Glass Bead Making

For years I always wanted to learn how to make glass beads and even more so since getting back in medieval re-enactment. Just after Christmas I had my chance and loved every minute of it.

I’ve played with fire before when I did silver smithing for an entire year back in 2006 so I was not scared of working with flame. What I was concerned about was molten dripping glass. Was I going to be able to prevent it from dripping off the rod and onto the table? I knew that glass can shatter when cools to fast so I was also concerned with that as in is it an internal shatter or an explosion of glass shards. My doubts were quickly laid to rest after a couple of hours of one on one tutorial with a lovely lady by the name of Joy.


My first fear was quickly overcome when I slowly put the first glass rod into the flame and gently rolled the rod. It’s similar to twirling honey on one of those honey sticks but a lot thicker. A gentle twirl and it stays on. It wasn’t until maybe my 5th bead that my second concerned was laid to rest when I unintentionally left a bead out of the flame for too long when “crack”. 


These are the beads that survived.

Now I want to get my lampworking kit together including a kiln for not only this but for other jewellery making techniques like Precious Metal Clay and Glass Slumping.

Till next time

Jenni

Wire Dragon Fly

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Christmas and New Year.  Mine was a quiet affair for both Christmas and the New Year although I ended up with a case of an upset stomach after Christmas lunch which prevented me from seeing my cousins on Christmas night.

I’ve got way behind with this challenge due to this Australian Summer heat that knocks me about in a huge way. I have managed to get some projects done during that time when I was able to but never found the energy to write about them so I'll be posting those over the next couple of days.

The project for day 19 was made on Christmas Eve as a present for Sandra, my sister, who loves dragonfly's.  As it turned out she absolutely loved the pendant and earring set that I made using the inspiration from Something Sublime. 



Thank you for stopping by

Jenni