Jen-Ken Kilns

This is my Chili Pepper Bead Annealer. I’ve had it since sometime in 2005 I believe, but it wasn’t until early last year that I really started using it five times a week. This has been a really good kiln, and I love it despite the fact that it’s red.

Yesterday, the relay decided to stop working. I turned the kiln on and started dipping mandrels and so forth, and when I looked back at the kiln the temp. was at 550ºF and dropping. I messed with it until the cycle started again, and the kiln started heating up again, but when I looked back at it, the temp was dropping again. The third time I tried, I watched the thing like a hawk and it worked fine. I don’t trust it though.

So, I knew this was going to happen – it is a part that is expected to wear out. It is lucky that it didn’t get supper heated (relay not turning off) instead of loosing temp. (relay not turning on.) And, I suppose it’s good it didn’t happen when Emily (hi Emily!) was here. But gosh darn it, I wanted a couple of good weeks of torching before the gathering!

Anyway, Mike at Jen-Ken was very nice and ordered me a couple of relays (an extra one for when this happens again.) He said the relay comes with instructions and that he would personally walk me through the process if necessary – even if the relay comes on Friday and it’s after hours or on Saturday. So, that reassured me a little.

It has occurred to me that I had an electronics unit in my college physics class, so I should be able to muddle my way through this. If worse comes to worse, I can always pack up the kiln and relay and bring it in to Flame Tree Glass and let Lance fix it. I will be in town next week for the Southern Flames meeting. But hopefully I’ll be able to manage. Messing with the kiln just scares me for some reason.

Alaskan Vacation

Well, I’ve been back from the vacation for a few weeks now, and I have yet to blog… until now. It was a fabulous, wonderful, awesome, vacation. I wanted to get all my pictures up and edited and so forth before I blogged about it, but it looks like it will be a loooong time before that happens. I also wanted to make a web page with all my pictures and descriptions and so forth, but I don’t think that’s going to happen at all.

So, we (my mother and I) went on a cruise to Alaska. It was actually a cruise-tour. We had a seven day cruise in Alaska’s inside passage starting in Vancouver, with stops in Ketchikan, Haines, Juneau, and Sitka, a day cruising to Hubbard Glacier, ending in Seward, then a three day trip to Denali National Park and back to Anchorage to catch a flight home.

The picture here is Hubbard Glacier and it was just pure magic to get up and out early and sit in a lounge at the top of the ship and watch the glacier come into view. It is hard to get a sense of scale in Alaska – the outdoors is so huge compared to anything I’ve ever seen before. This glacier is about six miles wide and 300-400 ft high above and below the water. In some of my shots I have a giant cruise ship in front of the glacier that helps create some sense of scale. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get closer or stay longer, But the glacier was magnificent, and evidently it is a rare thing to be able to see the tops of the mountains around the glacier. I took some shots of the bay/glacier and my good friend Clay stitched them together for me. I think this was my favorite part of the trip.

One frustration when it came to taking pictures of all the beautiful Alaskan scenery was that it was almost always behind a pane of glass. Whether it was a ship’s window, or a boat’s window, or a train’s window, or a bus’s window, there always seemed to be a window, with reflections. Yuck. So, getting good pictures of this trip was a challenge. I got a few good shots though and I’ll be sure to upload my pictures to flickr – with captions!

If you ever get a chance to go on a cruise to Alaska, I’d certainly recommend it. I wanted to go back as soon as I got home. There’s something about the remoteness and wildness and extravagant beauty of Alaska that really appeals to me. I kept thinking about living in such a place, but I don’t think I’m suited to it. I have too many conditions. And some of the ports we visited didn’t even have a nurse in town. Although apparently there are some psychiatrists in Alaska: In Juneau the bus driver who drove us to the helicopters and back was commenting on the problem of depression during the dark months. He said psychiatrists have to guess at how much light there will be and prescribe antidepressants accordingly to prevent seasonal affective disorder. Apparently he knew a woman who was prone to this problem. Well, last year (or a couple of years ago) there wasn’t as much dark as usual, so guess what happened? This woman went manic. (My mother and I were the only ones to chime in with the answer.)

Delinquent Blogger

Wow, I’ve had quite the vacation from the blog!

Mostly I talk about bead stuff here, but today I think I’ll talk about something a little different.

This last weekend I spent in Montgomery training for a NAMI program called In Our Own Voice. This is something I decided to do last year when I was at the NAMI convention but due to the vicissitudes of life and funding of a non-profit organization, the training didn’t happen until a couple of days ago. As a result, I had forgotten why I wanted to do this. I’m still trying to figure that out.

