Flame September 2016
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Colette Russ Debbie
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Chairman (Colette) Secretary (Debbie) Treasurer (Heather) Membership (Joy) Events (Martin) Webmaster (Scarlet) Journal editor (Joy)
@gbuk.org
Torchlight On… by Judith Hannington Pages 4 - 7
Inclusions…
page 9
Copper
page 13
Bicarbonate of soda
page 15
Silver
page 18
Mica
page 21
Cubic zirconias
page 24
Dichroic glass
page 27
Glow glass
page 29
Fuming
page 30
Preparing opals for use in glass…by Scarlet Leonard
Upcoming events
page 10
page 32
Torchlight On‌ Judith Hannington My first encounter with lampworking was in early 2010 when as an editorial assistant I commissioned Sally Carver to write a feature for the magazine publishing company I worked for. As a stained glass hobbyist I already enjoyed working with glass but was drawn towards beadmaking because of its small-scale nature. I recall asking Sally "Really - I can do this at home?" and of course the answer led me to a whole new world of glass. Thank you Sally! After playing around with some simple beadmaking on a Hothead torch I was privileged to spend a weekend furthering my basic skills and beyond with Julie Fountain - what a treat and education that was! It was with Julie that I first tried a dual-fuel torch and was converted instantly - not least because it was so quiet compared to the Hothead!
I continued 'playing' in my shed, attempting to develop a style of my own and have been very fortunate since to take workshops with Claudia Trimbur-Pagel at Tuffnell Glass and Leah Fairbanks at Flame Off. I am due to take a Tuffnell class with Angelika Kaufmann in September which I am immensely excited about.
I enter the GBUK annual competitions each year as I love the challenge of working to a theme and coming up with a completely new design that I might never otherwise have considered. It spurs me on to learn a new skill or technique and this year's 'Marine Life' theme made me face the challenge of making more complex murrini cane head-on.
I sometimes fret that I love the process of working with glass more than the actual outcome although I can be maddeningly stubborn in working at something until I achieve my idea. I realise though, that attempting something new often leads me to exploring other techniques and the finished results aren't always necessarily as important as the learning achieved along the way.
I do both lampworking and kiln-fusing and I often try to marry the two by combining flame worked components with my fused creations. These range from simple murrini flowers in my landscape sheep scenes to more complex canes and tiny versions of my paperweights mostly 'flower bubbles' - which I then incorporate into dishes, panels and windows. I also make tiny sitting and flying seagulls which feature as a three-dimensional element on my framed and wood-mounted seaside panels.
Paperweights are a particular obsession of mine at the moment - I love the preparation of cane and then that whole time-commitment thing where once you start on a weight you are hooked into it until it is complete, which at the moment for me, may be three or four hours of flamework. Things like mealtimes, for both myself and occasionally the dog, sometimes have to take second place, which she is never pleased about!
I happily gave up my publishing work about a year ago and have been solely running my glass business since then mostly selling my work at local craft fairs and also to a few gift and bead shops in West Wales. As well as the opportunity of getting me out of my shed and socialising with other artists and crafters, the joy of fairs is meeting customers who see my work and then realise they can commission me to make glass beads just for them in a style and colourway of their choice - the challenge of making jewellery to match an outfit is a real thrill.
I feel incredibly lucky to be doing something which I love with a passion and trust that passion will never fade as there is far more than a lifetime of learning to be had. The first biography I had to write about my glasswork finished with the following paragraph and I think it will be a statement that will always reflect my feelings for glass so it seems appropriate to repeat it here:
"I find the process of working with glass completely absorbing and am constantly amazed at how such a fragile material can be manipulated in so many different ways – it grabs all of my attention in a way that no other material ever has.�
You have your own page in the Gallery? Haven’t got one? Email webmaster@gbuk.org with a short bio and up to 5 photos. Send a link to your own website so visitors to GBUK.org can find you. Photos of winning beads from past winners of our annual competitions can be found here too. There is a members only area with tutorials and techniques - please feel free to send us any tips, tutorials or techniques to share with our members. Do you teach? Let us know so you can be included on our ‘Classes’ page so prospective students can find you. Are you on Facebook? Come and ‘like’ our page. We have lots of non-members that show great interest in the content we post - your beads will be seen by them.
