Medieval and Viking style glass whorls for hand spinning

Just a wee post to show off some of my handmade glass whorls, because I fear I have made a few too many. And of course I want to make more! These are based on historical whorls found in various areas from Medieval and Viking times. 

I cannot say they are historically accurate, because the designs are pretty modern. To read more about how these were developed for my shop, you can refer to this bit on my blog.

https://isinglassdesign.blogspot.com/2014/03/spin-spider-spin-experiments-with.html

 

 

 

Over time, the style has gone from single whorls, to whorl pairs (for extra weight and flexibility), and now to a longer style meant to be used alone. Because change is good, right?

You can find them in my etsy shop~ https://www.etsy.com/shop/glassbead

Taking tutorial photos

Diane at the Soda Lime Times recently asked if I would like to do a tutorial on making these heart pendants to be published in the February issue of her popular digital magazine. She'd seen the Christmas ornaments I was making and thought they'd make nice pendants. Of course I was honored to be asked and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

But making something I felt was worthy of publication, then writing the tut and taking photos took me just a wee bit longer than I'd expected. I take photos for my tuts myself, which means camera in one hand and hot bead in the other. It also means I've gotta be quick. And the chances of bead fail are high because the poor thing is spending a lot of time out of the flame, and the sludge is cooling and being heated way too often.

I was not pleased with the first heart I made- the lobes were not pronounced enough, just not really what I wanted to show off. So I gave it another go and was quite pleased with the resulting bead. I began work on writing the instructions up and sent the photos for the headpin off to Diane so she could take a gander at how things were progressing. Unfortunately, the photos were blurry and couldn't be used. Why didn't I notice that? How annoying, not to mention embarrassing!

So it was back to the drawing board. The Flow has a lot of great tips for writing tutorials and taking photos, so I took another look there. Diane suggested I try laying the bead down on a marver while taking photos. Was I shaking the camera or the bead or both? Who can tell? When I looked at the settings for some of those photos, I saw they were taken at crazy slow shutter speeds, which made me realize that my new studio space is very poorly lit. So I brought in all the light I could find, laid down my white paper for a nice uncluttered background and played with my camera settings until I got a reasonable shutter speed- between 1/60 and 1/125th of a second- much better! Then, when I was actually taking photos of all the steps, I leaned the mandrel against something to stabilize it and took several pics of each step. When the background was darker, I found I had to go down a step or two on the exposure compensation to keep the shutter speed faster.

Results? Good! The photos were no longer blurry and the tut was ready for publication! The February issue of the Soda Lime Times is out today- lots of lovely eye candy and som fun tuts too!

Scarf Slides and Cleaning Big Holed Lampwork Beads

Whoot! My newest lampwork glass bead endeavor is making scarf slides. I finally got myself a really big mandrel- a whopping 1 inch- and started making beads for scarf sliders on them. Though a one inch hole may be a bit larger than needed for some scarves, they seem to be about right for rayon. I gave one to myself, one to my daughter and one to a friend as testers to see how they work out.

The huge mandrel was much easier to use than I thought it would be. It's always best to sludge and dry mandrels overnight when making any high stress beads or beads that take longer to make. The mandrel needs to start out well heated and to stay heated the whole time. These beads started out with a clear core footprint, giving them a good stiff background to work over.

Important: make sure the sludge doesn't have any little gritty bumps. These should be rubbed off of the dry sludge before starting.

Because it's really easy to see inside these beads, they need to be cleaned extremely well. After the bead is finished and removed from the mandrel, clean as usual and then sand with 220 grit and then 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper. This will smooth out the inside nicely. I have to thank Hayley for this piece of advice. It has made a huge difference in the smoothness inside my large holed beads.

A couple of useage tips for these sliders:
For safety, it is probably best to run the scarf horizontally through the slider to be sure it can't just slide off of the bottom. Making sliders with a little bit smaller hole will also solve this issue.

Sliders can be used in a number of different ways- one is to run the scarf through the slider halfway, put the scarf around your neck, and then run both ends of the scarf through the slider. The large hole will allow a silk scarf to easily run through the slider three or even four times. Here are some photos of one around my neck.

Focus on Life Week 32, From Where I Stand

This week the prompt from Sally at focus on life was 'from where I stand' so, as you can imagine, Fats Domino singing 'I'm Walkin' was one of my theme songs. Had to just take this literally and show you some of the places my feet took me this week.