Basically, the program consists of five short video segments (of a professionally produced video provided by NAMI National) with personal stories told by the two presenters (in 3 minutes or less each) and questions from the audience in between each video segment. The video segments are: Introduction, Dark Days, Acceptance, Treatment, Successes Hopes and Dreams. The whole program is about an hour to an hour and half. In Our Own Voice is intended for audiences such as: Consumers (people who consume mental health services), Providers (mental health providers), Family members, Law Enforcement, School groups, Church groups, Civic groups, etc.

I think the program is a good one, and the presenters get paid for each program we do – not much, but it is something. It is a powerful program and has been shown – I don’t have citations for this, but I’ll work on getting one – to reduce stigma in the audiences that participate in the program. It has also given hope to people living with mental illness that recovery is possible. I’ve been very impressed with the two presentations that I’ve seen – each is different because each person has their own story.

I don’t think I’m quite ready to do a presentation. I need to flush out my story and practice – quite a bit. But, I think this is something that I am capable of – as they say I am an expert on my own story. And there will be someone else there to back me up as it were – I like that. Still the thought of getting up in front of a group of people – any group – and talking about this is a little daunting.

Finding My Voice…

I recently joined Facebook to take an online creativity course led by Sylvie Elise Lansdowne. We get one assignment a week and have to make ONE bead. That is, that we don’t get a chance to refine the bead or try different things. Then, everybody in the group comments on the bead photo, and gives ideas of what direction the bead can go in. We’ve done two weeks already, and I have to think on how I’m going to do bead three. This bead here is NOT one of the beads from the course – I’ll get to it in a bit.

This is a different kind of class for me. And I’ve gotten some great ideas so far – and it’s only week two. But I’m finding it very difficult to get moving on the assignments. I don’t like the one shot aspect, I don’t think. I understand why we’re supposed to only make one bead. It is supposed to loosen up the inner critic – by having people look at, comment, and often compliment the one unrefined bead. But I still don’t like it too well.

This bead here is a type of bead I’ve known how to do for ages – it’s in the books. I don’t know why I haven’t tried it before – it wasn’t too hard to do. But, maybe that’s because I’ve had the experience with glass that I have had at this point. Anyway, I like the way it came out except that the flowers are a little washed out looking. I think that the course I’m taking allowed me to stretch myself a little and at least give the bead a try. So, that’s good.

I ordered a bunch of Satake glass last week – it’s supposed to be here tomorrow. So get ready to see some different types of beads. I really enjoyed the Satake class I took awhile back, so I’m excited to get a chance to refine those techniques and maybe do a little experimenting. And then, in July, I’m going to take a class with Akihiro Ohkama, a Japanese bead maker. This class will be taught on Japanese torches (which are radically different from what I’m used to) using Kinari glass. Apparently, we will be making murrini – so that will be wonderful. I’m so excited!

Well, that’s all the bead related news I have at this time. I’m going to NY (state) to visit my father next week, so I probably won’t get a chance to melt the Satake glass until I get back. And, I have another class coming up on the 23rd and 24th, so April is a busy month.

Experimentation

One thing I’m not too good at is figuring techniques out on my own. I pretty much stick with doing what I’ve read or been taught in classes – and that’s a lot of stuff! Sometimes I do test beads – for example I made test beads with the Val Cox frit that I got a few months ago. I have them all arranged nicely, but I haven’t gotten a chance to label them yet. I also made several test beads with CiM Pink Champagne over several base colors – they aren’t labeled yet either. I’m not too good at the test and sample thing either it seems. Oh well. But figuring stuff out on my own is something I haven’t really done a lot of.

Take this stripe bead here. I learned how to do this in Cindy Jenkins’ book Beads of Glass. This is a great book by the way. So, you make a base bead, put some dots of color on it, then wind several wraps of clear on top and melt in. this makes the first bead here – the one with the green stripes. Nice. But I’ve been looking at Kandice Seeber’s beads and she has the nicest stripe beads. (And other beads too…) I’ve been wondering how she gets such nice stripe beads. So, I was pondering this the other day and it occurred to me to melt the dots in before I put the wraps of clear on them. Now I was on to something!

I don’t have a picture of the first bead I made where I melted the dots in first – there was a smudge and I was too lazy to retake the picture. But, the next step was to try more than one color of course, so I picked out a couple of blues from my jar full of stringers. And, here we have a nice little stripe bead with two different colors of stripes. I tried it with green dots first, but the green dots spread all over the place and didn’t work well.

