99th post: Florals Galore!

We have five brand new, Ottawa-made florals that will be available at the OGBA show this Friday and Saturday!


This one has a twist: I added some small cane-florals around the main stamened florals. It added a lot of time to the creation but I like the effect! I'm also happy with the enamelled base.



This one is sweet, little and bright. I accidentally made it on a 1/16" mandrel, which was nervewracking at the time (it's very delicate mandrel for a focal!) but luckily it worked out. It's a benefit now, as a smaller hole diminishes the hideous spectre of bead-wobble. The vivid green, coral and pale pink palette isn't one of my typical colour combinations but I'd like to explore it more! I actually did make a matching earring pair that Andrea is making into Captive Drop earrings.


This one was the first floral I made in the new studio! It features my trusty black base and handpulled reactive cane base, with stamened flowers in white.



I love the background on this one! So rich and vivid. Blue does such wonderful things in glass. I'll never get tired of playing with blues.


This was the most recent one I've made, and also the biggest of the batch! I'm really happy with it. It has a rich background with frit, silver foil, reactive cane and goldstone, two huge violet florals with nicely flared stamens, and four smaller complex cane-flowers. It's something that one can gaze into and enjoy the depths and detail.

I can't believe I'm almost at post #100! Thanks to everyone who has been reading my blog. :) It's nice to have a place to talk through projects, track progress and generally nerd out on glass. :)

The New Floral Stamen

So I finally got to use my new floral stamen stringer in a new bead. Here is the result! I get a sprightly, vaguely Eastern European feeling from this one. :) It will be unveiled at our final Winnipeg show this weekend.
This look is so different from my past ones. Definitely the most successful petaled stamen I've ever made, but it's so vivid that I'm it sure whether it would work with less flame-coloured flowers! I think it might work best as a separate mini-flower cane on its own. What do you think?

What a Rush!

Phew - the show season is over, and we did a good job, I think! Part of me would have liked to have done more and more (more dragonflies! more forged earrings! more metalsmithed work!) but the more reasonable part of me is glad that we limited it to four shows this year. They were really *good* shows for us, and left us some time to deal with our non-glass world as well! And it left both myself and (hopefully) our customers "wanting more" for the future...

Now it's time for us to focus on our Christmas. We still don't have very clear plans yet but our tree is up and sparkly, and that feels like a very good start!

I'll leave you with a photo of my latest floral (still available, by the way) to tide you over until I post again. :) Merry Christmas! Happy Solstice! It is coming soon and I can't wait for the days to get longer!

New Purple Floral Bead

As promised, here`s a shot of my latest encased floral! I`m using a new technoque to apply the stamen now: pre-nipping-off a point-pulled stamen section, and attaching it to a clear rod. Then I can just plunge it in as deep as I want, and melt off the clear rod leaving an automatic "expansion dot" of clear on top.
Before this, I was plunging a point attached to the full stamen rod, then cooling that and nipping it off the bead itself. This worked fine when the stamen rod was skinny, but now that I'm working in a thicker section it was giving me more trouble. I was either breaking the stamen off too stubby in the plunge-dent, or breaking the whole darn bead off the bead release. The new approach is much less disaster-prone!



















Front shot, showing the stamen cane. I like how the stamen went a bit spirally this time! Finally, distortion working in my favour! >:)



















Side shot of the floral showing the reactive base. I love how the reactive cane recipe turned out! It`s a bit less yellow and more blue in real life.

My Mom should be landing in Winnipeg for a visit right about... now! She's here for work and knows we're working too getting ready for the Velocity show on Niagara this weekend. She`s agreed to help us come up with names for our work (such as this bead - suggestions, anyone?), and maybe do a little tagging duty too! What a trooper! :)

New Florals!

I spent some time photographing my new work yesterday and wanted to share some glam shots of my latest florals!

This was my first floral test of the new "Effetre Ultra Clear", Peace White and Bordello Red. The flower is *okay* but I wasn't thrilled with any of the new colours. Ultra clear is not really ultra anything, just regular. Lots of visible bubbles in the rods itself, and you do have to work it quite cold. Manageable, but not amazing. Still, the next step up is way too expensive for me, so I'll just work far back in the flame and I'll be fine. :)
Peace White actually looked a lot less opaque than my old white in rod form and didn't seem to resist translucency any better. Bordello looks okay in this photo but in real life it's actually a lot darker and duller. Layering it over yellow was a mistake, since it's more of a purple red! A little goes a long way. The "starry" silver background was also unexpected. I thought I was using silver leaf but it was actually silver foil that I'd managed to slip into a leaf envelope. Insanity!
This was my second go with Bordello, matched with Effetre Ink Blue. Again, it's darker and browner in read life. Still, it was a pretty bead with my reactive cane background!
...So much so that I made an almost identical bead my second time at the torch. Without really planning to! This one has regular red, Effetre Amethyst centre petals and Leaky Pen accent flowers. I *am* thrilled with Leaky Pen!
Here you can see how close they look. Even the same size! Weird.
This one is very cute and tiny and pretty close to perfect! Ink blue on Leaky Pen with a lapis and cane background. It's one of the smaller florals I've made! Not sure why I went so small. I guess it'll make it more wearable, at least.

And here's a family portrait to show the different sizes and shapes. I haven't measured them yet but the biggest one is around 30mm, the middle one around 25, and the smallest just 20ish. Yay, I'm making florals again!

Now I just need to think of names! Any suggestions?!