Here's the sad result of my broken floral from last week. Wasn't it lovely? I'm going to recreate this background for certain! Turquoise with blue goldstone is hot. We have never set a cabochon before but this piece would make a wonderful cab, eh?
Here's a more recent successful floral, using a new stamen cane. It's very much like my previous stamen cane (using my same handmade filigrano components) but I added some white petals around the outside as well. Unfortunately they got pulled too thin and ended up very translucent. However I love the scale of it! And presenting:
My new earring design! I've been working on this for a few weeks now, and I'm still tweaking it but I couldn't wait any longer to announce it. I'm IN LOVE. Until now we'd been using mostly French hooks but I prefer to wear something that locks closed, that I can keep on 24/7. These are perfect! However I still have to be a lot faster at making them. I'm starting to break down the steps so I can be more efficient. Forging the wire is so much fun!
I have so many beads sets that I can't wait to turn into earrings! I've been using 1/16" mandrels for the first time in ages and I'm diggin' the challenge of making tiny but bold and deeply encased pairs.
By the way, these are TINY. The bead is only 4mm x 7mm and the entire earring is only 12mm x 22mm. Some of these will be bigger. It'll all be scaled according to the size of bead.
I can't wait to unveil these in person at the Fall Artisan Show at 395 Elm street, which is coming up very soon: Friday Oct 23 - Sunday Oct 25!!!
5 comments:
Beautiful Floral beads! But I have a question for you - on an older post, I saw a beautiful butterfly - the one with the hole in the wing, so that it would hang off center - could you let me know if that was done in soft glass or boro? I'm working on some beads of courage (donated to an organization that offers beads to kids undergoing medical procedures, and trying to improve my butterfly design.
Glad you like our butterfly designs! They've been evolving in our studio over the past few years and they look very cute when worn.
We usually do that design in soft glass because we have more frit colours made up in that COE, but pierced designs work in boro too. We've only made boro butterflies once or twice but we do abstracts and our "gorget" pierced work in boro. We started using Peter's Tweezers but they're a bit flimsy. We've been much happier with Bail Biters.
Good luck incorporating this technique into own design for Beads of Courage!
Thankyou for the info you sent on your butterflies! I've done some off mandrel work with boro, but never with soft glass - something new for me to try.
Off-Mandrel in soft glass can definitely be done! It's more brightly coloured and fluid than boro but also a lot more finicky, in terms of shocking. The punty rod will frequently break if you work on an isolated tip for too long, and you need to warm the tool with which you carry the finished piece into the kiln. But as long as you keep everything warm and work smoothly, you can do everything in soft glass that you can do in boro!
Thanks for the advice - I must say, my first attempt in soft glass looks more like road kill than a butterfly, but I'll keep trying....
thanks
Jeannie
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