lampwork – Ornamento

Beads of a Different Stripe

By: ornamento.blog August 21, 2014August 19, 2014

Art, beads, Design, inspiration, lampwork, Materials, tutorialArt, Beads, lampwork, Tutorial4 Comments

I have been busy trying lamp working techniques this summer. Striped beads are made differently than I would have thought. Instead of drawing stripes on the bead with a stringer you lay down dots, put on a layer of clear glass and melt it slowly. This serves to magnify the dots underneath which appear as stripes! How cool is that? Here are the basic steps:

Base bead

Make a base bead

Add some dots. Don’t melt in.

Add dots on top of dots. Don’t melt in.

Add a couple layers of clear over the dots only. Think of a shape like the planet Saturn with its rings.

Begin to heat the clear glass. Slowly so the glass doesn’t pop or crack.

Bring up the heat to melt the clear glass. This magnifies the dots underneath

Pick it up a bit and keep the mandrel turning.

Why?

Because you don’t want your bead to sag.

Let the bead cool slowly and keep it turning to maintain the shape

Almost finished.

And here are the finished beads. This could get addicting!

Don’t forget Bead Fest this weekend!

More Glass Beads from my Work Shop

By: ornamento.blog August 22, 2013August 19, 2013

Art, beads, glass, Interweave Press, lampworkArt, Glass Beads, Japanese Beading, Lamp Work1 Comment

I had a friend who traded working in polymer clay for glass. She reasoned that when she screwed up polymer clay it was ugly but no matter what you do to glass, it’s still beautiful. It’s hard to disagree, although some of my glass work might be an exception to her rule.

I only make lamp worked beads in the summer because I do not have a proper exhaust system to suck out the fumes. In the summer I can open windows, doors and run a series of fans to keep the air moving. But when the autumn becomes brisk, I put the glass away.

\ Being a summer only lamp worker means that I don’t have the torch hours necessary to get as adept as I would like. On the other hand, I find that I am pretty much able to pick up where I left off when I light the torch in the spring.

The beads above are made from lead glass or moretti glass and some of them are enhanced with fine silver. I love the blue bicone. That’s blue and a bit of green translucent lead glass fumed, raked and paddled smooth on the bead. The beads are sitting on a fiber blanket in my kiln waiting annealing. I cool them in a fiber blanket when I first make them, but that does not anneal them!

kilnbeads

I batch anneal my beads rather than heating the kiln going every time I light the torch. I think it’s more energy efficient.

Here’s the Jen Ken Bead Annealer that has served me well. It has a manual control and for a few years I had to monitor the kiln like a hawk and make sure it was moving through the annealing cycles properly and making adjustments.

Then I found this baby for a reasonable price a few years ago. Thew price has gone up since then. A digital controller is great though and a separate controller can be used with different kilns. I like the flexibility. Now all I have to do is enter my annealing schedule and the kiln does the rest. Yes, I still have to watch and monitor but fiddling with the dial is a thing of the past.

Big Holed Bead on the mandrel

Lead glass silvered

The same bead cooled. Aren’t the colors great? That’s translucent lead glass similar to what you see in the picture below.

Happy bead making!

Don’t miss Beadfest this weekend!

Where I Make Glass Beads

By: ornamento.blog August 15, 2013August 12, 2013

Art, beads, lampworkartist studio, bead making, crafts, lampwork, Lampworking4 Comments

Welcome to my summer lamp working studio. I work with City gas and an oxygen concentrator. My glass is mostly moretti or scrap class that I find or friends give me.

My lamp working station with home made arm rests (cigar boxes). The top of the table is an old door protected with pieces of thick aluminum flashing. I drilled holes in a wood block to hold the mandrels. I only make lampworked beads in the summer when I can have the windows open and the air moving.

The workshop. I batch anneal and when the kiln is on the area around it is cleared!

Glass shards

Stringers pulled from scrap glass

Disk beads and silvered glass. I wear a respirator when I am working with fine silver in the torch.

Blended and Silvered

Here I’ve mixed blue and green scraps and added some silver. I don’t know the COE of these glasses but they behave similarly and I think they must be very close in COE if not the same.

More beads

My home made mashers (rebent barbeque tongs)

From the Dollar Store, these also work as mashers but you have to quench them in water to keep the glass from sticking.

I’ve made a lot of beads this summer. I even like some of them. I will share them with you in a later post.

Attack of the Killer Beads (or Blog Hop Part 3)

By: ornamento.blog July 12, 2012July 11, 2012

Art, beading, beads, glass, inspiration, lampworkArt, Beads, blogging5 Comments

OMG! Beads! Millions of Beads! Not killer bees, Beads! Well, I felt the same adrenalin rush but in a good way when Kristen’s beads arrived. I haven’t been able to put up pictures until today because my card reader gave out. Well, here they are. Ta Daa!

I love blue, I love encased beads and I love crystals.

And not only were there beads, the package was tied with beautiful ribbon which will probably find its way into the necklace.

I am starting to play around with design ideas in my notebook.

And since I love to take pictures, here are some more.

I think this will be my last post on the Blog Hop until the Big Reveal.

Take a Peek into My Workshop

It’s been a while since Libby Mills profiled my workshop in her blog’s Studio Snapshot series. Since then, I’ve branched out into other mediums including felt, do more metalsmithing, and have acquired some new tools.

I am lucky enough to have a dedicated space for my work, but I live in a small house and purge regularly out of necessity. This includes my workshop. My current set up is the result of regular purging and many wasted hours playing Tetris.

