Light vs. Dark

Effetre Ivory, my favourite glass to use. The colour is a delicious cream, and the softness is just right for my sculpting.

While I prefer the light version for my ladies, I realise that the dark has its charm too. I have run out of my regular Light (as the load of Light I had bought, is in fact much darker), and I thought I would give the Darker version a go. Here is a pic of one lady in each of the Ivories.

The colour difference is more pronounced in real life, but this clearly shows the curdling effect of the Dark Ivory on the left, and the smoother creamyness of the Light on the right.

It is not just a colour difference though, as the surface of the two are different too. The Light is as smooth as the colour looks, the Dark has a slight texture to it, just as the rods used have a little and more texture.

The Ivories are famous for their reaction with silver, and while I love the rich caramel brown I get from fuming the Light Ivory, I think it is time I start exploring the possibilities of the Dark.

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

'My' new Gallery (part II)

I love discovering artists I haven't seen before, and I wasn't dissapointed at 'Galleriet Hornbæk'.

On the walls of the very first room of the gallery I noticed this fascinating piece by Lennart Forup

There are several pieces of his around the gallery, like these odd paintings on wood



This beautifully calm and peaceful angel painting by Maj Trolle is so lovely

I am impressed that people still make marble statues. This is right inside the door and made by Jerry Adder, who also made the painting below

Isn't art great? :)


Love,
Lene

PS: one pendant has already sold, Yay! :)

'My' new gallery! (part I)

This past friday was the opening day of a new gallery, 'Galleriet Hornbæk', in ... Hornbæk ;)

Last weekend I delivered 6 of my big ladies and an assortment of pendants to the owner, Susanne Risom, and on friday I went to the opening. It was great to see my work in the gallery among all the art. 

This is the front of the shop. It is only a window and a door wide, but inside it stretches through 3 rooms en suite, all the way to the back of the building.

Here is a window on the side wall, full of glass, ceramic bowls, bronze animals and bottlestoppers, and also some of my ladies.

This is the jewellery displaybox holding the rest of my glass, next to wild fairytale jewellery by Pernille Mouritzen.

You can see more pictures of art by other artists at Susanne's website: http://www.risom.dk/  and I'll post some of the ones I found interesting in my next post.

Love,
Lene

New Shapes

With my newfound wealth from my last show, I decided to buy myself a new tool.
I love leaf beads, but the ones I have been forming freehand so far have been fairly massive and heavy. They are beautiful and I am very proud of them, but I'd like to be able to create leaves with more of the lightness they would have in nature.

So I have invested in a leafmasher, and these are my very first mashed leaves.

I rather like them, though I can see already that the uniformity of the shapes is not entirely satisfying for me. I am pleased that the sizes are different, in fact making a perfect match might be a challenge. But that is part of the joy of nature and organic beads. They aren't supposed to match perfectly :)

I need to practise the final loop that makes them stringable. These are looped, but they are all quite wonky.  I intend to try making them on a spacerbead too, and on a length of wire. And while I try out all those solutions I will practice doing it quickly so the leaves doesn't crack from too much cooling before I am done fiddleing and re-fiddeling.

And when I get a good grip of that, it will be time for some post-mashing individual shaping, and time to get some colour and perhaps even sparkle into my work. I have after all admired this piece by Nina 'Sam' Hibler for years. Delicious! :)

Love,
Lene

Hillerød Kunstdage 2012, Saturday

The second day of the show has ended, and today I will show you a couple of favorites of mine, from the participating Amio shops.

This fabulous necklace and the beautiful trees are from Smykkeunivers.
I should have made closeups, that necklace is soo delicious. It is made from thousands of tiny seed beads and other little beads, it is firm and has a lovely weight, which is something I apreciate as quality in such a piece.

She also makes seed bead rope necklaces, beaded beads and also less involved pieces, all with good materials and beautiful elegant aesthetics.

Brightly colourful and large feather earrings from Tjekija Design.
They might be a bit much for me to actually wear, but I love them!

She also makes bracelets in reindeer skin with braided patterns of metal, leather and beads on them. Now this I can wear easily, so I brought this one home with me :) Check out her more blingy and colourful versions too.



And finally, little glass houses from Meng Design (sorry, I can't find her shoplink). Check out the millefiori for garden flowers. I am sure others have thought of it too, but I rarely look closely into fusing, so this is a first to me. Brilliant :)

It was a good day, and I look forward to tomorrow :)

Love,
Lene

Hillerød Kunstdage 2012, Friday

I did it! I signed up to participate in Hillerød Kunstdage, and today was the first of three days.
It's been a long day, so I will just leave you with a couple of pictures. Here is a view of the Amio Hall

Here is my space

and here I got to meet the two lovely ladies who made it all happen, Ann-Karina, founder of Amio.dk and Stine who worked her magic at the Frederiksborg Center

Saturday and sunday the show is open from 10am to 5pm, so come and meet the crafty people of Amio.dk and while you are here, go see all the lovely and interesting art at the artshow next door.

Love,
Lene