More New Marbles

I'm rather fond of this one. It looks like a single coral sending out its egg into the ocean. It's a circle of SIS with inward spikes, on a purple frit background. I'm thinking it should be possible to make a group of spawning corals, though they might well lose their circular shape during implosion.

Two more in pink, a flower and a spiral, both implosions too. They are both quite low in the marble, the spiral most, which makes it hard to see properly, even in person.

I'm afraid I still need to work on my roundness. Apparently I don't pay enough attention to the roundness, while I do remove chillmarks carefully. I probably should punty several more times than I do, in fact, I probably should make myself a very simple marble and punty it over and over just to practice.

I still worry about dropping the marble, and I definately do not master any kind of cold connection yet. I make my hot connections real skinny, so there is only a little bit to melt flush in the end, but of course this makes it very easy to get the punty too hot and droopy while working on the marble.

Well, there is always Practise, Practise, Practise :)

Imploding is fun!

After my first marble session I realised that for now, the implosions was the most fun for me to make, so I made some more.

This one is my favourite so far. The white petals have a really nice curve, the whole flower is halfway up through the marble, not just at the bottom, and I even got some green leaves in below. They have a different shape than the petals, which I like because I did it on purpose :)

Also the flower goes straight up, and while it is still not a perfectly round marble, it wants to stand the right way up, all by itself. Yay!

These are the 3 new ones I got made. No cracks at all this time, no soot, and I also took care to make the surface nice and smooth and free of chillmarks so you clearly see what's inside.

The baby-blue one has been squished on top. I think I make my marias too flat to begin with, and definately squished this one too much while imploding. I got it uncentered from the beginning too, but I like the melting part so I finished it anyway.

This one I tried to make with an additional row of petals, which worked out fine, but the mass of flowing glass turned sideways while imploding, and it is topheavy too, so ... not so fabulous either.

But I love it, I do, and I want to learn more. The whole implosion process is intriguing and I look much forward to trying it again. I think I may have to make yet another list of 'things to try out', because my mind is sizzling with ideas.

Love,
Lene

My first ROUND marbles!

Ooh, I love my infinite rim mould!

Yes, I decided to go ahead and get one, since all I have heard about it is praise and goodness. Isn't it delicious and pretty and SHINY :)

And it works great too, these are my very first rounded marbles.

From the top left:
a spectacularly cracked flower marble,
a large-ish vortex in pastels and pixiedust, slightly cracked and with a ring of soot,
a slightly cracked planet marble,
an octopus experiment with a very flat 'face',
another planet with several mysteriously flat areas,
and finally the best of the bunch, a white flower with just a bit of soot at the top of the lens.

It seems perhaps I should start out a bit smaller, or perhaps by reading/watching a tutorial :)

I am not unaccustomed to keeping large masses of glass warm (large for beads anyway), but I have never used punties before. I dropped the first marble tree times (the cracked planet), but after that it went well. It is a bit of a distraction though, as is using a new tool, which may well have kept my attention from keeping the heat up.

But I am very happy with them, in anticipation of better results with practice :)

Love,
Lene

My first implosions!

Ooh did I ever have fun getting up at 3 a.m. on friday to torch before work!
Thursday evening I had re-discovered the YouTube channel of Florin Voicu. He may only have postet 5 videos, but the how-tos are making me happy.

I had first seen the one with the spider, but as he says in the beginning, it is probably best to start with something simpler if you haven't made an implosion before. So I looked at his flower tut too and made my own mix of the two flowers.

The two first ones are trash, but this is no. 4. It has tree rows of 5 blue petals and 3 white stamens for the pollen in the center.

Here is a sideview, and yeah, I know it is completely wonky, but that was not part of the challenge this time. Just to implode.

This is no. 3. I thought it looked kind of okay, so I attached a length of clear rod to it and voilá, I have a wonky hairstick :)

I wasn't sure the rod would survive coming from room temperature and getting thrown into 520 Celsius, but it did. Yay! This one has 2 rows of 4 petals, and the center stamen of 3 dots.

And speaking of pollen, check out the beauty of the little buggers over at wikipedia :)

This was so much fun I may have to get myself a marble mould. That infinite rim mould sounds awfully alluring right now ...

Love,
Lene