Green or Not? Recycled Bottle Glass Headpins

I've been playing with a bit of bottle glass that I found lying about on the streets here lately. I just couldn't resist those lovely blue bottles any longer. In the beginning I thought- what a cool thing- free glass, nice color, and I can do a bit of small time recycling. But, after fooling with it a little, I've pretty well decided that it might actually be anti- green to work with this stuff. They are now in my etsy shop.

It is definitely more time consuming. First you have to clean and cut up the bottles- watch those precious hands, you don't want to cut them to shreds! Maybe gloves would be good idea? I asked my fusible friend to give me a quick bottle cutting lesson. Turns out his are just as jagged and nasty as mine. Oh well...

Then I had to melt the stuff. As you may (or may not) know, Italian Moretti glass (Effetre) is fairly soft. That means it melts relatively quickly. This bottle glass is not. I'll bet it took me nearly twice as long to melt it as it does to melt my regular glass. Of course, bottle glass doesn't have to be specially transported to my house from Italy, so maybe that makes up for some of that extra energy; it's already here!

I also figured out  that you can add just a wee bit of extra color to this glass by rolling it in Thompson enamels, which makes it a little more fun. Oh, and if you decide you'd like to try this remember that the fire will creep up a flat side, so be sure and put it into the flame on its edge, not on the wider flat section or it will creep right up to your wee fingers!

Out of My Box and Into Yours

I've been thinking about entering the newest juried pendant show from the ISGB- Awakening the Vision- Creative Discoveries and wondering about getting out of my box.  I had an interesting idea for a bead right after I heard about the show, which I tried out; it still needs some practice before it is where I think I want it to be. But, even though it is something new, it is not really 'out of the box' for me.
That got me thinking about boxes- mine, yours and what lies between. Where, exactly, are the edges of my box? On at least one side those edges seem to bump up firmly against precision work- things like dots in a row and drawing with stringer. It's a place I go now and then- teeth gritting and brain kicking like a child. I'll make a bead or two, label them ugly and imperfect, and then go on to some crazy style I'm perfectly comfortable with~ something like a portal, a fish or a 'comb jellie' bead. Something that is WAY out of a lot of boxes!
I'm not sure whether I will manage to make a bead to enter in this show. I often start out on these journeys and end up with nothing that I think is worthy of entry. But it's gotten me really thinking about things I need to work on, and I think that is really the point, after all. Working towards a show entry is always a challenge. This promises to be a bigger one than usual! Time for a bit of a brain stretch...

Focus on Life Week 10 ~ All Wrapped Up

I'm a late joiner to the Focus on Life Blog. I have been enjoying what I've seen so much that I wanted to be a part of it. What is it? Each week for the whole year we are given a subject or idea for a photo to which we lend our own interpretation.
This week's theme is 'All Wrapped Up'. My first thought was- sushi! So I took my camera to the grocery store and realized that practically everything we eat is wrapped up. I was thinking of doing a kind of green theme with photos from the grocery and my own home.

And then I went out for a walk and carried my camera along- no sooner had I thought that a photo of a plant wrapping around a tree would be cool than I saw this. Isn't it interesting how these two things support each other? I'll bet if the plant were removed, the structure would just fall over!

Want to see more wrapped up images? Start here!

The Taming of EDP- A Lampworker's Secret

How many of you love edp (evil divitrifying purple)? Show of hands... How many of you hate it? Wait! Those are the same people. Well, I used to feel the same way... The color is beautiful, but it tends to just sit on the sidelines and watch me pass it by over and over again- the wall-flower of my studio.

The other day I was feeling adventurous and pulled a rod out  - oh, what the heck- why not. I made a portal bead base, rolled it in a bit of white enamel, and started adding some edp and other colors. And guess what? No devit- a practical miracle. OK, I'm thinking, maybe I just didn't notice it- maybe it will come out of the kiln looking ug-ly. But I'm just gonna try that again and see. So I did. And guess what- no devit again.

OK, I'm thinking, I must just be holding my mouth right today. We'll see what happens when I do this tomorrow.

And my un-scientific assessment of the situation is this. If you roll a bead in white enamel and apply the edp, you get rid of both the 'e' and the 'd' and end up with just the lovely purple you always wanted. There is a bit of edp in all of the beads pictured. I was having some other troubles with the tube, and managed to reduce some of the purple in that bead. The edp ended up a bit washed out looking in that bead as well, so there may be other odd things going on that I haven't quite figured out yet. I hope y'all will give this a try and let me know how it works for you.