I wish

If could get what I want I'd do no other work than making beads. I could concider making jewellery, giving lessons etc, but everything would be beadrelated.

*Sigh!*

But there's no way I can make my dream come true. So I just keep doing my daytime job. That means, though, that my listing of new items, writing blogposts and everything else related to the lampwork bussiness will happen very randomly. As you might have noticed! :)

So I hope you have patience with me and keep visiting my blog, my ArtFire store and my Facebook Fanpage!

Getting crazy!

I love my new burner, but it aso makes me completely mad. I just can't seem to learn to handle my clear! Also, the Dark aqua and CiM colour Leaky Pen is almost impossible to use as they fry as soon as they se the flame.

I can't do without clear and I love aqua and ink so this is really annoying.

Now even hotter

I'm still trying to figure out my new torch. It's a lot of fun, but at the same time quite frustrating as all the glasses react in new ways. The ones that I earlier worked with ease now tends to drip, burn and scum in a way that I yet don't master.

On the other hand, the ones that I earlier almost never used as it took ages to get them to melt, I now find very pleasant.

Some of the new reactions are manageable and even fun. Some just annoying. Like
- the Vetro clear bubbles and scums. So now that I finally get it hot enough not to capture airbubbles it creates its own bubbles all over the place.

- my beloved Vetro black, that has always behaved nicely, though a bit stiff, now is starting to let me down. When making black and white beads, for example, the black is invading the white, creating "watermarks" on it.

- using stringers for dots is much harder, as the heat tends to boil the glass.

It's all probably a matter of PPP, but right now I'm quite frustrated.

Three red cats

I've spent a lot of time practising encased florals (when I haven't taken care of sick children). I'm slowly beginning to grasp the technique of the beads, but still haven't got a clue on how to get sharp fotos of the damned things. Beginning to suspect that my camera is of too low quality for this kind of photos. But I'll give it another try.

Meanwhile, you'll have to settle whit this picture of three red cats. They're about 20 mm high.

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......