-somewhere-in-the-middle-for-dodgeball mind, I hoped that someday I would be “good enough” to be asked to test something. LOL… silly, I know. (hmmm… now that I have had that secret wish filled, I wonder what one will replace it.) Anyway…

The tool is fantastic! Amy came up with the idea of having interchangable word plates that allow you to press messages into the surface of glass. They work with the texture plate presses she already has out. She let me choose a few words that I wanted to play with. I chose LOVE, DREAM, CALM, CREATE, & JOY. I picked words that spoke to me. I think JOY is such an under rated word, don’t you? It isn’t used nearly as often as it should. Looking back though, I should have asked for LIVE and LAUGH to go with LOVE because that would make a really sweet bracelet!

When the new tool arrived, I knew right away what I wanted to do with it… off mandrel flat back discs!! (what? wasn’t that what you were thinking? LOL) I think one of the reasons Amy asked me to test the tool was that she knew I wouldn’t go for the “supposed to” way of using it. Paired with cabochon mandrels by Inspiration Toolworks, I was able to get out of my head just what I had in mind. I love these new clasps!! And I also used a couple in ACEOs that I have been working on (shown up top).

Eventually Amy gave me a gentle nudge and asked if I had tried using it on mandrel as it was designed. I was so excited by the results. I found that words came out really crisp and clear with opaque glass and more subtle in transparent colors. Both very cool, very inspiring findings. I love the texture of the word in the surface of the glass. You can run your fingers across the bead and feel the bumps of each letter. I love love love jewelry you can play with while you wear it, and these beads definitely lend themselves to that.

Anyone else ever tested tools? Did you find it inspiring? I would love to hear more about it. And if you make beads and get one of these tools, I would love to see the kinds of things you came up with for it!!

Kerry Bogert is blogging about her glass art beads and jewelry from her home studio in Ontario NY. Check her work at www.kabsconcepts.com.

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.