Woohoo, another bead in Soda Lime Times!

Well, not a bead exactly, but I sent in my brooch and got accepted, yay :)
This is the january 2015 issue, the International Issue, which means everybody but the US lampworkers, and here I am on page 5. Sweet!

Three little berry-esque beads on a foldformed copper leaf I hammered up from a sheet. I especially love how the tip of the leaf turned over and now holds the pin closed. You can see more close-ups of the brooch in my post Winter Berry Brooch, and you can get a free sample issue or subscribe to Soda Lime Times here.

Ringbeads, Theme Day at Bifrost

Yesterday my local glass supplier Bifrost Studio Glas had a sunday Theme Day. From 11-14 the doors were open to the shop, and to the workshop where Helle Mark were demoing. The theme of the day was ringbeads, made on the large mandrels seen in back of the second Picture (oh, and in her hand too, Doh!).

 

Here are some of Helles beads she had made in advance for us to fondle.

I also have a set of those mandrels (Thank you Lenette!) so here are some of mine :)

It's been a while since I made those, but I feel inspired to make more now, they are just so darn delicious :)

And I also shopped a bit. Yay for new rods :)

Nipsenålstræf

This saturday I went to the 2'nd Annual Get-together of the Danish pin collectors.
It sounds very fancy, but in reallity it is simply Marianne being nice and inviting us over for an afternoon of chatting, buying/selling/trading and having a good time - and some cake, yum! :)

We will each bring the pins we want to sell, and the ones we want to show off, like these cushions from the large collection of Søren.

 

A small part of Mariannes figure collection, with a star pattern of rounds in the background.

Cartoon and fairytale characters

 

I don't know who owns the next two cushions, but they are fine examples of how to display your pins.

 



The old fashioned way - make a pattern of rounds and an outline of figure pins

I love bell jars :)

 

Finally a close up of Sørens supremely solid and very heavy cushion from the first picture again. The pins cover the front and sides completely and at least half of the back too. It's basically a very fancy brick. Sweet!

My own collection is very small as I only began collecting last year, and I am not all that serious about tracking them down. You don't find pins just anywhere. But of course I brought pins to sell. Last year I had made bee pins for the day, and this year I brought my new mermaids and also horses in black.

 

Two more pictures of my own handmade pins can be seen at my brand spanking new instagram account. I have a feeling I am going to like that app :)

And finally - a picture of pins by the incredibly talented Susanne of dugperlasnipsenåle.dk. Her pins are insanely detailed, and so small it boggles the mind. She even makes miniature pins, exstra tiny ones. Enjoy (and visit her site for fine pictures of very fine pins) ...

Høstmarked at Musicon i Roskilde!

​Så er det tid til årets Høstmarked!

Denne weekend d.6-7 september deltager jeg med mine glassmykker  og nipsenåle (sammen med 44 andre spændende stande) i Høstmarkedet i Musicon ved Roskilde.

"Fortidens trend - nutidens inspiration.
Besøg årets Høstmarked.

​

Trendy torvehal med nye og unikke smagsoplevelser. Hyggelig markedsplads med fokus på særlige og unikke produkter.
Boderne byder på alt fra sommerens arsenal af spiselige produkter. Delikatesser, specialiteter, gastronomi og andre gode sager.

Redskaber til haven,  havemøbler, planter, kunst, kunsthåndværk og Kreative produkter. Inspiration til både indendørs- og udendørs hygge.

Mød de spændende arbejdende værksteder, med workshop for børn og voksne."

​Besøg hjemmesiden for yderligere info 

 

Musicon findes på adressen:

Musicon

Rabalderstræde 1

4000 Roskilde

 

og markedet finder sted i Hal 10.

 

Der er åbent lørdag d.6 kl.11-17 og søndag d.7 kl.10-16.

 

Der tages en entré på 35,- men du kan printe din egen rabat billet og komme ind for 25,- 

 

På grund af ombygning på området er der omkørsel. Find vejen her:

 

 

Happy 5 Years Anniversary!

Today is the actual date of my 5 year anniversary. Hooray! *throws confetti*

The Open Studio weekend went very well. A big THANK YOU! to all of the visitors who were trickling in and out the whole time. I am so happy I got to show the wonderful craft of lampwork to all of you.

Thank you to old friends and new friends for stopping by, and thank you to all 'strangers' who came to see what it was all about. Thank you for the fun challenges you gave me.

And finally a big thank you to my dear family (mother, father, sister and my husband) who helped with lots of things, before and during the weekend, to get everything ready.

