Torch time

I had some time at the torch this week and thought I would share what I have been working on.  Focused on lampwork this time and have some enameled pieces rolling around in my head that I need to get to very soon.  As far as the lampwork goes I have been playing primarily with sculptural shapes rather than standard round beads.  I made some rounds to and practiced and played with dots and frits, but those are not quite as exciting to see.

First up is a batch of raked or feathered hearts.  The hearts evolved after playing with it on a barrel bead and deciding it would be cool for a project I was asked to do and then evolved from there.  The pic of my hand is a sort of heart shaped burn mark that is fading.  I mildly painful reminder to make sure you pick up the glass rod you have been using to rake with by the correct end.  Purely coincidental that the burn was heart shaped when I had been working on hearts!

The largest heart in the collage is my fave!  I have mentioned before that I get all my glass from Devardi, this one has their silvery black metallic glass as the stripes.  Once I mastered getting the metallic to come out I fell in love with this glass, it reminds me of hematite.  You can see that some of the hearts slumped in the mini annealer, it may be that I put them in there a tad too hot.  Still saving up for a Chili Pepper kiln where this shouldn't be an issue. As a side note, the folks at Devardi are a dream to work with, offer affordable pricing,  carry a great assortment of colors, and always promptly answer all my newbie questions when I email them.

Next up were some more turtles and mushrooms.  These seem very fitting for a shop with the name Northwoods Creative Studio.  They seem to fit right in with my birds and owls.  Later this week I hope to tackle and master making some little foxes.

Again the black here is the silvery metallic.  I took liberties with the colors in this batch of shrooms and turtles.  The little turtle on the bottom has eyes that are a wee bit large, making him look very surprised.  The mushrooms are topped with frit also from Devardi.  I don't think it can be seen in this pic but the green shroom has a crack in the cap, I sometimes have this with my transparents, I think as a result of not getting them in the kiln quickly enough.  So, much to her delight the green shroom will be gifted to my oldest daughter.

Did a bit of wire wrapping with my shells last night.  I collected them two summers ago in FL and am getting around to using them.

I always like my work (if I don't I redo it), but I LOVE this piece and am torn as to whether or not I will be putting it up for sale.  This simplicity of this center of a conch shell and the minimal wrapping just speak to me.

While I'm very pleased with how this one turned out, I can't keep them all!  Listed this one tonite on Etsy.



Lilac

Lastly a few parting shots of the flowering shrubs at our place.  Happy spring to you all :)!

Flowering Quince