Judy's June Jewelry

Judy has been busy working on some new jewelry pieces. Here's a preview of some things you may see soon on our etsy site. The preview pictures aren't great, because, well, she doesn't have one of those fancy photo studios described in a previous post! But this should give a good idea of what's coming.

Naked People!

I heard from my mother last night that my niece was helping her look at the latest photos I posted. She is apparently quite concerned that the people are not wearing pants! No shirts seems to be ok, but pants are needed. This reminded me - if you are easily offended by naked people, naked angels, or devils doing "devilish" things, use caution when going to Lucio's site. If you are open to all sorts of art, by all means proceed there!

Lucio Class!

I just finished a two day class with Lucio Bubacco! He is amazing! Simply the best human figures in glass. Just getting to watch him work was a treat. Then we got to try things out for ourselves. Here are the 3 complete pieces I managed to create. Most of the work ended up shattered in little bits all over the table. Sculpture with moretti glass is a real challenge as the smallest mistake causes cracking. These are all about 3-4" tall. His of course are much larger, plus he adds goblet feet and bowls to them. His also have far more detail. You will notice that 1 of my figures has a sort of face to it, but they kept turning out quite badly so I went for more abstract heads on the others. He demonstrated a larger version of the face for us, so I think I know what I was doing wrong, but haven't had a chance to try again yet. These are nowhere near his quality (or even very good), but I sure learned a lot and got some great ideas and tips to use on my other work!

A figure with wings.























Another figure with wings. This one doesn't have a great face, but the hair is good!

A figure in a more active pose.

Chalcedony Fail? Win? Unsure?

I've recently been trying out some new glass called Chalcedony from Gaffer Glass. Many people have been getting gorgeous results from it. I have unfortunately not :(

At left are my initial experiments. The two beads in back used a base of Moretti sky blue. The one in front is Moretti white. The back left bead has Chalcedony stringer. The other two have Chalcedony shards.

From what I've seen and read, the trick seems to be repeated cycles of extreme heating and extreme cooling. However, no matter what I did with these, all I can get is transparent, the light/pale yellowish color, or the dark red brown. hmmmmm.

At the the Bead and Button conference I got some tips that the Chalcedony works better when used with other Gaffer Glass rather than Moretti. Granted, I know they are different COEs and that if you use them together you have to use just a little of one and the majority of the other rather than a 50/50 mix. But I had seen other people get good reactions with Chalcedony shards on Moretti base. Luckily, I also picked up a lilttle sample of some Gaffer at B&B (THANKS!!!!). So this attempt is a base bead of black Gaffer with Chalcedony applied over it. I did a lot of reheating and gravity shaping before it finally turned colors. It turned out quite nice. However, some issues/questions remain: when I made this, I applied Chalcedony over the entire surface of the black, but the black "sucked" in the Chalcedony and I had to apply multiple layers of it before it stayed on top. Also, I applied the Chalcedony over the entire surface, yet it seems to only be visible in the middle. I wonder why it didn't turn colors on the ends as well? Or did the Chalcedony gather up in the middle and the black snuck out from under it on the ends? Perhaps it only changed color in the center because that is the part that was heated and cooled the most times due to gravity shaping on the ends? or because when heating the ends the center was right at the edge of the flame, which may be better for getting the desired effect than reheating in the center of the flame? hmmmmm. What if I want a "normal" shaped bead, and not something long and tubular?

And here is the final bead I tried. This is a base of Gaffer clear with a shard of Chalcedony over it. Again, the shard covered the entire bead when applied, but now color is only visible at the ends. No amount of heating and cooling could get color in the middle. And again its mostly the yellow/orange/brick red. There is a bit of pink at the ends but not much. It doesn't seem that the clear could've "swallowed" the shard, because I can't see it "inside". Perhaps the Chalcedony needs to be applied quite heavily in order to get reactions, though I don't know how people are getting results using it with Moretti then. Apparently more experimentation is needed. Luckily I have lots more Chalcedony. Not much Gaffer though so hopefully I can get it to work on the Moretti.

More results hopefully coming over the next few weeks...

Photo Tent Win!

Those who know me well know that I hate to pay full price for anything. Especially if I think that full price is overpriced, or that I can easily make it myself. This is the case with photography setups. My glassy friend Bette recently bought a photo setup. I will admit that it is VERY nice and includes everything you could ever possibly need. It also cost in the hundreds of dollars, as do most decent setups. I would have to sell a lot of beads and jewelry to pay for that! After much research (that IS what I do in my "real" job anyway), I built my own setup. It does not include quite so many parts, but it has several features I think are very nice. Here are the details.

