Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Lampwork: Brooklyn Glass

I know, I know!! I could win an award for procrastination when it comes to my blog. I'll dedicate more time to it, I promise. For those of you who don't know, I'm taking a lampwork class at Urban Glass in Brooklyn and let me tell you: I am officially addicted. Tuesday's are the new Fridays for me because I get to go to class and create intricate beads and I'm constantly learning something new.

I've worked on some striped and polka dot beads but I'm still struggling with clear coating. What usually happens is my temperature control is off and I end up blending all of my patterns together to get this marble effect. Sometimes when you make mistakes, you create something even more beautiful than you intended. Which is always a wonderful surprise!

Once our beautiful mistakes and our patterns are set, we place our beads into the vermiculite, which will cool the bead a bit before the beads get annealed (when your beads are places in a Kiln to slowly lower the temperature of the entire bead.

I'm working on a bunch of pieces that will be listed in my etsy shop within the next few days. So please check it out and let me know what you think. I'll be having a jewelry party in April so stay tuned for further details.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts so feel free to comment or email me.
Make it a great day!!

Look at me go!
Melting my dots...

...and Voila!!!