This issue is all about inclusions ; other materials put into/onto beads to enhance their appearance. These can be metal, ground minerals or even baking ingresients. We have tried to cover the more common ones, but you may know of something we’ve missed - why not let us know?
Bicarbonate of soda
Brass frit
White sparkle mica
Copper foil
Silver wire
Copper wire
Silver mesh
Dichroic glass
Preparing opals for use in glass
This little guide will show you how to trap an opal, with a reasonably high success rate, without any fancy tools.
Opals are a lovely inclusion for glass; using natural opals isn’t very stable though as natural gems have a water content that causes stress in a finished piece. Gilson opals are manufactured opals compatible with 33coe glass, however the opal is must be fully encapsulated with no air bubbles.
Please note: Gilson Opals are only for use in borosilicate glass.
You will need: Gilson Opals - I am using a white rough opal in this example. 10mm boro tubing A pair of tweezers
Always use tweezers to handle opals, the oils from your hands can affect the opals. 1. Close up and round off the end of the tubing, let it cool.
2. Pick up the opal with your tweezers and drop your opal in the tube.
3.
Heat the tubing, you will see the tubing start to close over the opal.
5. Use tweezers to pull away excess glass, from both sides of the opal.
You can use the opal from a garaging cycle or you can anneal and leave the opals to use at a later date. Annealing and waiting will mean you can see if there were any imperfections before putting an opal into a piece, which could save you a lot of time.
4. Before the tubing fully closes, stop heating and suck on the end of the tubing to create a vacuum that will pull out the air.
6. Punty up on the side of the opal you will want face up in your final piece and place in the kiln.
GBUKmarket www.gbukmarket.org As a member you are entitled to a shop front where you may list your lampworked goods. You will need to register for a shop and wait for an administrator to check your membership is up to date before your shop is activated. Do make use of it, share it, advertise it, drive customers to look at the only selling site devoted to lampwork from lots of sellers. (members).
Promote your shop and sell your beads – it’s there for you as long as you are a member.
Have a read through the terms and conditions to see what you can sell. We want to promote lampwork in its many forms and uses and don’t want it to be used for other types of sales so we will be keeping an eye to make sure that’s all that’s being sold. There may still be bugs and issues so please let us know if you come across any.
Copper leaf is thin and static, tears easily and can be rolled onto a bead. Copper leaf turns black on contact with the flame and this is continuously burnt off until no more black remains on the bead. Copper leaf tutorial by Teresa Laliberte Copper foil is thicker and can be cut with scissors or have shapes punched out. Copper foil is difficult to burn off in the flame. A more common use is to decorate the bead with copper foil shapes and encase them. The copper is grey when applied but turns bright red once annealed.
Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
Copper mesh comes in different thicknesses, mesh sizes and mesh shapes. This also won’t burn off in the flame but will spark and turn grey, turning red again once annealed. Copper mesh is a decorative element with a variety of uses from window beads to seascape elements.
Copper frit can be picked up by a hot bead, can’t be burnt off, will turn grey on the bead and red after annealing. Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
Copper wire can be wound round the bead, can’t be burnt off, will turn grey on the bead and red after annealing.
Roll the warm bead in a tiny amount of bicarbonate of soda and encase in a cool flame. As soon as the bicarb gets heat it will produce bubbles. Too much heat gives too many or too big bubbles and they will break through the encasement leaving holes as they go.
But it doesn’t have to be encased. Left on the surface and melted in will give a rough, stone-like texture.
Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
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Take a class with the immensely talented who is famed for his hollow beads, beads from recycled glass and his soft glass spiders. The class will be open to GBUK members in the first instance. Members will get first refusal on the places available. Any spare will be opened to any other lampworkers who would like to take advantage of the opportunity. The class will be held in the studio at Tuffnell Glass in Rudston, Yorkshire on
Price £75 for members £150 for non-members
Ray will take you through a fast track creative journey of lampwork money-making techniques with a focus on new tools and tool findings (things you'd never have thought of).
There will be QUICK FIRE demo's on hollow bead making and turning hollow into sculptural beads.
Add to this to the technique of spun glass .... Your head will be spinning with techniques to take away.
Ray is happy for students to copy / remake anything shown at the class for students personal use or sales. To book: http://www.tuffnellglass.com/contents/en-uk/d144_Page_146.html
Entries for the next journal, which will be distributed at Flame Off 2017, need to be in by
30th September 2016
Closing date: 28th February 2017 Themes: Song beads Japanese
A new challenge will be set in each issue of . There are no prizes, but we’d love to see beads made using this picture for inspiration. You can post them up on our Facebook page or send them to secretary@gbuk.org and they will appear in the next issue of Flame. The closing date is 20th November 2016.
Silver is better known as an inclusion in beads and comes in the same forms as copper. Silver leaf is thin and static, tears easily and can be rolled onto a bead. It can be ‘burnished’ on (using a marver to help the leaf to adhere to the glass) and either left before encasing in a transparent glass or melted in. Each gives a different effect.
Silver foil is thicker and can be cut with scissors or have shapes punched out. Sometimes foil gives a more durable silver layer that several layers of leaf don’t.
Jewel Stones bead tutorial by Lisi
Silver leaf and foil look good under frit and silver glass.
Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
*Naos* fire opals tutorial using silver foil
Silver wire can be wound round the bead. It can be encased or left on the surface. Applying heat directly will allow the silver to fuse to the bead and, depending on the type of heat, stay looking like wire or form droplets. Either way is attractive.
Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
Silver mesh is a decorative element that can be left intact (encased or on the surface) or melted in. Melting it will leave ‘droplets’ of silver behind.
Beads by Joy Porteous of MeaganLily Lampwork
Find a tutorial here: Encasing silver mesh by Starleen Colo'n
www.gloworms.org
Glen’s Glitz, Gadgets and Glow Glass
Adding excitement and mystery to your beads with: Electroforming kits Petal tools
Glow powder Glow stringer Glow frit Glow murrini
Shards
Glass sculpting tools
Mica glitter
Twisties
Pin vices
Mica powder
Vine cane
Mica (pixie dust)
Mica is defined as a shiny silicate mineral with a layered structure, found as minute scales in granite and other rocks, or as crystals. Also known as pixie dust, it presents as tiny lightweight particles, and behaves like icing sugar – becomes airborne easily and clings to everything. You may like to wear a mask – tiny particles are never good to inhale.
It usually comes in plastic bottles or bags, which isn’t a problem providing you keep hot mandrels away from it; the easiest way to apply mica is by putting the bead to be coated into the mica container and swirling it. I f you are uncomfortable putting hot glass/metal into a plastic container, decant it into a glass one, but it will be a messy procedure. The downside of this is that as the mica is used up, the available mica left will be further down the jar and it will be more difficult to coat larger beads or beads further away from the end of the mandrel. Spice jars make good containers, they are long and tall and you can make the most of what you have.
Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
There are numerous types and colours of mica available. Most are what you see is what you get, but some are a pale powder whose colour is revealed once worked. Make a base bead in the colour of your choice. The base colour can influence the end result so experiment to find what works best for the effect you are trying to achieve.
Let your base bead cool then put back into the flame to warm it up, much like you would do when using frit.
Place the warm bead into the jar of mica and roll/swirl it. You can tap the mandrel on the edge of the jar (not recommended for plastic jars! ), or on the worktop, to remove any excess then warm the bead again in a neutral flame.
Take a look at the resulting coverage and effect. You can add as many coats as you like to achieve your desired result, removing excess and warming in the flame as you go.
