Adventures in Glass

It's been a few years since Caitlin and I have taken our yearly lamp working class with Stephanie Maddalena at Hudson Beach Glass.  We spent two days in January making glass beads using a propane torch and some low temperature glass rods. Here are the results. 

Just out of the kiln. From upper left, clockwise:

Encased silver foil over black and blue; tiny jelly fish aquarium; blue encased swirl; medium jelly fish aquarium with green frit and encased with clear; implosion with green frit

Blurry close up of Jelly Fish aquarium

 Necklaces and bracelets. Original lamp worked beads, and commercial beads. Silver beads and findings. Strung on waxed cord. 

Close-up. 

The Annual Glass Class with Caitlin

For the past 4 or 5 years, Caitlin, my eldest godchild, and I have celebrated her birthday by taking a lampworking class together. We really enjoy Stephanie's classes, and we've followed her to a couple different venues. We like the set up at Hudson Beach Glass best of all the places we've been. The 2-day format gives us 10 hours of torch time.



Here's my work station. Safety glasses, matches and shaping paddle in upper left. Torch, unlit, in the center. More shaping tools to the right of the torch. Glass rods to the right.



Stephanie doing a demonstration during class. Please ignore the "pooh" tshirt.





Caitlin at the torch. She's using the shaping paddle to steady the mandrel while she works the glass in the torch.
Caitlin's finished beads at the end of the first day.

A really blurry picture of my beads at the end of the first day. The two beads in the foreground have jellyfish designs encased in clear glass. I really need a better photo of these.

Lampworked Lumps

Several years ago, when my eldest godchild, Caitlin, was thinking about pursuing an art career, I made the offer of a lampworking class together as a birthday gift. Although she is pursuing other career aspirations, the annual lampworking class tradition continues and we both enjoy these weekend workshops over the torch. This will be our 5th year - and we're both looking forward to it. We take our classes with Stephanie Maddelena who teaches in lots of places, but we really like the set up at Hudson Beach Glass.

Lampworking, however, is a lot harder than I ever imagined. Here's Caits, hard at work at one of our early sessions.

The thing about working with glass is that it's hot. And pretty frickin unpredictable. And you can't use your hands to shape it, except with other tools. So getting things round, square, even, flat, symmetrical, etc is really, really hard. Hence, the lumps. The other thing about glass is that when it's hot, it's orange. So you really don't have a good idea of what color you're going to end up with (although the color rod you start with is a pretty good indicator), especially since some colors react with other colors, and some colors change depending on the temperature of your flame. So after all the classes we've taken, I can say with some assurance, that I'm pretty good at creating lumps of various colors.

Last year, I spent lots of time encasing beads, which means that you start with colors and then add clear glass on top of the colors to make it look like its underwater, or something. Notice that none of these are perfectly round, flat, square, cylindrical, or symmetrical in any way. But the colors are pretty. The next step, which I am very, very far from mastering is to actually use these pretty colored lumps. This is my first unedited and very juvenile attempt at stringing. This necklace is too long, too heavy, and has terrible wirework, but I do like the combination of the silver findings, the various silver beads and bits, and the addition of some purchased small boring beads in the same palette as my lampworked beads.

To see some REAL work in this area, visit my sister's Etsy site, Nancy's Ear Candy. She actually knows what she's doing, whereas I'm just playing around.

Welcome to my alleged renaissance

Last year was a wash for me. The stress of my day job meant that I had little time and no emotional fortitude to do anything creative. I suffered because of it. I managed a few interesting creative projects - most notably some clever birthday cakes, both of which involved significant marzipan and lots of food coloring:

April Garden Cake for Bruce's Grandmother's 93rd Birthday

Safari Cake for the Great May Birthday Celebration

(whereupon war broke out over who got the blue hippo...go figure...)

This year, however, I'm planning on getting back into my studio and doing something less fattening in the creative department.

Here's a sneak preview - for the last 4 years, my eldest godchild and I have taken a lampworking class together to celebrate her birthday. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the collection of handmade beads I've created, but here are a few photos of some of the more choice pieces:

Join me, as I attempt to keep myself motivated, not just with some quilting projects, but with some other creative endeavors as well. Stay tuned, and I'll attempt to share what I'm working on, and what I'm finding inspiring.

And please, if you see something that inspires you - will you share?