 OH, and I found some new shoes- cheap! And the question is- socks or no socks? I was informed that they looked wrong with the socks. Just old fashioned, I guess!

I'm sending you to Islandgirl's Insights to see where others are standing this week!

Typography, Focus on Life Week 24

Well, Sally's done it again- gotten me looking around and thinking about things I don't usually think a lot about.
To quote Liza Dolittle- 'Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words, I get words all day through; first from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?'
We are surrounded by words and images. The first thing I though of was the 'graffiti wall' near my house. It gets whitewashed regularly and graffitied twice as often! The junk food junkie is a regular contributor to the wall. I have to admit that I can't read half of what's written there, but it can be pretty interesting nevertheless. Seems every contributor to the wall has his own style. Then I saw a train going by and started thinking about the graffiti that is on the side of many of the cars- kind of a traveling ad, I suppose.

On my walk I saw building names carved in stone, business names imprinted into sidewalks and manhole covers, and company logos. Words and images together can deliver a powerful message- there are some we are so familiar with that we don't even need to read the words to know what the sign is for!
To see what some other folks are tapping and typing, check out Sally's blog!

Hope- Focus on Life Week 19

Lord save us all from... a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.  ~Mark Twain

Well, I am very late to the game this week- I hope not too late! I've been thinking about hope this week thanks to Sally's prompt. Seems like I'm always hoping for something as folks everywhere are all the time. I'm going to show y'all a bottle tree this week- a kind of hopeful symbol in this neck of the woods.They are meant to trap evil spirits- and the moaning sound they can make in the wind is those trapped spirits. Why do I call this a hopeful symbol? Well, I think it's pretty hopeful to believe you can capture bad spirits, thereby making your life better and happier!

People are always coming up with creative ideas to make their lives more hopeful- amulets, talismans, dreamcatchers, all the little things we like to use to give us a feeling that we can make the world around us a wee bit better! So cross your fingers and let's get this game we call life rolling!
 
See more signs of hope at Sally's Blog.

Abstract Photos- Focus on Life Week 18

'You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye.'  Clement Greenberg 

 Sally's prompt for the focus on life challenge this week is Abstract! Woohoo! I had no clue when I read that word what I would be doing. Sally had some suggestions and told us about making a light trail in our photos. Fun stuff, so that is the first thing I tried. But then she suggested that we distort our photos for more abstract designs- I think I could play around in photoshop all day trying out different things!. So this first photo is a distorted light trail taken right off my front porch.

But my own epiphany came when I took my camera out on my weekly Focus on Life Walk- I took a LOT of pictures, and when I was almost home I stopped to shoot into the window of the local bike shop. Ummm... have you ever tried to shoot a picture through a window? Well, there is a little something called a reflection. The window is right on a busy street, so there were cars going by and folks walking by too. These pictures seem pretty abstract to me! Even though I know what these are photos of, I have a hard time figuring them out. Yes, it's been photoshopped...

The local hair salon was even cooler! 

Another abstract trick?  Simply laying a photo on its side can do wonders to make it all quite confusing! Start here for more abstract fun.

Hearts!

I've just been ignoring my blog-no fun lampwork posts for a while. So I'm just going to show off a few hearts. I love arranging beads into fun shapes. The heart that sits at about 2 minutes to twelve is my fave of this bunch- lots of odd color reactions!

Jodi's Jewels and Me

Just a quick post to show off some lovely pieces made with some of my beads!

Jodi of JodiMooreJewels has fallen in love with my portal pendants and has done some lovely things with them. It's always fun to see what someone else does with beads I've made. Jodi's got a wonderful sense of color, and really draws out the colors of the focal in her beadwork. Now it's time to give her shop some love.... 

Inspiration, Big Hole Beads

Isn't it nice when something inspiring just pops into your inbox! The November issue of the Soda Lime Times just came out yesterday and it was all about big hole beads. How to make 'em, how to core 'em and all the eye candy a girl could wish for! The big hole bead category covers anything from a bead with 5 or 6mm hole that will fit on a European style charm bracelet to sliders and dread beads with 1/4 or 1/2 inch holes- or more! I've been making mandala or kaleidoscope beads for years- but never very many at a time, because they take me so darn long and I end up feeling just a wee bit incompetent. But with a few words of encouragement from the folks at Soda Lime (and did I mention a lot of eye candy???), I thought it was time to give it all a bit of a go. Fun stuff, even though these babies took me about 40 minutes each- and these are actually a bit on the small side.

