Merry Christmas!!

Wishing you all a safe and wonderful Christmas, and a prosperous 2007!

Hope your dreams all come true.

See you all in the new year!

Playing

I decided to have a play with some powdered glass (similar to enamel) that I got off Cathy at Chockadoo. I realllllly love it! I love how you can get different looks with just varying the amount of powder you put on the bead.

With the beads below I used a colour called amethyst red (I think lol) and it is a yummy colour! I put a fair bit on the sides of the larger beads so you get a deeper colour showing, but on the small round spacer beads, I only rolled them lightly in it and it gave them a beautiful blush.

For the lines I used a glass colour called silver plum. If you dont work it too much you get a great 'oil slick' effect on it, and it contrasts beautifully with the pinks.

I have to admit that this set is fast becoming one of my favourites! I will have to try it in other colours as well.

I've called this set.. Soul Spirits.

Cheers!
Anne :-)

More Custom Orders

I had some other custom orders for sets along similar lines of some that I have already created. The first pink one has the large hollow lentil again, but all the other beads are just normal solid lentils.

I do love my swirly beads as shown in the last two pics. Molten glass swirls beautifully together, not like with paints where the colours will blend. Glass colours tend to stay separate so you get definite patterns and lines. If you want to mix colours of glass you really need to blend them well all the way through, otherwise you'd just end up with streaky colours.

Woohoo!

Woohoo!! I finally got the custom order for two cabochons finished! After the first ones cracking in the kiln it's good to see these ones had survived! I'm rather pleased that I actually managed to get them almost the exact same size too, because when you slump beads, the glass flows however it wants too, so I don't really have any control over how the finished cabs look.

If you put beads in the kiln to slump that have a design on them, eg flowers, as the glass melts and flows the flowers will spread and flow with the glass, sometimes they come out looking like larger versions of the originals but other times they come out looking seriously distorted.

Anyways, here they are!

Cheers!
Anne :)

Last week...

Well last week I had a minor drama in my kiln.

I obviously hadn't coated my kiln shelf very well and when I slumped some beads to make into cabs for a custom order they decided to stick! As they cool, the glass shrinks and because they were stuck to the kiln shelf they basically shattered. Not a pretty picture when I opened the kiln the next morning! So now the order has been delayed I'm afraid. I have the new beads made and ready again for slumping, so fingers crossed they work out this time!

Otherwise, I managed to get some beads made up. Here is a photo of a set and a raised floral bead.

I'm not sure if I mentioned previously that I made up some bookmarks. Just printed card bookmarks, but they have some photos of my beads on them and will be adding them to each order I get.

I've also been working on a PMC (precious metal clay) piece. It will be a pendant piece and will have some beautiful garnet briolette drops hanging from it. It may take me a little while to complete but when I do I'll be sure to post a photo on here for you.

Anyway, that's all for now, take care everyone!

Cheers
Anne.