THANK YOU! :)

 

More pictures from the weekend can be seen here, and here is the photo countdown from earlier.



Happy Birthday, Little Mermaid :)

Everybody celebrates the 100'th year, so here's to the Little Mermaid - 101 years! Woot!

Today is the 101'st birthday of the little Mermaid.
Not the fairytale by H.C. Andersen, which is much older, but the statue in the Copenhagen harbour.
There she sits, the lovely little thing, gazing across the water ...

To celebrate this day I decided to see how many mermaid lampwork beads I could find, because I definately knew they were out there. And I were not dissapointed. These are just a fraction of what can be found. Enjoy!


Rachelle Goldreich is the maker of this sparkly wet mermaid.

This beauty was made by Marlene McDonald of Marlene McDonald Glass, maker of sea treasures.

Ulrike Dietrich made this sweet and colorful focal.

This cute number is by Diana Rast of DizzyBead. She has several mermaids and many other little pendant friends in her shop.

This stunning focal is by Melissa Johanneson Rice of Flame Touched Glass. Melissa has many owls and colourful mushrooms in her shop. (the mermaids tail is on the back of the bead).

This sleek form is by Sally Sutherland of Soul Silver. Clean beadlines and sweet silver pieces are in her shop.

This playful Mermaid was made by Rebecca Jurgens of LandsArts.

Three Mermaids in a row, by Summer Cambell of Summer Glass Designs. Click the picture for a better view.

This necklace is by Simin Koernig of Simins Creations.

And finally, a sparkly Mermaids tail from Ginger and Jerry at BeadTrap.

Thank you so much to all the artists, for use of your pictures, and for making the beads in the first place. What a bounty of beautiful flowing shapes and colours :)

I also wanted to make my own mermaid, and if you come visiting my 'Open Studio' today or tomorrow (at 10am - 5 pm) you will get at chance to see and perhaps bring home one of the very first of my brand new Mermaid Pins! Tiny and shiny :)

Have a great weekend!

Profusion Art Glass celebrates 5 years anniversary!

Five years ago this month, I finally worked up my courage and registered my lampwork hobby as a proper business. And now as time has passed, it is time to celebrate!

Fireworks! Pew pew ...

So on saturday 23'rd and sunday 24'th

I open the doors to my lampwork studio,

and you are invited.

I will show you how glass beads are made; goddess beads, other shapes, dotted beads, pins too (nipsenåle) ...

I will serve you a light snack and give you 20% off all beads and jewelry ...

I will even take the challenge of making your dream bead right then and there. You know, the one you have not been able to find anywhere ...

Sounds good?
Then drop by on aug. 23-24 from 10-17 and lets talk.

Until then you can find the info and the address on my facebook event, join/like my facebook page and follow my 10 day photo countdown as it unfolds.

Mixed media, hmm?

Hmm, so apparently flint stones are quite sensitive to heat. At least glass melting heat.

Many years ago I saw this beautiful idea on the web, of a natural stone with a pit/hollow in it, in which was placed a nice colourful implosion. You can see the picture I had seen here, at DeMoss Glass Art. I love it, I do, and I want to try to do that too.

I'd obviously like the implosion annealed, so the choises are to anneal it while in place, with the rock inside the kiln (though I don't know if they would shrink equally or just crack the glass), or to shape the back of the implosion after the rock, anneal it and glue it in later.

Around the corner of my house is an empty lot covered with pocket size stones, so off I went to find a handfull of suitable ones. I did find some, nicely shaped and able to lay flat in the right direction, all of them flint.

I didn't want to just drop them into my kiln and fire it up, as they might explode, as they would in a fire pit. I don't want to endanger my heating elements, so instead I tried to push the backside of a hot implosion into the hollow of a stone at room temperature. It seemed like a good idea, but then within 3 seconds - smack! the flint decided to split, right in the middle. Darned! My best stone too of course, because why test it first :)

Split Flintstone

I do have a few thoughts -

The next step would probably be to try heating the stone after all. But I have no fiber blanket to cover it (if it should decide to fling shards around the inside of my kiln), and how would I get the stone out of the kiln hot, and handle it firmly, while also handling the soft glass implosion? Well, a grill tong perhaps, but it might well slip. Some sort of face shield would be good too, if it decides to jump at my face, while I finish off the glass surface, at an extra 500C above kiln temperature.

Maybe I need a larger stone to better withstand the heat when I press the implosion into it. Or maybe flint just isn't the best material for this project, though it is fairly readily available to me and naturally pitted. I wonder what stone the DeMosses use ...