Photo Studio in a Basket, ready for storage

The most important part of a photo setup is the lighting. This is therefore the part I spent the most on! In this case I am using 5000K daylight bulbs that put out 2000 lumens. I got them from Energy Superstore (www.energy-superstore.com). I cannot say enough nice things about this place. I talked to them a couple times on the phone after placing my order online, for various reasons, and they had great customer service. Also, their prices were the best I found anywhere, no minimum purchase, and free shipping if you order over $50 (get some friends together for a bulk buy!). I have only dealt with them this one time, so I hope everyone else has the same great experience that I did. I put the bulbs into worklight reflectors that I got a Lowe's. I got the smallest reflectors - if you are planning on a bigger tent for bigger objects, you might splurge on the larger ones. The worklights clamp onto whatever you have around. You can see that I have a handy plant stand that I use, but I'm sure you can find something creative around your house (empty boxes from all your glass purchases perhaps?). Also, since they are fluorescent, they don't take much energy and don't get terribly hot. Cost per light = $13 total for bulb and fixture. Total cost = $39.

Next, the photo "tent". You can buy these from about $20 to $30 and on up depending on all the options. To build mine, I bought a $10 basket at Lowe's. It has a metal frame and the fabric attaches with velcro, so its easy to remove. Then I draped some fabric over the frame. This particular fabric is a sort of nylon-y stuff. It feels a bit like a cross between paper and thin plastic. It does a great job of diffusing the light while letting plenty through. I found it at WalMart for $1.50 per yard. Its extra wide so 1 yard was far more than enough. My favorite part about the tent is that you can slip the fabric back on the frame and have a basket that stores your whole setup in a nice little package that doesn't take a lot of space! (see first photo for the packed setup) Total cost for tent = $11.50.

The full setup!

Bette's setup came with 2 acrylic risers, one black and one white. For white, I have found that a piece of glossy photo paper for my printer works quite well. I haven't found a replacement for the black yet but I'm keeping an eye out. I also had sitting around a scrap of black velvet. I can drape it over the top rear of the frame and down across the bottom (see photo below). This makes a nice backdrop for clear glass. This is the setup I used for the goblet photos taken in the post 2 posts back. There are lots of other things you probably have just sitting around that would make great backdrops, and plenty of places online to print out free ones. You can also see from the following photo that at one point I just used some extra tissue paper to drape the outside of the tent. It didn't diffuse the light quite as well, but it was pretty good and it was free. Total cost of other "bits" = $0.


Cost for my whole setup: $50.50

I am not including the cost of the camera or camera tripod as Bette's setup did not include those. However, the camera I am using is a Minolta Dimage G600. You can find it on Amazon for more info. It is not an SLR, not a super high resolution, and not top of the line. I did not want to buy a new special camera just for glass photos! This is the same thing I've had for several years that I take on vacations. It turns out that getting the lighting really good makes it much easier for the camera to do its thing. This is just a nice little camera with a good macro setting and the ability to adjust the exposure a little. The only thing it won't do that I sometimes wish for is manual focus. The little camera sits on a mini tripod with legs that extend to almost a foot tall, and a nice swivel head. I already had one for the camera anyway, but you can get them new at most any Wal-Mart/Target/whatever for about $5.

I hope this helps those of you who want to build your own inexpensive photo setup for glass! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

ps. A big thank you goes to Bette for letting me use her fancy setup until I could get my own built, and to Lisa and all the others for their help and advice!

B & B

Well, its Wed already but it seems like just yesterday we got back from the Bead and Button conference. Here's the gang. We had a great time talking and shopping and eating and meeting friends, both old and new. I have tons of new ideas and glass to explore!

Goblets on my own

So the studio is back up enough that I was able to get out there and do a little playing a few days ago. Its not fully operational, but the ventilation was up, which is the important part. I made these 2 goblets all on my own with no instructor supervision. The first one was an attempt to recreate the yellow one made in Mickelson's class. He had to help a lot with the shaping on that one so I wanted to try to do it by myself this time. Not too bad. The stem has twisties of the new boro glow-in-the-dark glass from Glow Glass (http://www.swirlees.com/) and Origin (http://www.originglass.com/). Shane says I pulled the stem down too thin. I think he is probably right. I just love TALL goblets though :)

The other goblet is a shape I haven't done before. I'm not sure if it would be practical for drinking from, but I really like it anyway. There is a thin line of pink around the rim, and 2 shades of green twisted into the stem. Again a bit too thin, but nice and tall!

I must remember to take them back and anneal them - that part of the studio was not operational yet!