Some things I have made

Some of these are available on ebay.  Look for bellakjewelry.  More will be available soon.

                                                      
                          My favorite, I made the wire wrap on the pendant and the chain maille chain too
                          the chain pattern is called rosette.

 

Yeah I like this one too.  Purple is the color theme here.  I also made the chain maille here.  It is called eclipse. 

LOL  my first icicles,  not too bad for starters.  :)  It took a few before I got the hang of making the loop.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.

And here is my first off mandrel pendant.  I decided to try it after I had learned how to make the loop while making the icicles. 

This is a lanyard I made for my daughter-in-law.  It still needs the clasp and a split ring at the bottom to hold her clip.  I used the eclipse chain maille chain here too.  I really like the way it turned out.

I made my own bead rest for inside the kiln

 Don't waste your money buying bead annealing racks from someone else, you can do it yourself with the tools and materials you are likely to have already. 

Here is a bead rack I made using a 1/16" stainless steel mandrel.  It comes from 1/16" stainless steel welding rod.  If you buy your mandrels already pre-cut, I urge you to check out your local welding supply store for 1/16" and 3/32" stainless steel welding rod.  It comes in different grades.  You want 308 308L.  These will take a lot of heat and last a long time.  I use a hothead so don't know about the heat from a dual fuel torch.

To make the rack I used 3 of my 1/16" stainless mandrels.  Be aware that stainless steel is strong so it will give resistance.   I first made a bend a little off center using my round nose pliers.  Then I made another bend beside it.  After that there is one more bend to make the other leg.  Then bend the legs as shown.  These first three bends are the middle where the straight mandrel rests.  See the picture for an idea of where and how much to bend the legs.  The legs must be bent as shown so that they won't tip over under the weight of the beads.  I would say to make about a 45-60 degree angle.  I made my mandrel that will hold the beads just short of 9" to fit my kiln.  I have a table top model that was made by The Glass Hive.  I got the short guy :) and I love it.  This isn't a plug for them, just saying that my kiln interior measures 9" across.

Ahhh, now I have to make 6 more rests.  Then I will be able to anneal more beads at one time than my other, purchased, rest would accommodate.   I batch anneal because I do not work at it full time.  I usually get from 8-16 hours a week at my torch so I only anneal when I have a full load. 

I have an idea that a taller and a shorter version of this bead rest could be made to create two more tiers of racks for better utilization of space in the kiln. Wow!  I could have 100-150 beads in there at once.  That means I would have to spend more time at the torch, it's a good thing :)

Good ways to practice lampworking

I have been trying to learn lampworking from online tutorials and youtube videos.  There is a lot that is left unsaid by the posters of these lessons.  I don't fault them for it because it is wonderful that people are willing to help others learn.

I have learned how to make beads of approximately the same size.  I found that if I make several of them in one sitting I am more successful than if I take a break in the middle of making a set.  Any beads that don't match in size get sorted out, then I have a nice set of graduated beads :)

Making icicles of the same size is also challenging.  I have all sizes of them now and no two match, but they are pretty :)  What the heck, they don't hang on the tree next to each other anyhow so I don't see it as a major problem.

The small things that people take for granted are things that we have to learn for ourselves and lots of practice is the way.

I wanted to learn to make icicles so I watched some videos on the subject.  Then I thought through the process for a couple of days until I had it in my head how I was going to do it.

I learned that making icicles is excellent practice for learning heat control, how to heat just a small area such as working on the hanger end, and how to work off-mandrel using tools to hold the piece.

Lesson # 1
Always preheat any tool that you are going to hold your piece with.  If you don't, your piece will likely crack and/or break in two.  You don't want the tool hot, just warm enough that the temperature isn't a shock to the glass.

Lesson #2
Don't get the glass too hot, it will boil and be ruined.  I already learned this from making beads but in making the gather on the first few icicles, I kept the molten ball (gather) too hot for too long.  I soon learned to keep it at the coolest part of the flame that would have enough heat to shape the ball.  The best way to avoid boiling the glass that I have found is to work in the flame for a little while then move the ball farther away to cool it down a little.  Keep working back and forth like this.  At least it works for me. 

making my own striped stringers

Yesterday I was making some stringers and decided to apply stripes of 3 different colors to a clear rod.  The rod was about the thickness of my little finger.

I first made stringers with the colors I wanted to use, then I heated the clear rod and applied the stringers in stripes of about 1 1/2 inches to the end of the clear rod.

Then I made a fatter stringer out of the striped end of the clear rod and applied that to a small bead I made using the clear glass.  It turned out looking like a stone bead only with bits of clear between the stripes.

This is a pic of some beads I have made so far.  The striped ones are at the bottom,  I made 2 of them.