glass « Heart of Glass

Posts Tagged ‘glass’

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

A little variety

Well the second bit of exciting news I alluded to in the previous post is still not ready to be revealed yet. I thought it would be by now so I’m itching to tell. So I have something new to show you all to keep things interesting.

I’ve done a couple of silver smithing classes over the last year and a half with Matt Dwyer of Fio Contemporary, learning new skills and new materials to use with my glass. The classes have been great and easy for me to do after hours now that I have a little bubby. And Matt has been uber patient and really helpful breaking down projects to manageable steps. He has loads of tools in his workshop which is awesome for getting things done quickly.

Ok, back to the jewellery. The first is a simple ring with one of my scale beads sitting in a bowl. I tried to follow the lines of the bead and shape the ring and nut on the top to match. It’s a bit top heavy but it looks lovely so I don’t mind. The choice of bead really couldn’t be anything but top heavy, I guess. And I think silver just looks lovely with glass and gives it a different look to my casual leather necklaces. I’d like to eventually make different types of rings with different shaped beads on them – practising all different types of settings.

The second piece is a focal bead sitting on a pendant. The bead is held on really snug but does move a little bit with a little bit of force. But it wouldn’t move when wearing it which is fine. I’m really happy with this one too and I’d like to make more of these pendants. And I love the pattern on this bead so I’m going to make more beads with it but in different shapes. Pictures to come.

I think the ring was the hardest to do but it was the first piece I made so it was a lot of different concepts to learn. By the time I got to the second piece it was a lot faster. Actually, the pendant was supposed to be a 3 hour project that Matt gets us to do in class. It’s a great idea and really forces you to move quickly and finish it in the 3 hours. Though it took longer than 3 hours, most of it did get made in that time. I’m sure as I make more of them I can get the time down. All I need are some tools!

Tags: glass, jewellery, silver
Posted in Blog | 2 Thoughts →

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Shiny night times – bracelet

Tags: bracelet, glass
Posted in Beads | Post your Thoughts →

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

It’s pink

I have been quiet now that I’m back at work, being busy as good little web developer. But I have found some time on the weekends to make beads. My latest muse is soft pastel pink. And lots of it. They are still sitting in my little photograph cube and every now and then I walk past and peek inside the cube to see all those little beads looking up at me. So cute, my little eggs.

Tags: Beads, glass, pink
Posted in Blog | 2 Thoughts →

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Experimenting with colour and shapes

I have been obsessing over this green colour for some months now. I’ve been thinking about it non-stop and was really happy when I finally found it in a glass rod to use. I stopped obsessing about it once I had bought some and just started to think about the colours that go with it. One thing I like about having a messy and disorganised desk is that you can see how two or more glass colours would look like before you melt them. This has fired up my tastebuds and I’m working on two necklaces at the same time. I’ll show you one for now and the other I’ll save for another time when it looks closer to what I had imagined. This one is simply matched with a frosted clear glass bead and a shiny silver glass bead with a few sterling silver wire beads.

So I’ve had some play time and have come up with these square-ish glass beads. The shape is new for me and is a little unusual. These are free formed, meaning I didn’t use a pre-shaped mold to make them. So that means that they are all slightly different and I cannot get them to be all exactly the same shape as each other. But this is the nice thing about hand-made glass beads Also, the weight is balanced to the bottom so that they won’t flip over while wearing them, well that’s the idea anyway. I’d imagined the shape and colour that would look quite elegant as short necklace. Not a choker style necklace but a bit longer. I’ll post that once it’s finished. I’m still tinkering with it.

Hope you like it.
Green glass beads called Glamour

Tags: colour, glass, glassbeads, green, jewellery, shape
Posted in Blog | 2 Thoughts →

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Glass eye murrini

My arm has healed and I am now back at my torch melting glass. I have made a few beads, not many. I still have a couple back orders to fill. But a few glass friends have organised glass get togethers every 2nd Monday. Informally named Murrini Mondays, we have been working on our new skills learned from glass master Loren Stump. Since I am way behind in these skills thanks to my non-snowboarding skills, my murrini making progress has been slow. But it’s not all bad news. These eyes were my first successful murrini pull and I’m quite pleased with them. You might see these eyes placed in beads one of these days.

Glass eye murrini

Tags: eyes, glass, murrini
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Friday, May 29th, 2009

When it rains…

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.

Flood waters outside my studio