other artists «

Artistic Inspiration from the bank??

David was reading his mail the other day. He had something from his bank. Imagine his surprise when I yelled ‘STOP!’ – ‘Don’t throw that away I want it!’ – or words to that effect.

He handed the sheet to me with a rather puzzled expression on his face, while I grinned with glee!

st_marys

Inspiration??
Well opening a kid’s account wasn’t exactly what was on my mind – but THAT dog spoke to me! All at once I saw how I could construct a dog bead I truly liked!

And I did!
p5306452

I truly like him! He makes me smile! Not least of all because I’ve struggled so much with dogs.

p5306451

Like my monkee’s he’s made with a nice big hole running horizontally through his head. This means he can be worn easily on a chain or cord AND that he’ll always face the right way, he’s not going to swivel round on you while you are wearing him. He’s a decent size too!

I was so delighted I made another!

p5306446

I changed the colours up this time so he looks a little dobermanish.

p5306447

I don’t know how I can translate this into other breeds at the minute – but I’m happy with this starting point.

Thank YOU St. Mary’s Bank!!! Or more precisely thank you to the artist who drew the original pup!

I’ve got a loverly bunch of bananas!

p5296244

This little monkee is SO happy – can you tell? He’s just scored the best bunch of bananas in the jungle!

My latest bead comes out of inspiration from two of my favourite beadmakers – Astrid Riedel and Anastasia.

Astrid has been making some wonderful two part beads recently -

And I was captivated by Anastasia’s sculpted fish beads -

They are both amazing and I’ve been so struck by them that I was wondering how I could turn these ideas into something that was uniquely mine. Yesterday it came to me and Monty and his bananas were born. Thank you ladies, for being such a constant source of inspiration to me!

p5296247

I still have a lot to learn as far as sculpting goes but I’m proud to think I’ve come as far as I have – when I began with my first tiny round bead I never imagined creating something like this!

Wire wrapping on the other hand is something I’d rather forget about and you might notice that my skills are sadly lacking in this department! Monty says he doesn’t mind too much as it means he’ll never loose his bananas.

p5296249

I’ve decided to offer Monty for sale right here on my website – PLEASE NOTE HOWEVER – he does come with his wire wrapping and if you have any skill at all you’ll probably want to re-wire him yourself! I hold no responsibility for any trouble Monty might give you if he thinks you are trying to steal his bananas!

Monty is $40 US, this price includes shipping. If you are within Ontario, Canada this price also includes PST. If you are redirected to my ArtFire shop it means that Monty has already been sold. Thank you for looking! )

A beadmaking class with Anastasia

I’m just a little excited this morning.. I checked my email and found that I have a space in the classes that Anastasia is going to be giving in my area this summer! This is really, really exciting because -

I’ve never taken a beadmaking class before!
Anastasia makes AMAZING beads!

I have to wait patiently for the end of July to come – I don’t want to wish my summer away so I’ll try and bask in the anticipation of it all.

I know I’ll be so nervous, I’ll be worrying that I’m lighting my torch correctly because I’ve never actually seen anyone set the flame – all I know is what works for me.

If you aren’t familiar with Anastasia’s wonderful beads you can visit her website here and here’s a sneak peek of what you are in for if you do -

Beads by Anastasia, aren’t they amazing? Can you see why I’m just a little bit excited??

Exploding Crochet???!

One of the things I like best about today’s technology is how easy it makes it to find other Artists and what a great source of inspiration the net can be.

Take Howie Woo for example.
Howie crochets, cartoons and makes films!
What I like about Howie’s crochet is that he’s creating things from wool that have never been thought of as soft woolly things – grenades, dynomite, ray guns, ufo’s . . . he’s also very creative at presenting his crochet – you need to check out Howie’s blog to see what I mean.

Howie Woo - Crocheted Grenades

Aren’t they fun!?

Visiting other Artist’s blogs is always a nice way to start my morning – I end up feeling enthused and inspired and often with ideas for pushing my own glass creations further than I’d thought I could.

Fun using Murrini in beads – how to do it!

Every now and then I use murrini in my beads -

Murinni chip in a bead

I especially like to add a dot of clear glass on top of the chip to help magnify the design.

my favourite murrini bead

The bead above is one of my favourites because of the unique shape, it’s fun to hold – the hole runs horizontally through the middle of the bead in this photo.

Of course, sometimes murrini can be melted into the bead -

p7306286 p7039002a

And sometimes you can REALLY melt it into the bead!

p7039002b

I love the way this one came out looking like an Eye Bead.

So – how do you make a bead using murrini/murinni/murrine/millefiore ?

