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.

Coming up: This years get-together of the Danish Glass Beadmakers

Just a short note before I dash off to this years Beadmakers Ball at Ravstedhus in Southern Jutland.
Okay, it's not a Ball, but I liked the alliteration :)

I any case - in just a few hours I'll be off for Jutland and 2 days of all glass and fire. Yay!

This year, in addition to two full days of demos,  we have not one, but two bead competitions, and I can't wait to see what has been sent in. Here below are my submissions.

First, for the single lose flower themed bead, I have sent in a little flower fairy.

Baby flowerfairy hugging her pet Ladybird

And for the new competition, which I will translate to 'Finished Work' I sent in this emerging fairy pendant, hanging from a grass leaf I made from copper.

Emerging butterfly fairy pendant on handmade copper stand

And a close-up of the pendant

Emerging pendant

She has little wings on her back and is not yet fully emerged from her crysalis.

That is all for now. I must pack up the last few things and get my car on the road. I shall return during the next week with a photo report af the weekend.
Have fun till then :)

Tolkien Event at Galleri Castens!

The premiere of the new Hobbit movie is just around the corner, and jeweler extraordinaire Karin Castens of Galleri Castens in Copenhagen is making an event of it.

She has made a series of jewelry with an elven theme. It fits her style perfectly, and this saturday, on dec. 8'th at 2pm you are invited to come to her beautiful shop and enjoy a free Tolkien themed harp concert and the unveiling of her new pieces.

She has only revealed one of her designs, a gorgeous pair of earrings. They are so very pretty and I want them! I'll pet them and squeeze them and name them 'my precious'.
You can see them here, on her facebook page, where you might also be very lucky and win a pair! Yes, Galleri Castens has been touched by the spirit of Christmas and is giving away treasures right and left (or at least a fabulous piece every sunday until Christmas). Go and like her page NOW to have a chance at winning.
 
Karin also asked all of us, who have pieces in her gallery, if we would like to participate in creating Tolkien inspired jewelry for the event. Why yes, yes I would :)

My first idea got dumped pretty quickly, and my second thought was to make orc teeth and maybe some bones. But when I showed my children the tooth I had made, and asked them what it was (is it a pelican? is it a tadpole? well, at least one child suggested it was a claw) it was pretty obvious I'd need more time to practice to be able to pull that off.

In the end I was very pleased to send in this leaf and flower necklace on handpainted silk ribbon.

Making this have me tempted to do an all flowers necklace, with different colours and sizes all around the neck. That would be lovely for spring :)

Now I am looking very much forward to saturday, where I will go and have a listen and a look at all the beauties that has been made. Want to join me? :)

KM&V Countdown - Week 3

Argh, Only 18 days to go! And still I have no giftbags. After the last failure I am wary of shopping online, but I feel the deadline breathing down the back of my neck, so today I'll fire off an order and hope for the best.

This week I got a few good things done. I ordered more glass, a load of bails, some leathernecklaces for the pendants (need more), some earrings for the flowers (need more) and 2 display trays in black (need more). I also found some other display objects that I hope will be good with my ladies. The lofty idea I had of building some sort of shelf arrangement is not going to happen, so I am looking for alternatives.

I also celebrated my birthday on friday by taking the day off of work. I got in a nice couple of hours of torchtime, Yay! then proceeded to housecleaning (a bit less of a yay, but nice in the end) and picking up the kids early.

(sorry about the picture. It's getting dark earlier now, so I had to use flash)



Bye for now,

Lene

KM&V Countdown - week 4

This week was very productive, and the weekend had a to-do list like you wouldn't believe. I am so ready to sleep, and I'll leave you with theese pictures of what I got made.

The pods by the way, are on a base of opal yellow. I got some after reading a lot of raves on Lampwork Etc., but I really like ivory a lot better since it fumes over so nicely. I'll have to go back and search to see what the excellence of opal yellow is, because so far I don't see it.

I also made and cored this bead. It is a birthday present for my mother, and the colour of the 'eyes' came out especially well and shines when seen from the side. I am very pleased with it :)

That is all for now, see you next week,
Lene