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Ways to wrap a teardrop bead has been published and the file can be downloaded here.
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Part V,Part III, Part II, Part I
WARNING : IMAGE INTENSIVE POST AHEAD :P
Some of the beads I made. Not very interesting, I know. -_- But considering it was my first try, just close one eye la.Like what I've said earlier on, I find lampworking to be a very technical craft. One of the problems with this craft that I was anticipating even before I've had a hand at it was with the coordination. Like you've seen in the video and pictures that I've posted earlier on, you'll see that you need both hands to work on it simultaneously.
I suspected I was going to have a problem since coordination is my shortfall. Well, not because of an inherent trait, mind you. :P
It can be quite intimidating working with fire for the first time. o_OIt was due to the brain hemorrhage I've had which have left the left size of my muscles a bit weaker compared to the right. So, basically the imbalance in muscle strength somehow contributed to the coordination problem for me.
It may look simple but it sure wasn't easy to cover a strip of glass on the mandrel to form the base for the donut bead, ok!
What would normally the case is to hold the glass rod on your dominant hand and turning the mandrel on the other. Darn! I knew I was going to have problem with turning the mandrel with my left hand.
But once you get a hang of it... it's kinda fun to see the glass turned into molten glass but it can be difficult to control the liquid form!True enough la, I was struggling a bit throughout the operation. Speed was also a slight problem for me. Well, you need not move fast to get the job done. Just that my left is relatively slower than normal lor. Sometimes, I get a bit impatient with my left that I only let my right do all the job! But you can't do that in lampworking though cuz you do need BOTH hands for the job! But it did cross my mind that lampworking might be good occupational therapy for me. You know what they say, practise makes perfect! It's definitely much more fun than those physiotherapy exercises that I've had to do. My physiotherapist is so gonna agree with me on this! LOL...... If only lampworking wasn't so expensive to begin with.... :/
Anyway, irrelevant rant there.
As I was saying, yes. So, basically, the two full days was actually packed with demonstrations of techniques to create all the designs on the bead. Well, not ALL but the beginner ones. Although it was only demonstrations of technique one after another, it was interesting because after those demonstrations, you'll go like, "aaaaahh, so that's how they make those beads." You can, from then on, more or less figure out how a certain bead is done.
Well, unlike how you normally see a piece of jewellery in the mall and could figure out how it was done and can more or less go back and replicate one for yourself, glass bead making is unfortunately the case. It's a lot about a matter of skill! Although you may be able to figure out how it was done, it's not something that you can just go back and replicate the same. Well, not for beginners at the very least. The learning curve does seems to be much longer, although some people do seem to have a knack for it, like one of the girls from the class! o_O
Because there were like so many demonstrations, I didn't take pictures of all. It was just waaaaay to many! I'll just post a few.
Technique wise, the class started with making a teardrop and stringer. Stringer is thin strips of glass that are used for decorating the bead. Now, these two were peanuts. Very simplie and straightforward. For teardrop, you just kinda melt the glass and then let gravity do the job. As for stringers, you just melt the glass and with a tweezer, pull a chunk of the molten glass away from the fire and as the glass hits room temperature, it stiffens up to thin strands of glass.
So, I felt very good. I thought, well, it wasn't really as hard as I was expecting it to be. And boy, was my confidence shor-lived!
Next up, the twisties!
Twistis are also used for the decorating job but like the name suggests, it's two colours or more twisted together to make strips of thin glass for decorating.
Now, then's when I began to struggle. Why? You probably guessed it right. It's the use of both hands!
Like you see in the picture above, you basically stick the ends of two different colours of glass rod together and melt them into molten glass. Then you twist the two rods in opposite direction as you pull the two rods apart.
You twist them because you need to get the two colours intertwined with each other and you need to pull them apart because you need to turn them into thin long strips.
Oh, boy! You have no I.D.E.A.
Stringers and twisties that I made.
And these.... by the pros. So obvious, isn't it? LOL..... Okay, I'll show you one of the demonstrations in making a feathered cylinder shaped bead.
First, wrap a small donut bead on the mandrel. The small donut is like the core basic in glass bead making just like how making a loop is in jewellery making. How you wrap the small donut will determine the hole of the bead. Basically, the glass need the wrap 'roundly' around the mandrel because if the glass spreads out flat at the edges, you will end up with sharp edges which will cut through any thread you string through the bead. It's what they call to achieve a 'dimple'.
Emm, I don't know if this makes any sense to you but I'll explain again in the next post with pictures.
I always have a problem in getting the small donut right!
Anyway, the greyish thing you see on the mandrel is the bead release. Well, you need to coat the mandrel with the bead release before adding any glass to it so that the glass won't stick to the mandrel and you can release the bead from the mandrel later on.
Decide how big of a bead you want your bead to be and make another small donut on the other end. The length from one donut to another would be the size of your bead.
Then, fill up the gap between the two donut with more glass. The reason why it's done this way is to have the two donuts as the guide so that you won't go beyond the boundaries which is so likely to happen when the glass melt. Trust me, it sure ain't easy to control molten glass. Especially not when gravity, who has the upperhand over you!
'BBQ' it a little. LOL..... There's a reason why the mandrel is now hold vertically when all the while it was being held horizontally to only torch one of the end. I'm not sure if I remembered it correctly, or I remembered it at all! But... I think it was something about not wanting to melt the whole bead because in a molten state, the glass runs about and gravity will pull it downwards distorting the shape of the bead and trying to get the 'dimple' at the end.
Erm, yea....told you it was a bit technical.
Smoothen it a little on the graphite pad and this is what you finally get! Graphite pad is the black piece of block on top of the burner that you see in some of the pictures above. It was mounted onto the torch and a tool used to shape the bead. They've also got a hand held one.
Now that you've got your core bead. It's time for some creative fun! Which I think is where the fun begins and also the most difficult part since it involves very intricate detail work.
Wrap the twisty that you made earlier on around the bead.
Fire the entire bead to melt the twisty into the bead.
And this is what you get!
Now, very quickly and while it's still warm, get a rake to 'feathered' the twisty out.
And that's how they make those feathered bead. It's something like how those patisserie chef make those spider web from chocolate sauce, isn't it?
Anyway, I'll show you the finished bead as well as some other in the next post.
There was also one demonstration that I just cannot not mention!
A dragon bead!! LOL....yea, like how cute is that?
It's not part of the actual content of the class. They showed us some books and Sally asked what demonstration would we want to see some more. One of the male student, well, the only male student actually, (So sorry, forgotten his name! I think it was Gerald if I'm not mistaken) saw a dragon bead in one of the books and said that he would like to see how it was done.
That, of course is nothing to Sally cuz she has done loads of frog beads before this. I just remembered that I saw a frog bead too when I was at the Patchings Farm Art Festival.
And so..... the demo begins....
Start with the spotty body.
Forming the feet.
Can you just see how small the bead is and how intricate of a work it is? o_O
Putting on a head.
And the eyes next.
Now, our 'lil dragon buddy can see you! XD
Sally was nice enough to put a piece of white paper behind so that I can capture a better picture.How insanely cute was that!
Unfortunately, I didn't get to keep the dragon bead. :(
We draw a lot at the end of the day to share out all the beads made during demonstrations throughout the two days course and the dragon bead was not in the lot of beads that I draw.
Oh, well......
At the end of the day.....
My work station was just as messy as my mind was! LOL......
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