Here’s a how to -

before you make your bead choose your murrini and lay it out where you can get at it easily – include a few extra chips in case you need them.
when you’ve made your base bead, use a pair of fine, long handled tweezers to pick up your first murrini piece – grab the murrini by it’s sides not the ends!
while you keep your bead warm, very slowy introduce the murrini to the flame – wave it in and out of the flame – if it gets hot too quickly it will crack and part of it will probably go flying off (that’s why it’s a good idea to have a few extra on hand).
Once the murrini is hot but NOT soft (you don’t want to squish it!), spot heat the part of your bead that you are going to place it onto.
Carefully place the hot murrini onto the hotspot of your bead – if they are hot enough the murrini will stick!
Heat the stuck murrini gently and you’ll notice it starts to round up – at this point I very gently flatten it a little to keep the design as large as possible. If you allow it to continue to ball up the design will shrink as the outer layer of the murrini creeps up and in.
Continue to heat the murrini until it’s melted in the way you like it.
At this point you can heat your clear glass and add a dot to the top of the murrini if you like – melt this is as little or much as you want.

Murrini extras!

White in murrini tends to devitrify (go rough at the surface) – to avoid this you can

reheat well one last time when the bead is complete or,
put a dot of clear over top

What’s the difference between murrini and millefiore?

From what I have read millefiore (shown in the above beads) is a name for a particular type of murrini that often looks like flowers – hence ‘millefiore’ – ‘thousands of flowers’
Murrini encompases much more than this and includes incredible designs that include faces, animals, words – pretty much anything!
Murrini can be created with hot glass by shaping and layering different colours or, by using cold glass and arranging many different stringers into a bundle so that a design is created when you look at the end of the bundle, this is then fused into a cane of murrini.
Murrini by Brian Kerkvliet

Find Brian’s amazing murrini here

Vickie Hallmark shows how Loren Stump puts a murrini face together here

See a YouTube video of murrini being made by the Corning Museum of Glass

For more tips on adding murrini to a bead here’s a Lampwork Etc. tutorial

Do you like murrini? Have you got any tips to share? I’d love to see what you do with it!

Quick fix clasp for elderly or stiff fingers

This Mother’s Day I made some beads for my Mum. She’d mentioned that she’d like one so I thought I’d surprise her.

p5100981

I wanted to give her a choice and something that she could easily switch out when she wanted.
Mum’s problem is that she has trouble putting necklaces on because of the clasp.

She has one I made with a magnetic clasp that she really likes, so I wanted to use one of those.
Problem was the magnetic clasp made it impossible to slip the beads or pendants off and on.

Here’s what I came up with -

p5100990

All you need to do this is

a ready made chain
two split rings
a magnetic clasp

I removed the clasp from the necklace by taking the ring that holds it in place off . Then added a split ring to that end of the necklace and added one part of the magnetic clasp to it.

I then took the magnetic clasp, threaded the second split ring onto it and added the necklaces original clasp back onto this split ring.

THEN, the clasp can be hooked into the necklace as it would normally, BUT you don’t need to use it to take the necklace off and on – you use the magnetic clasp for this.

IF you want to change the bead or pendant that is on the necklace you can simply unhook the clasp and slide the bead or pendant over the small end of the chain – nice and simple!

This was a much more successful Mother’s Day project than THIS

p5090964

But more on THAT later. Suffice to say you should never try to cook Angel Food cake in a toaster oven — but you already knew that right?? D

Silvered Ivory Stringer

I just read Rosemarie Hanus’ wonderful tutorial on how to make Silvered Ivory Stringer or SIS as it’s known for short. She gives a very clear description coupled with great photographs to help the process seem easy and foolproof. I am going to try her method as I hadn’t had much luck pulling SIS before and use another method that I found online (see bottom of this post).

If you are not a lampworker it might sound quite exotic. There is something captivating about the name and believe me, the results of using it can be very captivating also!

Here are a couple of my favourite beads using Silver Ivory Stringer -

SIS and Cobalt Blue

Cosmic Storm, Ivory, Triton and SIS

The first of these two has a very small amount of Silvered Ivory at the meeting of the cobalt and ivory glass. It’s creating an organic line between the two and causing reactions within the ivory.

The second bead has more SIS in it and really shows the wonderful reaction that can occur in the adjoining colours.

Ivory glass and silver do some beautiful things together!
Wanna close up of that reaction? Here’s a snippet of another bead -

Silver and Ivory glass closeup

Depending on how long you work the stringer (or even silver foil/leaf right on an ivory bead) the reaction can spread. This bead, using the same colours as the orange one above shows the reaction being spread as gravity has pulled the glass downward while I shaped the bead.

Sorry it's sideways!

I love the reactions in this bead – it makes me think of a butterfly wing.

Another thing that can happen with silver and silver ivory stringer is called fuming! This is when some of the silver burns off and ‘fumes’ adjacent parts of the ivory – or other colour that is used in the bead – causing a change in colour. It can be very beautiful.

sis fuming ivory

You can see the results of fuming in the above bead, the silver ivory stringer has turned the ivory glass next to it a wonderful honey colour –mmmmmm……

If you melt glass and haven’t used Silver Ivory Stringer/ Silvered Ivory Stringer/SIS – you might want to try it!