So there you have it. I shall lay this idea to rest (again) for now, as I am going to be a busy busy bee for the next couple of weeks (explanation coming up in a few days).

Testing Tumbled Beads

After the first success of tumbling the seaglass pendants, of course I turned to my ladies next.

I tumbled only a few, to test before possibly ruining a whole bunch at once :) and here is the result:

On these I am not quite as enthused about the clear lines. It doesn't show much on the ivory ladies, but is very prominent on the black one. I checked in on them at 10 hours, but this is the result of 24 hours of tumbling. If I tumble them anymore there will be no nipples left, and still the clear does not seem to go away.

Which was of course the entire point I was raving about earlier, and so -

Here are my new babies!

Beads with deliberate patterns as impressed lines, then tumbled for just 4 hours. They are sooo delicious! All frosted and smooth, still translucent, and with clear paths trailing all around. They are fairly large for what I normally make, but on a short cord you don't even notice the weight.

I have a second batch in the tumbler as I write this, in other patterns and other colours, and they are huge! Also, I build them up with clear cores and just two layers of a transparent colour on the outside, so they would be a bit lighter in colour than these, which are colour all the way through. It is summer after all :)

I can't wait to see how they turn out ... :)

ETA: The before and after ...

Shiny beads

Frosted! I like it :)

Yay! :)

How to turn a large desk into a workshop table

Earlier this year I were lucky and got a desk for free through Freecycle Copenhagen. The table I had was very shaky, which is both annoying and not very usefull, and I thought this model would be much more stable with the large 'feet'.

The desk was quite enormous, so I thought I'd remodel it to better fit my needs, which was a stable jewellers bench. As you see it already has a curve, and it was even in the right side for where I wanted to place it.

So - first we cut off the excess depth

and the excess width.

The legs were secured to a metal frame under the plate. Since so much was cut off there were no room for all 3 legs and the large frame around them, so two would have to do.

The table included an extra pull-out plate, so we split the frame, cut away about 20cm, and inserted the smaller pull-out profiles to make it a whole again.

then assembled the frame ...

And put the plate on.
To keep things from rolling off the edges we cut the surplus plate and had enough for a barrier all the way round.

and Tadaa, there it is. Such a major improvement. All I need now is a bit of silicone to seal the cracks, and I'm ready to move in :)
Hurray, metal work , here I come!

Kim Fields: Sculptural Flowers Class at Bifrost Copenhagen

Last week I and a bunch of other lampworkers had a great time with the lovely Kim Fields, teaching sculptural flowers at Bifrost. Oh my, was it ever hard!

Kim's flower technique is quite advanced and takes a LOT of attention and focus from first timers.

Kim Fields showing the first bead, having everybodys attention

These are my beads from the first day.
First a small basic flower. I made mine in babyblue, with 5 petals. This one came out okay.

Basic babyblue flower

The second one, a dogwood flower, was larger, and that alone made it more difficult. My petals almost got away from me a couple of times, but I pushed them back in and gave up on the final shaping  ... well, here it is. The rubino oro came out well at least :)

A dogwood flower (supposedly)

The last bead of day 1 was a poppy, with 2 rows of petals. Phew!
Keeping all those from touching, and also keeping them all squished and nicely thin, was quite a challenge. Kim demoed it in periwinkle, but I wanted a bright red one, like the first single petal she had made to show the shape and how to ruffle the edge.

Kim's tip of the day: make single petals untill you know what you are doing. Then worry about getting them made directly at the bead.

Kim's single poppy petal. Sweet!

My first ever Poppy!

Apparently I squished the inner petals a few times too many, which made the black part smear the whole petal. The outer ones are fine, but hard to see. I think this calls for a do-over :)

We also made our own cane. I am very pleased with mine, so I might just keep it forever :)

Day 2, another challenging day:

This one, shot from it's very best angle here that makes it look fairly okay, was quite difficult, with 2 layers of different coloured leaves and petals. It is made sideways on a small barrel, so no hole in the center.

We also made a small leaf, but mine broke so I tossed it. It looked very nice until then :)

This final flower, the sweet pea ... well, it doesn't really have a good angle, so there you go. It's rather tiny, so perhaps a larger size would have been better to start out with.

Tiny Sweet Pea flower

And here they are all together for a show of size.

Phew! That was a hard 2 days, but very rewarding. Many thanks to Kim for traveling this far to teach us, to Jette for arranging the classes and to all the students for being there and completing the experience.