Cracking up

I really love the CiM colors that I bought from Tuffnell:

Leaky Pen, Cirrus , Halong Bay and Peacock Green

But they keep cracking up on me! I try to treat them as gently as possible, but if I do anything but plane spacers, they're gone. :-(

Having a bad bead day

Today I seem to have forgotten everything I've ever learned about lampworking. I can't space the dots, my beads are cracking, my silver is burning and I just can't make a simple doughnutshaped bead.

What happened?

Sooty!!! :-(

I think I'm getting crazy. Almost every bead I try to encase comes out sooty. I changed from Effetr to Vetro, but it didn't help. Wonder if it's the propane that is the problem...

Or me......

Hollows

Making hollow beads fascinate me. It's something about that lumpy glass suddenly turning round and smooth...

Or imploding :-(

Here are two examples, both in Effetre glass:

Fish

Okej, it's time to show some beads. My camera skills leaves a lot to wish for, but I'm slowly learning. And the only way to get better is to practise, they say...

Starting with a few fishes:

A selection of fishes.
The black one's got a vertical hole. All of them are made in Effetre glass.

This one I made just the other day.
It's made of Vetro clear glass and Reichenbach striking red frit. Vertical hole.

Well, here I am!

Some people might think that I've got enough blogs as it is. (I've even heard thatSOME people think that ONE blog is enough, but that must be a malicious rumor.)

Anyway; The problem with myprior blogs is that they are in Swedish. In many ways that's not a problem at all since swedish is my language and I'm pretty good both at expressing myself in that language and spelling the words. Two resons good enough to keep me happy with Status Quo.

But then I took up lampworking. And that isn't such a big hobby in Sweden. So I miss a place where I can share my experinces, feelings and results with people who's both got the same hobby AND can understand what I write. French (wich happens to be my third language, though in a very distant sort of way) is not an option. Hence, english it is.

What I really want to say is:
Welcome to my new blog!
It's about lampwork, beads and other stuff related to that.
I'm quite a newbee to this craft but I can't think of anything else I so much want to be good at as this.