The final bead I tried was white dots with a transparent color – CiM Leaky Pen in this case. I was really happy with how this bead came out. My dot placement had gotten a lot better with the practice and I just love this color anyway. I also like how the white peeks out the sides a little bit. I can do all sorts of color variations with this modified technique – I don’t have to use clear to make the wraps on top of the dots, I have several lighter transparent colors. And I don’t have to use black as a base, I can use any color opaque OR transparent. There are lots of options, the important thing I discovered is to melt the dots in first, and then add the transparent encasing.

Beads of Courage Etc.

I haven’t posted in a while for several reasons. I took a week off to clean the house a bit, and then I got sick, but mainly I was struggling creatively. I don’t know if this is a winter phenomenon or what, but I’ve read in several blogs that other people have been having problems too. I’m not sure that knowing that helped me. I think it just added to my angst. Two things have helped bring me out of this to a degree. First, I went to a bead show last weekend and after looking at the beads people had out I realized that I don’t have to be making what I consider to be “art” with every bead. All I have to do is make nice beads. That freed me up quite a bit. The other thing I’ve been doing is making beads for Beads of Courage. These beads are round and can be any pattern or color, which is nice because I can make a single round bead and not have to worry about making a set or pair or whatever. These beads have been fun to make.

I have an Etsy shop and an Artfire shop set up – it was my New Year’s resolution to try and sell beads. Well, what with the struggling creatively and so forth I haven’t really listed anything – and here it is March already! So, I sorted through all of my beads the other day and discovered a few things. One is that I had more beads that I consider worthy of trying to sell than I thought I had. I had several focal beads and a few sets of pressed beads. The sets are just simple beads, nothing too exciting, but they are pretty (at least I think so).

Another thing I discovered sorting through my beads is that I have more duds now than I thought too. There were several beads I originally thought were good beads, but now I think they aren’t really so good. My standards have tightened up. I’m getting better at making beads. This is great, but it might mean that I need an even bigger bucket to hold my duds.

The third thing I realized while sorting through my beads – and this is a corollary to the first two things – is that I’ve made a lot of beads! I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise, but I obviously haven’t really been keeping track. After a year of torching regularly, I have quite the bead collection – most of them (by volume) duds now. But still, I have a lot of beads I consider to be good beads. I need to do something with them! I need to work on my jewelry making skills.

And finally, I want to spread an important tidbit of information. These beads are a base of Effetre Dark Sky with Raku frit. Now this color looks a lot like Turquoise to me, and it does the same thing as Turquoise. It forms dark, kind of shiny, scummy spots. Of course these spots would come off if I etched the beads, but I didn’t want to do that. So, I searched the web and found an archived lampworketc thread discussing the best way to clean these beads. After reading this info I decided to buy some toilet bowl cleaner called The Works. And it does work! And it works fast! So, I just wanted to pass that on.

Baby Seal Bead

So this past weekend I went over to Atlanta for a glass class. This time it was Marcy Lamberson who makes whimsical sculptural beads. She is a super sweet lady who is also a great teacher. My goal for this class was to “learn stuff and have fun,” and I accomplished that goal.

I started getting sick on Friday so I ate plenty of pineapple and a few potato chips as well. I felt fine except that I kept sneezing, my eyes were watering, my nose was running… It made it a little difficult to focus on the beads, but I persevered. I was tired when I came back on Monday though. And, I am still a bit under the weather.

The beads we made included a little bird, a seashell, cactus, face, Viking, and a cat. My cat cracked while I was making it and ended up in the water. But the bead I’m most pleased with is the baby seal pictured here. This exercise came on day two and it was a 2-D or 3-D assignment. Marcy had some items we could pick from – both 2-D and 3-D. I picked a little seal replica and set about making the bead.

I have to admit that the seal looked kind of easy to make. It didn’t take long to realize that making a graceful shape with a vertical orientation is more difficult than I originally thought. I kept at it though, and I think I came up with a fairly close approximation to the model. This is significant because the bead wasn’t demoed. That is to say, Marcy didn’t make this bead and explain how to do it. It was up to me to figure out – and I did. Or at least I came real close.

This bead, like a couple of others I made, did crack though. It’s real hard to keep a bead warm without melting everything back into a blob and loosing all the details. It is very nerve-wracking for me – I get all tense while making the sculptural beads trying to keep them warm. This is definitely something I need to practice. And I will. I just found the little seal model online at The Big Zoo and I plan to make many more of them as well as some of the other animals.

I have to say that my confidence has definitely improved after taking this class. I can’t wait to feel better so I can get back on the torch and try some of these beads again. It feels a little bit like a whole new world of bead making has been opened up to me because now I can look at something and begin to pick out how to replicate it in glass. That’s super cool!

Sunday night I had dinner with Sarah – a super cool chick that I worked with a while ago. She regaled me with stories and said nice things about my beads. It was fun catching up with her and hopefully we will stay in closer touch. I can’t possibly describe her in a way that would do justice to her – stop by her blog for a glimpse into a truly unique life.

