Glass and beads

Remember that old joke? What’s black and white and “red” all over? A newspaper! (So lame, so very lame -ha!)

Okay, I’m not talking about newspapers today, I’m talking about beads. And shapes - I have been messing about with bead shapes. One thing that I’m really into is the shape or form a bead takes. Sometimes you see a bead with beautiful patterns and colours but the shape it takes lets it down somehow. It looks good but not fantastic, if you know what I mean. But then you’ll see a bead and it’s truly amazing. Everything about it works - the design, the colours and it’s shape all come together to make a blow out, knock out bead. A real banger of a bead. I also like how certain shapes of beads feel in my hand. I love how some beads just feel so good and right in my hands. Beads are not only visual treasures, they’re a treasure to possess!

So with that thought in my mind, I have been exploring different shapes of beads. Namely round beads and long tube beads. When I first started making beads, I made them quite small and tiny. I don’t know why but that was what I was comfortable with. Then after I met a whole bunch of glass loonies at a Brisbane Bead Makers Meet, I saw some really huge and heavy beads. My mind boggled at the sheer size of some of them - gear stick knobs they could’ve been!

So, first off I wanted to explore long skinny beads as you don’t normally see them for sale in shops. I imagined long skinny beads would look good in a long drapey necklace, and I’ve been loving the wild safari themes in clothing of late, so a zebra-style pattern came to mind as it does stand out but not overwhelming for the wearer or complicated for me to make. I made long zebra stripe ones and even longer black beads to set them off. I love the way these look. And I love how the black ones feel in my hands.

Round beads were next on my creative To Do list. I love round beads and that’s come from a love of marbles since I was a kid. So I pulled out my marble marver and kept with the zebra design. This time the visual width of the bead is quite big and therefore would make the zebra design stand out. So I opted to go for high visual impact and a smaller number of beads. Plus these beads are huge solid glass beads, so you don’t want too many of these hanging around your neck unless you’re doing weight training. These ones I love love love and I get heaps of attention. I think they’re great attention grabbers but not too “out there” since it’s only black and white that’s been used. They’re more bright and striking, I think. I also broke up the necklace design with a plain dark bead, just to break the pattern. I had been wearing it with a black bead, but this picture shows a dark green bead.

And now to the red all over. I’ve also been exploring frit glass of late. Even fallen in love with it Frit glass is small bits of broken glass and is a great way to add a sprinkle of colour to a bead. I’ve fallen in love with a Cherry red frit in particular and decided I want to make it the feature of some beads, making the frit look like it was floating in the air. They kind of looks like rose petal, don’t they? The shape I explored this time was a straight-sided circular tab. There’s something about these that I like so I’ll make some more of these.

I’ve recently come back from holidays with friends.  Enjoying the last warm days of summer at the beaches and islands.  We also headed down to bustling and sunny Sydney and cool and artsy Melbourne too.  So we had a varied holiday which was good - a little beach time, a little city time.

And besides bumming around I visited some art galleries too - glass galleries, artist run initiatives and just some regular art galleries as well.  I had an awesome time seeing what artistic people around the country are coming up with!  I even went to my favourite Australian designers shops - all 3 of them in 2 cities - Dinosaur Designs.  Their jewellery and homewares are so cool, I love how these guys dance to the beat of their own drum.  Their work is so unique, I love it.

So when I got home, my head was bursting with inspiration and ideas.  I didn’t even flick over Sarah Hornik’s colour calendar to May because I thought my head would burst with more inspiring ideas - lol!  So I got my butt into my studio and got some beads made and even some photos.

So this post was meant to be photos of all my latest work.  But sadly last week my house was flooded in some massive rains.  Things are okay now but I had to ferry all my glass, equipment and air concentrator upstairs to somewhere safe.  It was such a shock to see the water in my house, but even more shocking was how fast it was moving.  I hope I never see that again.

Ced & I spent our weekend cleaning out all the mud and clearing out all the damaged furniture.  We left the windows open for as long as we could to dry it out and stop the mould smell.  I think we’ve done okay, no smell now - whew!  But eventually we’ll have to get someone in to replace the floor boards and stuff - groan!