Remember that mica isn’t glass so will not melt, rather become fused to your bead.
As mica is not glass, it does not naturally adhere to it, and vice versa, so when encasing or adding decoration it is important that your encasing layer is hot and when adding decoration, or that your base bead has a reasonable amount of heat in it, otherwise you could find it a frustrating exercise. But it is possible and you can achieve some lovely results. Try using different transparents over the paler colours of mica.
Don’t worry if there is some residual mica on the bead after it has been annealed. Soaking your bead before cleaning will also remove any loose mica from its surface. Although the mica is heat fused, the coating may rub off in the long term.
Ursula Mann
Cubic zirconias Easy Floral Bead with CZs by Diane Woodall Floral beads have always been popular, and with the added bling of cubic zirconia (CZs), this design is sure to stand out. I based this tutorial on the beads that Deanna Chase makes using embedded CZs, but added some vine cane and simplified the flowers to make it easier for novice beadmakers. The variations on this design are limitless. Materials: dipped mandrel straight-sided lentil press (optional) marver old mandrels (3/32" or larger for vine cane, 5/64" or smaller for CZs) water-soluble white school glue 2mm CZs stainless steel tweezers lampworking torch and kiln setup
Effetre Pea Green Reichenbach Deep Black or Effetre Intense Black (pulled into a thick stringer) Effetre Super Clear Effetre Light Teal transparent Effetre White (pulled into a very thin stringer and thick stringer) Effetre Ink Blue transparent (pulled into a thick stringer)
1. To prepare the CZs, place a dot of water-soluble white glue on the end of a mandrel and then place a CZ, flat side down, on the glue. The mandrels can be stored upright in a container of sand while they dry.
2. To prepare the vine cane, make a gather of Effetre Pea Green on the end of an old mandrel (3/32" or larger) and marver into a barrel about 14mm in diameter. Do not put bead release on the mandrel.
3. Using a thick stringer of Reichenbach Deep Black or Effetre Intense Black, apply three or four stripes parallel to the mandrel. Melt in the stripes. I like to encase vine cane to keep the black from bleeding.
4. Encase the gather by winding clear glass around and around from one end to the other. Apply pressure to the clear, pressing against the previous wrap, to force out any bubbles that might form during encasing. Melt the clear until it is smooth.
5. Heat just the end of the gather (but not the entire gather). With tweezers, grab the tip of the gather and pull while twisting with the hand holding the mandrel. The hand holding the tweezers will not twist. Vine cane should be thin, so pull hard enough with the tweezers to produce a thin twistie.
6. I made this cane thicker than I normal so it could be photographed, but it should 2mm or less in diameter. After pulling a length of cane, burn it off and then begin again with a new pull. Tip: After the last pull, plunge the remaining glass into water and it will fall off the mandrel, so you can use the same mandrel again.
7. Before using the vine cane, nip off the ends of each piece so that you are always starting with a nice, straight end. Vine cane can also be made without twisting. If you are a novice, you can make vine cane using a smaller gather that can be pulled in one pull.
8. To make the glass flower bead: Wind on a base bead in teal that is football shaped and almost as wide as the opening of the lentil press. You'll be adding a vine and flowers, so don't make the base bead too big. For this bead, I used the center cavity (18mm) of a straight-sided lentil trio.
9. Apply the vine cane to the base bead, winding it around the bead in a wavy pattern, ending the wrap where it started. Melt in the vine cane.
10. To make the flowers: Apply a tiny dot of white in four or five places on the bead, spacing them evenly around the bead. This bead has five dots.
11. Using the little white dots as a guide, apply four or five white dots (for petals) around each guide dot using thick white stringer, spacing them as evenly as possible and leaving room between the dots for the glass to spread. Melt the white dots flat to create the flowers.
12. With a thick stringer of Ink Blue, place dots on top of the white dots. You can make them smaller so that some of the white will be visible when they are melted in or larger so that the Ink Blue will cover all of the white. Melt in the ink blue dots.