One of the interesting thing about BHBs is that they are often used so that the flatter side faces out. When I make these, I am constantly looking down the mandrel to see if they are fairly round, and how the design is coming together. But round is not the only shape a BHB can be- far from it! One of my own Icarus Wing Beads was featured in the gallery. This is a fairly new style for me with a bit of a wing shape on one side and lots of twirls and curls on the other.

Big Hole Beads do present the small problem of getting that large hole to look good on the inside. Sludging the mandrel the night before and letting it air dry will help ensure a good bond between glass and mandrel. Use the sludged mandrel within a day or two to prevent rust from forming on the mandrel- rust stains are quite hard to remove from inside the bead. At The Gathering, I was instructed to sand the inside of these beads with wet/dry sandpaper in ever increasing grits to make them nice and smooth. For more tips and a fun tut, I'd advise you to get your own copy of the November 2012 Soda Lime Times-it's great fun, and a tremendous value too!

Keep the Customer Satisfied, Satisfied...

I had a rather bizarre conversation the other day with the owner of a fairly new online business. He was interested in having a few of my items available through his site. Seemed like a nice guy, we had a good talk, and then I went home, looked at the site and started thinking... Hmmmm...

One thing he mentioned was a current customer who was giving him a bit of trouble about some slow shipping. He apparently had his hands full, and had to hold off on sending out their order. I mentioned that I always send shipping notification out when I ship something. Etsy has made that so simple now- a pre-written note I can just punch a button and send, and I can even add a clickable tracking number. He said he just didn't have time to send out shipping notification. Really?  Well...

A couple of days later I placed an order with a company I'd never done business with before. And guess what- no shipping notification. So what happened? Well, I waited 6 days and emailed to ask the status. No reply. The next day I waited for the mail to arrive- still nothing, so I called. Of course it was on the way. But I don't think this was much of a time-saver for them since they had to go back and look it up and talk to me on the phone.

In the meantime I was getting a bit peeved. I find I am not very patient when I order online. I send the $$ in good faith, and then I really want to know when it's on the way. After all, I have no idea who you are or what your policies are. An automatic message only goes so far- I still want to know when MY package is on the way- and how it's being shipped so I know who to look out for.

So back to the new online company. Another thing he mentioned was that his customer could not possibly be in a rush to get his product as they couldn't use it for months. Second guessing the customer never seems like the best business plan to me. What if they are doing this as a test- they want to find out how quickly you ship and what kind of customer service you give- well, you've just failed miserably.

I work hard on customer service, always trying to give a bit more than expected- a little note on one of my own special cards, an extra 'lucky' bead, careful packaging. I find communication is key, especially if there is any problem with an order. Yes, we all make mistakes from time to time. I always apologize, offer to cancel the order, and offer a bit of something extra- whether it's free shipping, a discount or a freebie if there is any type of problem whatsoever. Why? Because repeat customers are my favorite kind!

Alright- this has been a bit of a rant! In conclusion, I think the best policy is to treat the customer as you would like to be treated!

Let's Twistie Again!

Well another blind idea came to me the other day. What if I made twisties and offered them for sale? I fired up the torch and made a small pile, put a picture on facebook and waited to see who said what. Lots of 'likes', which I always like, and one lovely pal who asked if they were for sale. And I'm off! Twisties for sale- a few at a time in random color assortments for the moment. A lot of the combinations contain colors that may react with each other depending on the background used and the amount of heat applied- edp, copper green, intense black- things like that. I used some scraps in this turtle and let them cook a bit for a cool organic reaction.
I love making beads, have been doing it for about 12 years, and am fairly confident that I'm doing some things right in that category. But making supplies to sell? All those scary monsters I thought were locked away in some closet started sitting over my shoulder and saying- no, no, no, you shouldn't be doing this! They're still talking to me, but I'm giving it a bit of a try anyway.

Everything I sell is always guaranteed, but these are doubly so. They have to arrive intact, and the buyer has to like them! If not, keep 'em and I eat the cost. Oh and I want feedback too- real feedback, not the kind you get on etsy. Any and all ideas will be happily considered.