So then on Monday I moved my glass equipment back downstairs - hurrah!  I was so happy and relieved to have my little studio back in working order again.  I was kind of feeling lost there for a bit, but now I have my little place back Rejoice, rejoice!  I even made a few beads but I think some flood water got into my gas bottle as I’m seeing some scum on my beads!  I will have to swap the gas bottles around (there’s one on the BBQ) and see if that helps.  But besides that I’m getting back into my work!

Photos are of the flood.  I’ll try to find the ones I found before the flood and post them up soon.

And winter is blowing in.  I’m loving the cooler weather.  It makes things much more comfortable when torching over a hot flame for long hours.  Though, I did discover a little trick to keeping my cool while torching - get a frozen ice-pack, the ones for sports injuries, and shove it down your top!  Wonderful at 35 degree heat with 95% humidity.

So, yeah, I’m looking forward to pulling out my fluffy slippers (ugg boots) and scarves, and for the 24 degree days to come back.

Well, 2008 is now done and dusted.  And thankfully too.  The last 3 months of last year working on a big and urgent project for work which left me too pooped physically and mentally after hours to do anything.  So, not a lot of creativity or beads were conjured up.  Not saying I didn’t make anything, just not as many as I’d have liked (but isn’t that like everyday?

So, what did I get up to?  Well, the house renovations finished in December and I got a studio with great lighting and ventilation.  I am really stoked with that, woohoo!  It’s a mess in there at the moment, but I have to work in there for a bit to find out how I’m going to figure out a work-flow system.  Then I’ll get some drawers and shelves and the like for all my bits and pieces.  I’m super excited about it.  Photos anyone?

Also, I attended a Think Pink High Tea event to raise money for breast cancer research.  This was organised by my friend Liz DeLuca (and many others) and was a big success.  I had so much fun and bid on big beautiful glass objects, I also won gorgeous glass goodies too.  I made a glass bracelet and donated it to the cause.  It wasn’t pink, oops, but it didn’t have to be.  So I made something different to what I usually do and it’s turned out to be a favourite amongst friends.

In this time I discovered a new Double Helix glass called Triton.  Oh baby!  Very nice indeed.  I really like how it’s a shiny lighter silver colour compared to my other favourites Psyche and Nyx.  So, with a new bracelet design and a new glass, I just had to mix the two up.  The results is a nice light but shiny bracelet.  What do you think?

And then Christmas arrived.  I unfortunately had worked myself into sickness and ended up with tonsilitis for Christmas :(  But I did what I planned to do for Christmas and that was to lie around :D  I met up with some family up on a beach north of Brisbane on Christmas eve to eat prawns and drink beer and hang around the Surf Lifesavers Club until Santa showed up.  It was an impressive crowd waiting for him this year.  Everyone was in such a good party mood.

Christmas morning we were back to the beach to worship the waves and the sun as every good little Aussie does at Christmas time.  The waves were great that day.  Thankfully a coffee shop was open so that we can just chill out on the beach instead of rush back for breakfast.  The rest of the day was spent sleeping and eating and just haning out with my mum and one of my sisters.  More photos if you’re interested.

And then New Years was more of the same, except without Santa.  We hung out at the beach with friends, relaxing, reading and swimming.  More yummy prawns were eaten and washed down with lovely cool ale.

Aaahh…Now to just continue that relaxed pace into the rest of the year ;-)  Chat to you guys soon.

Cheers everyone!

So it’s Spring now. The change in weather here in Brisbane, has been noticeably warmer in the last week, which I really love. Now I feel like tossing off the doona and going for a run. I love how the warm weather just makes you want to run around outside So with all this new energy, I’ve been spring cleaning the house, my desk, my jewellery desk and my mind. It’s a messy task (and a big one at that) but it feels so cleansing! So today I won’t show you pictures of my disorganised desks or the inner workings of my mind, instead I’ll show you the collection of hollows that I made over Winter.

I’ve been on the hollow band wagon for a while now and I’m really loving making them.  Since watching Italian glass artist Andrea Guibelli make his blown hollows in Murano, I’ve been making them since! I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon either. (I have to say, the cubed hollows are my favourite!)

Wow, Sarah Hornik has just published her first E-Book! It’s called “Think Pink” and it’s all about the queen of colour, Rubino Oro.

Sarah has obviously done some research on it’s history and make-up, and also experimented on Rubino Oro extensively to include it in her book to save you from searching the internet yourself. I think it’s a great resource written by a lampworker for lampworkers.

There are loads of pictures of beads for ideas and drool-worthy inspiration, tips on using Rubino Oro and other colours such as EDP, Leaky Pen and dichroic, 2 step-by-step pictured tutorials, and included are some great Sarah secrets that you usually only get to learn in her classes! Well worth the US$22.50 price, in my opinion. Definitely get a book for yourself. Just make sure you’ve got some Rubino Oro to play with, too!

You can also send her photos of any beads that you made with her tutorial to put up in her gallery! Cool! Watch it, I’ll be sure to get a bead up on that page.

Oh btw, does anyone else see this? But I reckon the way Sarah describes Rubino Oro on page 4 (2nd paragraph), sounds like RO is a Cancerian.

Oh wow, where did the time go? May was the last time I wrote? I’ll just slink over into the corner of the room and quickly bash out a post for you guys, yeah? Yes, bad girl.

I just had to have a quick look into my diary to find out what my lame excuse for not writing will be. I’m glad to announce that I have proof that I was too busy to sit and write a post. Let me provide the evidence, your honour:

The downstairs part of our house is now officially a construction zone. We are building in downstairs, adding in a couple of bedrooms and an art room for Ced & I to get creative and messy in. Of course, before any major renovation job you have to run around like a chook without it’s head first. Run to the hardware store, the window place, the timber floor place, the tile place - all with a pen behind the ear, a clipboard and a measuring tape. Then it’s meeting with the builder, lighting people and floor people, and plus all the phonecalls that have to be made. The major preparation part is over now and the work has begun, thankfully. Renovating your house = no weekend play time.

But I mustn’t complain too much. The builder is going to do one very, very important job for me. He’s going to build me a work studio, including the ventilation. Yesss! I had to work out all the specifications, the measurements of the desk and hood, phone fan and ventilation experts and work out the maths required to ventilate the room. Whew. It was hard at first but once I got it, it was easy. Any other Australian glass bead makers setting up their ventilation? Get in touch with Fantech as well as read up at Mike’s site..

Then the really fun stuff started. Sarah Hornik came to Brisbane to teach classes. Yay, it was so cool to see Sarah again. It was great to show her Australia and watch her take photos of the funny stuff we take for normal everyday things. Like biscuit packets :\ . It was also really cool to meet all the glass bead makers that made it up to Brisbane to do her classes. I was heading up to Redcliffe and Virginia some nights to join the class for dinner. I met so many glass people - it was fun meeting my on-line glass friends in the flesh.

Me, Sally and Sharon took Sarah out to as many scenic places as humanly possible. We took her to the zoo, to the Gold Coast, to Eumundi on the north coast and to the city and the valley. And then after her teaching work, Sarah came to stay with me for a bit. It was fun having her in the house, though I had to work so I couldn’t hang out with her like we did in Murano. But it was still cool hanging out with Sarah

After a sad goodbye at the airport, Sarah left Aus to go home. Ced and I then worked really hard to move all our belongings from downstairs, upstairs. We finished it all in one day - boy were we knackered after that. But it was good to get it done as we ended up taking a truck load of rubbish to the dump too. Oh how cleansing that felt. And the reason why we had to get it done in one day was because the builders started work on our house the very next morning! :@ Lucky Sarah had left when she did as the builders started jack hammering at 7am!

I also have done two lots of glass classes. One set with Peter Minson and the other with Bernard Stonor. Peter’s classes were first and they were excellent. I got lots of pro tips from him, like holding yourself and how to hold the glass, and how to move yourself so you conserve energy. I got a few “a-ha” moments in the class too which is always good :). We got to play with boroscilicate glass and blowing beads! That was loads of fun. I would like to try that again sometime.

Bernard Stonor’s classes were also excellent, as we worked through some advanced techniques in soft glass. We made murrini, marbles, blown vessels and sculpture. It was masses of fun. There were loads of cool people in the class, a great mix of some I’d never met before and some old friends. And Bernie was good fun too. Thanks to Tracy “Wildlight” Brown for organising it. I think the most fun day was the marble day. Even though the marbles I made are perfectly round (Okay, more like dried prunes than round :p) it was just brilliant to extend myself and try something completely different than I’d do at home. Peter’s boro class was like that too. It was great fun and I can’t wait to see what I make after this.

So there you have it, all my excuses Now things have calmed down around here I can focus on friends, family and beads. Hopefully I‘ll have some photos to show soon.