Gaffer Glass

A few weeks ago I got a comment on my Guide to Lampworking Glass from a very nice woman named Mona saying that she is with Gaffer glass – not listed in my list – and would love to send me some samples. How could I refuse? Free glass is like… well it’s the most excitement that I’ve had in a while.

Gaffer lampworking cane is 96 C.O.E., and produced in New Zealand. The US warehouse is in Washington – which is where my glass came from. I’m not too observant I guess, because I didn’t notice the glass melting any slower or working very different than the 104 C.O.E. that I usually work with. The glass did freak me out a bit because all the colors I got were striking colors. The dark green color (looks black in the picture) actually turned a transparent cobalt in a couple of spots for a few seconds. I wasn’t able to get the lightest color to strike, but that is probably user error.

In short, I will probably explore the 96 C.O.E. line in greater depth at some point. The colors available in this range are very appealing to me – they seem to be very rich in color. Jewel tones is how Val Cox describes them in her book. I’m still learning the language of color, but the Gaffer colors are just a different look than the Italian 104 C.O.E.

I want to get a little bit more familiar with glass in general before I go in the 96 C.O.E. direction though – although I might buy a few colors to go with the Val Cox frit I have already. I don’t know. If I could, I’d get all the glass… But quite frankly storage is a major issue. Hopefully I’ll have a solution to that by this time next week. We’ll see.

New Necklace

I made this necklace Monday night. I posted the beads earlier, and noticed that the green stone beads matched very well, but did not get the silver spacers until Monday. It is a very simple design, but I like it.

I went out doing errands today and the girl at the Pet-smart commented on the necklace. I told her I made the beads, and she was very interested. Too bad I wasn’t more put together – I could have given her a card or directed her to where I have stuff for sale. Well, I should have had cards with me at least. I need to work on getting inventory also.

I have been in a bit of a creative slump recently, but the necklace has helped get me interested again. Also, I have been looking at the tutorial sections of the forums for ideas on what kinds of beads to make. I took a couple of days off to look at the forums, and that has helped a lot. So, I’m trying to work through this slump.

One of the beads I’m working on are star beads. Except mine don’t look as nice as those in the link. It will probably be awhile before I will want to show one of these beads – I need practice. They are fun to make, but very time consuming and nerve wracking. I have to constantly remember to keep the bead warm so it won’t crack, while not getting it so warm it collapses into a pile.

Hearts and Love of Glass

These are some hearts I made over the last couple of days. I figured since I know how to make hearts, I should make some for Valentine’s Day. I’m thinking I will try listing them on Etsy and see if I get any nibbles – I guess I should do that soon!

I’m pretty happy with the hearts although they aren’t perfect – the lines at the bottom of some of the hearts are not perfectly straight all the way around. Oh well, somebody’s bound to like them anyway. There are a lot of people out there that like the handmade look – little flaws that make a piece not perfect, although I’m not one of them.

My approach to bead making is to strive for perfection – or at least a high degree of precision. I am fairly critical of my work and am constantly striving to improve it – I know I have a long way to go. I don’t look for too much assurance or compliments – I like compliments, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t need them. I show all my beads to my mother and she also has the same point of view – must be where I got it – she is critical of my work too.

Now, when I say critical, I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean that the beads I make are assessed for design, shape, color, execution, etc. and held to a high standard. I think this is good because it pushes me to practice techniques and work towards a higher technical proficiency. I am fairly ambitious and want to be able to support myself with this one day – in order to do that I have to be really good.

My friend Beth has a completely different approach. I’m not sure I can describe it and do it justice. I don’t think it’s a bad approach – it’s just very different. For example, she made a nice bead that cracked, and instead of putting it in her dud pile, she’s wearing it around. Her family is also very supportive of her efforts – in an amazingly uncritical way.

I should mention that Beth has been making beads for a week. She bought a kit at Hobby Lobby last Saturday and has been working with that. I have supplemented the kit with some bead release and some Satake glass (soda lime) that I didn’t want any more. (I’m going to focus on the lead line when I get a chance.) Beth has been having all sorts of problems with the beads and has been relying on me for advice and instruction.

Perhaps that’s part of her problem – lack of good instruction. I let her make a couple of beads a week ago or so – that is what spurred her on to get the kit. She really loved making the beads, and couldn’t wait to make more. I’m not really prepared to teach an introductory class just yet – I need practice with that too – but I have helped as much as I can. I just enjoy sharing my love of glass, and I think it’s really cool that I now have a friend in the area who loves making beads too. I think it’s going to be fun to have someone so close to share my love of glass with.