13. Heat the bead evenly and then gently press in a straightsided lentil press. Heat the bead to remove the chill marks.
14. While heating the center of each flower, press a CZ into the middle of each flower, using the mandrel as a handle. The glue will burn off in an instant. Gently heat each flower after adding the CZ. Give the bead one more heating and it's complete.
Dichroic glass Dichroic glass is glass which displays two different colours by undergoing a colour change in certain lighting conditions. Stacking layers of glass and micro-layers of metals or oxides give the glass shifting colours depending on the angle of view, causing an array of colours to be displayed. The glass treated with various metal oxides to make it appear to have many colours. The name comes from a Greek word meaning “two colours.� To make dichroic glass, the glass must be sprayed with micro-layers of metals, usually including titanium, chromium, gold, zirconium, and aluminium. This is conducted in a vacuum chamber, which evaporates the metals and fuses them to the glass in extremely thin layers. The fusion process creates a crystalline structure on the glass, which causes light to fracture. Each piece of dichroic glass has at least three colours: the colour that reflects from the glass, the colour of the glass, and a second refracted colour that can be seen at a 45 degree angle.
Dichroic glass is COE specific so only use the one for the glass you are using. It is available as pieces and strips, both annealed and not. The above fused dichroic is available from www.shirleygiles.com in the webstore.
Beads by Shirley Giles of Shirley Giles Beads
How to use dichroic glass One side the the glass has the dichroic coating. It is important to determine which as this side must not go directly in the flame or it will burn off. The coated side is put on to the bead and can be encased to protect it further. Pre-heat the dichro before applying to prevent thermal shock. Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass Cut the dichroic strips into pieces for application. Place them dichroic side up so that side goes directly on to the bead. Warm the dichroic before applying. Once applied heat in a cool flame to soften the clear back and smooth over your bead. Encase. The dichroic coating can become scummy and burn off if it is exposed to heat for long. Borealis Dichroic ribbon cane tutorial from Mary Lockwood Dichro Spiral Marble video by Boxfan, from The Flow Boro Dichro Scrap for Soft Glass Lampworkers by Jaci Sinkewicz
Bead by Debbie Dew of Silverartz
Glow glass Powder that can be mixed with glass that glow in the dark or fluoresce under black light, compatible with all glass COEs. Easy to handle, it doesn’t denature or burn in the flame.
Glow powders produce green, aqua and other hues, where green gives the highest brightness and aqua the longest glow time. Added rare earth minerals increase the glow effect. These materials can absorb and store energy of various ultraviolet and visible light spectrums, and release that energy in the form of bright light and glow in the dark for hours.
Glow glass, once mixed, can be pulled into stringer and incorporated into frit, stringer and murrini. Beads by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass
Glow products available from Gloworms.org
Fuming glass Fuming is the technique of applying metal particles to the surface of a lampwork glass bead. Ensure there is adequate ventilation when trying this.
Start with pure metals (.999 if possible). Prepare a 12 to 14 inch 6-8 mm quartz or borosilicate rod by warming up very end and putting a small dent in top side. Take a piece of silver or gold (about 2 x mm (foil, wire, nugget) with tweezers, and put in the depression. Heat up end of rod until the metal melts into small ball. This should hold the metal to the rod. Warm the bead to be fumed until it has slight glow. Keep turning it in last third of flame. Silver: Place end of the rod with silver on top near the end of the "candle" of the flame. When it warms up to the point that it begins to sparkle; the silver has started to vaporise. Keep the bead turning, and waft the end of the rod in and out of the flame. Keep cooling and reheating fairly fast to keep the process going. You will see a honey yellow colour start to appear on your bead. The longer you fume, the darker the colour will become, until it turns white. Once you like the colour, bring the bead into the working area of the flame, and melt in the fume. Some silver will burn back off, that’s normal or you can encase it. Gold: takes a lot more heat to fume, using a strong tight flame. Begin as with the silver but once the bead is warm, bring the gold into the very tip of a candle (it should just touch the end of the cone). Leave it there. When the gold starts to react on the rod you should see colour start to show on your bead. The gold has to stay in the cone to fume ( don’t waft). Again, the longer you fume the darker and richer the colour. You can go all the way to gold plate. Melt in as before; gold does not burn off like silver. A ready made silver fuming kit is available from Tuffnell Glass
Silver fuming tutorial
How to do gold fuming on soft glass part 1 How to do gold fuming on soft glass part 2 Bead by Stephanie Gough From Beads by Stephanie
by Scarlet Leonard Chaos fuming is achieved by building a random cage of glass on a clear maria. You can use clear or any other colour that fumes well to build the cage. The cage can be built by adding lots of sections of stringer to the maria, unfumed, like a teepee covered in spider webs in a random method. Once the cage is built it can be fumed with silver, gold or a combination of the two. Silver will give you the blues and yellows’ gold will give you purples. Try to keep the fume off the sides of the maria. Once you are happy with the amount of fume on the cage you can start melting down the cage into the maria and the result will be a crazy pattern of different fumed and unfumed layers. Back with a colour and lens to finish. This technique can also be applied on mandrel. Start with a base colour, build a cage on that to fume. Once it is all melted in, an encasement will lens the fumed pattern.
Photos, using his techniques, reproduced with the kind permission of Larry Cazes, Santa Cruz, CA
Silver Fumed Nebula Pendant Demo by Boot Johnson
If you have an event you would like included, please email events@gbuk.org with the details.
10th /11th Sept
Angelika Kaufmann Class, Rudston Studio
12th Sept 24th Sept
The Life and work of Stained Glass Artist Margaret Agnes Rope,Shrewsbury Musuem GBUK Class with Ray Skene at Tuffnell Glass studios
16th Sept -8th Oct
Black to White and Back Again, London Glassblowing
8th / 9th Oct
Rashan Jones class, Rudston Studio
18th Sept
Bead Tours, Brentwood
17th / 18th Sept 1st Oct
Melbourne Festival of Art and Architecture, Melbourne, Derbyshire (Open Houses) Handmade Art & Craft Market, Tabernacl Chapel,Cardiff
2nd Oct
The Welsh Bead Fair, Cardiff.
2nd Oct
The Glass Fair, Knebworth
2nd Oct
Mac Birmingham Contemporary Craft Fair
5th /6th Oct
Rashan Jones class, Rudston Studio
15th Oct
The Big Bead Show, Sandown Park, Surrey
14th - 16th Oct
Made in the Cotswolds, Chipping Campden
18th Oct
Midlands Bead Fair, National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham
23rd Oct
Beadwork Fair, Harrogate
3rd /6th Nov
Crafts for Christmas, NEC, Birmingham
5th Nov
Handmade Art & Craft Market, Tabernacl Chapel,Cardiff
5th / 6th Nov 10th /13th Nov
Discover Gather Give Contemporary Arts Fair, Stratford Upon Avon Festive Gift Fair,NEC, Birmingham
13th Nov
The National Glass Fair ,NMM Solihul
15th Nov
Beadwork Fair, Newmarket
17th /20th Nov
Gloucester Christmas Fair, Gloucester
26th / 27th Nov
Blackthorpe Barn Arts Contemporary Craft Fair, Bury St Edmunds
3rd / 4th Dec
Mac Birmingham Contemporary Craft Fair
10th / 11th Dec
Blackthorpe Barn Arts Contemporary Craft Fair, Bury St Edmunds
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Next issue: January 2017
Do you have a tutorial or article to share with members? Would you like your events included or advertise your supplies? Contact secretary@gbuk.org.
www.gbuk.org Cover photo by Colette Ladley of Dragonfire Glass Sparkle white mica by Gloworms.org Tutorials have been donated or found FOC on the internet