As I said at the beginning of the post when I first tried to pull SIS I did not like the results I was getting so I searched online for instructions and found the method I use, it is not my invention and I wish I could remember where I found it. I make mine an entirely different way to Rosemarie, so there is no right wrong way to do it.

Silver Ivory Stringer for challenged stringer pullers!

Here’s how I create SIS.

You can use pre-made commercial ivory stringer or pull your own. I always use dark ivory. Like Rosemarie I prefer silver foil to silver leaf.

Using COLD stringer I take my silver foil, lick the ivory stringer (you KNOW you always really wanted to LICK your glass!!) and wrap the foil around the stringer once.

This gives me a length of stringer that is now covered with the foil, I repeat the process and work my way along the stringer covering it with foil. The little bit of licking helps the foil to stick to the stringer. Once I have a suitable length of stringer covered with the foil I quickly pass the stringer through the flame of my torch. This helps the foil to adhere to the stringer – be quick! You don’t want the stringer to melt, or the silver to burn off.

Voila! That’s all there is to it. I’ll try and find out where I came across this method and if I get a chance I’ll add a tut with pictures to my tutorials page too – stay tuned!

Thanks to Rosemarie and to whoever it was that posted the info that allowed me to make my lickable SIS – I am so proud to be part of a wonderful community who learns and shares from/with each other.

FOUND IT! The recipe I use came from Amber’s (Naos) thread on making dragon scale beads on Lampwork Etc. Thanks Amber and everyone else for all the tips in this thread – it’s a great read!

Rubies or Spangles?

I HAD to share this!!

Sterling and Ruby Red by Meghann Gervais

In return for Meghann’s generosity with her amigurumi (wonder if I spelled that right this time!!), and the delicious fudge she made us, I gave her beads.

Meghann had asked for pink beads — that’s hard for me because I’m not a pink person, but I struggled and came up with these -

But did the red set too which I like much more.

I think Meghann must have gone directly home and turned them into that wonderful bracelet and once again I’m amazed at how a few simple beads can be transformed into something so beautiful! I think the red and silver are perfect together – like Meghann I’m undecided whether they are glitzy Rubies or strawberry flavour Spangles (Jolly Ranchers).

Visit Meghann’s website to see her other beautiful creations!

Voting is open at the Glass Olympics!

Mary Lockwood is running the Glass Olympics over on her site.

The theme of this competition is Spring – all the entries have a spring theme or flair to them.

Sitting here in Ontario where we’ve been plunged back into Winter I can think of nothing nicer than looking at some Spring inspired art.

I’ve entered, well you probably guessed it. . . BUNKEES!

Bunkees are in the (Glass) Olympics!

All you need to do to vote is write a comment for the item you like and make sure you use the word VOTE in your comment. You get two votes, one for the gold category and one for the silver category. If you have trouble commenting you can always email Mary with your two votes.

I entered some Bunkees, but there are so many wonderful entries you’ll be hard pressed to know who to vote for! Click the link below to go to the gallery for the Gold (intermediate/advanced) category

Go Vote!

Thank you Mary for all your hard work!

Zoiks!! I’m going to the dogs!

For AGES (or so it seems), I’ve been wanting to make some dog beads. I see so many lovely ones out there -

Paula's Dog

Paula’s Dogs never fail to make me smile.

Then there is Lori Peterson who makes it look like dogs should be the easiest thing to make! I love her style and the control that she has of the glass.

Lori Peterson Dog

Marcy Lamberson’s dogs make me wonder if there is anything this talented lady can’t sculpt out of glass!

Marcy Lamberson dog

And then there is Maybead whose dogs make me want to rush to the Animal Shelter and adopt six or seven!

Maybead's Dog

Last but definitely not least is Puddy Tat Glass’ Dogs. Her site says ‘where cats rule’, but these dogs make ME drool! All of her animals are absolutely AMAZING!

Created by Bonnie at Puddy Tat Glass

So, what’s the big deal? Why do I want to do dogs? Animal beads are popular, especially dogs and cats – I’d like to be able to donate some to our local shelter, or sell some and share the profits with them, and I see many different opportunities for selling them.

BUT!!

I’ve had a terrible time getting a dog to look like a dog! You’d be amazed how a not quite right nose, or the wrong shaped ears can change a beast into something entirely different. This can work in your favour if you see Lori’s post on the Watch Me Create Blog , she explains how easy it is to create many different animals from the same basic shape. Each time I’ve stood at the torch and tried a dog however, something goes horribly wrong…

I’ll continue this post tomorrow – finally I’m making some progress!