New camera!

Another piece of nieuws I simply must share is my new camera, I'm so thrilled with it. A Canon Ixus 100, wonderfully tiny and pretty and such an amazing improvement on my old one. I guess if you're into professional photography you may feel free to disagree, but for my purposes this is great. These bead pictures have been taken inside the house in the afternoon and not been edited at all. Before I had to take them in full sun and fotoshop like crazy to get them looking anywhere near realistic. Took me forever. Now I feel that the colors are practically perfect and the detail is great too. Still need to experiment more on how to get the best shot (glass is notoriously difficult to photograph) right now i just want to share a few pics of my collection and some of my recent and older beads to celebrate my favorite new toy.

studio shot

Soooo....I've been looking into studio safety issues on the great wide web and have come to the conclusion that my setup is sadly lacking...and while I can't quite not make anything at all, I am spending less time behind the torch until I get this all worked out. The problem is that my ventilation is insufficient, and all these wonderful heavy metal gases that are released during lampworking aren't exactly the best thing to be breathing in. so I need to install a good ventilation system but the problem I still need to figure out is where I'm going to get a sufficient supply of fresh air from without drilling holes in the ceiling or wall. That would of course be possible but since I'm not planning on living in this house that much longer...I don't really feel like it investing in that area. Enough stuff on my wish list already! So here's a picture o my current setup. I work in a very spacious attic with three windows and a door open at all times for a nice breeze...really need to figure this out before the winter starts. My torch doesn't keep me that warm :-)

So another thing I've been planning on doing and am going to start with today is making a nice list of links for more information on lamp-working, studio safety, techniques and well basically anything related that I like. I've done a ton of research since I started doing this (ok not that long ago but still...). So I hope that'll be useful for some of you who might be into this too.

Believe it or not, all of these beads are made with the same colored glass. I was trying to recapture the purples and blues of the first bead but I got more greeny colors. Still pretty but not exactly what I was going for!













This flat bead feels perfect and looks like a stone...


















And I was trying my hand at getting nice color out of my raku frit...some blues, copper and a hint of purple...all of these beads are made with raku frit on different base colors.










my faves, front and back:

just one

My sister was visiting me and although she tried her hand at making beads too, I haven't spent any time behind the torch this past week. I made this bead just before she came, and it's my most current pride and joy, because of the colors I got out of the silver glass. It's so hard to capture on camera, but there is a mother-of-pearl luster that glistens in the light, ranging from blues to purples and dark burgundy.

colorful collection

Well it's been awhile, not for lack of torch time but taking the pictures, editing and uploading them isn't really my thing. so here's a nice variety of things I've been making lately. Enjoy!!!



Summer garden beads...I haven't cleaned the holes yet but they're so cheerful...







and a closeup of some of the twisters






















More garden greens, with a 3-in-one focal:






and here I was trying out my new CIM (creation is messy) glass colors, they're right down my alley:


last but not least, an attempt at scrolls that didn't really work out, but i still love how they look. They're a base of ivory with silver leaf, and the scrolls are made of EDP (evil devitrifying purple, apparently) which are then partially reduced...a very talented lampworker (mariekuniek, she makes really beautiful beads so check it out) made similar ones and I liked them so much I had to give it a try: