What's Going On ...

While taking the class from Michael Barley, he showed us how to 'blow shards'...it amounts to taking a small diameter pipe, adding a large gather of glass on the end, rolling it in frit or striping color along it and then blowing it into a large bubble...finally last night I had my first chance to try this out (ironically Val Cox is selling shards on her site, and I bought some of them to try out - hers are Gaffer glass, not Moretti compatible...anyway) and I managed to get 3 bubbles blown...the first was the most difficult, I didn't have the gather hot enough for the blob to stretch and the air bubble wasn't expanding...the next two attempts were pretty successful and I'm tickled to have this new technique in my 'arsenal'...What is the purpose of this? I can make a bead and lay the shard into it, giving a watercolor effect to the bead - each bead will be unique and one of a kind...of course I can add decorations ontop of it, but its a neat way to get a blending color technique on a bead w/out it being overpowering...besides, how cool is it to blow a big bubble of hot motlen glass on the end of a rod, I ask you? The pic shows shards from one bubble - I rolled the blob into a variety of frits, and these were the color combos that came out...maybe you'll be more excited once i get some beads made using them..

I also played around with raku stringer and made some lentils, but I only got 6 done, so they aren't ready to be revealed yet...but they are pretty groovy, I promise...and I have more to play with, so who knows what else will come out...can't wait!!

earlier this morning: Have a quick jaunt to run this morning, will be back soon and will update my Freebie pic (and draw the name) I promise...and I'll get a response to ya, Nancy...tee hee, I snaggled the amber pendant...I wanted the grass green one, but decided not to be a hoggy - I'm glad you got that one instead...