Here are some pictures of the ordered chaos.

New Lampwork from an Unlikely Souce

My friend Sandeye gave me these glass chunks. They were left over from a glass installation she and Phil Jurus assisted with in New York City some years ago.

Sandeye wondered how the glass would looked made into beads fumed with fine silver, I said I would give it a go and see what turned out.

First, I pulled the chunks into rods and stringers. Slowly, I might add.

Then I started making beads.

I couldn’t mix the glass since I didn’t know the COE of any of it, so I experimented with silver fuming.

Then I got bolder.

I added copper metal leaf

I added baking soda

I added pixie dust

I mixed them all up and fumed again

I put raised stringer designs on them

I melted the stringers in

I made hollow beads

I tried reduction flames

I even thinned aluminum foil in my rolling mill to see how that would work. Not too well.

I made spacers

I made tubes

I made round beads

I made tablets

I even cut up copper pot scrubbers and got some cool effects.

See those dark spots? That’s copper scrubber I cut with scissors.

Eventually, I used up all the glass.

By the way, I made the beads on my new Mega Minor torch I bought from Wale Apparatus at Bead Fest in August.

I’ve been busy, haven’t I?

Think Sandeye will be surprised when she gets her beads? Don’t worry. I will keep a few.

Susan’s Blue Candy Dish

By: ornamento.blog October 14, 2010October 14, 2010

Art, beads, lampwork, Personal History, problem solving, recycling, repurposing, risk takingArt, creativity, Found Object Jewelry, inspiration, recycling, repurposing5 Comments

I broke Susan’s cobalt blue candy dish. An old cobalt blue candy dish. It was probably an heirloom. Susan took one look and said “Phooey.” Then she smiled. “Make me something from the pieces.” So I took the pieces home and stared at them. I got an idea. I put them in my rock tumbler and tumbled them into velvety looking beach glass. I didn’t know what to do next. I showed them to Susan and asked what she thought. “I liked it better shiny,” she commented. Phooey, I thought. I put the glass away. That was twenty-five years ago.

One day I took the glass out and stared at it because the time had come to make something for Susan out of the glass. The glass was talking to me. Not only that, I had taken up lampworking in the twenty-five years that had passed, and I will stick mostly anything in the flame. Well, that’s not exactly true. I don’t cook in the flame or light combustibles or body parts. I respect the flame. But I love to play and experiment.

I made lots of beads for Susan using all kinds of inclusions where the COE of the glass didn’t matter. I had didn’t have a plan or directions; I just heeded the laws of chemistry and improvised as I went. After kiln annealing, I put the beads in a box along with with some findings and jewelry tools and other beads and gave them to Susan. She took one look and clapped her hands. “Oh, goody gumdrops!” she exclaimed.

One day when I can tie her down, we will make things with the beads. Here’s to the next 25 years, Susan!

Here are the beads I kept.

I will post next week on how I get these effects with scrap glass.

What I made in Olivia Surratt’s Class

I first met Olivia Surratt at a two-day workshop the Philadelphia Area Polymer Clay Guild sponsored with Robert Dancik. For some reason, I liked Olivia right from the start. I don’t know why; sometimes that’s the way it goes. So when Olivia offered to teach a wire and fusing class to benefit the guild, I jumped at the chance to take it, even though wire working is not new to me. Not only has Olivia studied with some great teachers, no matter what you think you know, you can always learn something new or a better way to do something from a good teacher. Olivia did not disappoint me.

One of the first things I did was to replace my portable butane torch with the model Olivia likes best, the original Blazer GB 2001 Self Igniting Micro Blazer Torch. It actually costs less than the torch I already have, but works so much better.

Olivia and Pauline, her trusty assistant, led us through her methods for fusing fine solver and wrapping with copper wire. I used beads I made. Here are some pictures. I give the class an A plus!

It’s Mural Arts Month in Philadelphia. Go out and kiss a mural!!!

For earlier posts on Philadelphia Murals, press here and here.

Jewels from the Sidewalk

I walk to and from work every day and I constantly scan the sidewalk for treasures I can use to make something. Trash day is the best day of the week!!!

Awhile ago, I wrote about making lampworked beads from glass I found on the sidewalk. Now I have added brown beer bottles to my cobalt blue wine and aqua Bombay Gin bottles. And a co worker contributed too! She had a beautiful yellow glass vessel sink in her powder room and when it cracked and she had to have it replaced, she gave me the broken glass.

The pictures below show each kind of glass, plain, fumed and fumed with stringers on top.

Since I don’t know the COE of the glass, I don’t mix the colors. I cut the glass as best I can and hold it in the flame with a long hemostat. It’s loads of fun and you never know what you’re going to get.

And the Beads Go On

By: ornamento.blog August 20, 2009August 15, 2009

Art, art, creativity, crafts, inspiration, beading, beads, Design, glass, Hand Made, lampwork, Personal Growth, Personal History, Wale ApparatusArt, crafts, creativity, Interweave Bead Fest, Lampworking1 Comment

I’ve fired up my torch after almost two years and I’ve been trying different techniques including hollow beads, encasing and working with enamels and baking soda.

Here’s a sampling of what I’ve made so far:

I’m really looking forward to Bead Fest this year. Aside from seeing all the lovely lamp worked beads, Wale Apparatus one of my favorite suppliers, is on the vendor list. How cool is that?