Kim Fields: Take Flight Class, at Bifrost Copenhagen

So finally, here are my bird beads from the Kim Fields class, in order of completion.

Day 1:

First bird, 3 layers of wings on such a small body is not easy. The head is tilted to the left. I didn't mean to, but I like it :)

Second bird, an owl, came out kind of okay. With a white coating on the belly, wings on the back, a tiny bit of a tail and many many tiny little claws. The eyes were difficult, in that the indentations in the white were easily lost since white glass is so soft. The beak is more of a nose, but the placement is good. The horns ... meh.

Bird no.3. A little extra one I fit in, in the afternoon. Nothing special.

Day 2:

Bird no.4 the Pudgie. Markings around the beak and eyes. Took a lot of fiddeling and didn't come out too well. Also made me forget to heat the tail, so it popped off later in the kiln. Oh well ...

Bird no.5 An actual bird, the Vermillion Flycatcher. Mine is a bit chubby, but I like it all the same. The black line on his face was supposed to go through the eye and through the beak, but as red turns black when hot, it was not easy to see where the colours met. Trying to tell the to colours apart, I got it too hot and the line flowed downwards. An ekstra dot of red on the top of the head pushed the line too.

This final bird we made is the Musvit. I am very pleased with how it came out. See how the head is round with an angle at the back and a full melt-in at the front? It has a good size too, compared to the body. See the half-circle marking on the cheek, and the eyes properly indented? And it has a line of black running down the chest and some white under the tail.

The wings need work in the shape and thickness, but they have a lighter line across on the upper part, and a coating of striated stringer (which I made myself, Woot!) on the 2 lower wing layers. It is on the topside of the tail too.

After only 5 sparrow shaped birds ever, I'd like to declare it a success. Yay! :)

This last bird is not made by me. It is made by Kim Fields herself, and now resides in my glass collection. Isn't it fabulous? :)

All in all I have to say it was a wonderful experience. Being in a room full of hyper-focused people is a special feeling, and I am very pleased I got to be a part of this class.
Thank you to all involved.

Kim Fields: Take Flight Class, at Bifrost Copenhagen

Oh my! Did I ever have the best two days with Kim Fields and the other students over at Bifrost Studio Glas. Oh yes :)

I almost didn't make it, being very ill om monday. I was in bed all day and couldn't eat a thing. I thought there were no way I could be at the class I had looked forward to for months.
Tuesday morning I felt somewhat better, though still doubting I could last the full day, but off I went with determination. And lo and behold, the excitement of the class and the good food we got (+ a little bit of coca cola) kept me on my feet all day. Yay!

The only birds I have made before this course has been tiny one-colour spacers with a dot-head, tail and little squished dots for wings. They are all cute and fine for earrings, and where actually the first thing I made back in 2007 when I got my torch and tools.

Now however, I feel I can move on to bigger and better, and since I love to sculpt my lampwork, this class seemed like just the thing for me. And it was! I had a blast :)



Kim Fields making a fabulous and complex Toucan

And I learned so much from Kim!
Sculpting colourful birds is nothing like sculpting goddesses. You have to be very precise with the heating or you'll loose definition on the previous steps. I learned about precision heating, laying down lines and not have them move while melting in, softening the base, but not loose the shape of little dots on top, pulling tiny dots into shapes with the tip of a stringer ... I even made my very first cane. Hooray!
It was simply a fabulous class, and I am so happy I got to go after all. 



This is the Toucan, finished but for the final turn of the head

We, the students, did not make a Toucan, the beak alone took half an hour to make, but it was interesting to watch the process, in case we should feel adventurous later at home :)

We did get to make this one below. I don't know the name in english, but Kim had spottet it out her window in the morning, and it is one of the sweetest local birds I know of. It was the last one we all made, complete with face- and chestmarkings, and 3 layers of double layered wings, using the striated cane we made ourselves.
I was very pleased with my version of this one as it went into the kiln, and I hope I will be when it comes out too. I look forward to getting my birds from day 2 in the mail, so I can post them all together.


The danish name for this bird is Musvit

Many, many thanks to Kim for coming all this way to teach us, and to Jette for arranging it and for taking so good care of us while we got lost in colours and shapes and flames.
Thank you!!!

Fish- and Mandalabeads

It seems that over the summer I have developed a fondness for large beads. Usually I don't wear large or colourful jewelry, but lately I have been. Still within my prefered somewhat muted colour palette, but for me these are very flashy. 

First I made fish beads like this one:

I even finished up 2 as necklaces, for Karin Castens sea/mermaid themed exhibition in august. This is not my biggest fish, but it will fill the center of your palm up nicely. This one and his purple/mintygreen friend can still be found at Castens on Holbergsgade 19a.

Then I happened to come across Kristina Logans video clip of her making her wonderful disc-shaped beads, and I had to try that too.
Mandala beads, a lovely shape to fondle. Mine with large holes and lots of texture.

 

Do not drop on tiled floor!
This one, unfortunately, is no more :(

 

I have ordered silk ribbons for these circular goodies, and they will be necklaces too shortly. While I wait I will see what fun variations I can come up with. Ideas are swirling :)

Lene

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 :)

Back from a Beadiful weekend (part II)

Sunday, the second day of the event, is open for the public. From 10am to 5pm there are demos to watch, you can try making your own bead, there is a beadcontest to vote for, both Ravstedhus and Ombos are open for business, and finally, there is the bead fair, full of awesomeness to bring home.

Here is my booth

and here is Martina Schlemminger's, which was next to mine. I could use some more colour, don't you think?

Here is a picture of some lampworkers looking at the contest beads. The theme was 'Eventyr', the danish word for fairytale. It also means adventure, so there is room for interpretation :)

And here are the winning beads!
First place goes to Connie Sørensen for the Sleeping Beauty Castle
Second place goes to my three Tinderbox Dogs (woohoo!!)
and the shared Third place goes to Bente Clausen's Goddess and Matina Schlemminger's Dragonhead.
Hooray, Congratulations all around! :)

You can see all the (13) participating beads at Brittas Blog Pibbs. She has made an extensive account of the weekend, 4 posts long: post 1, post 2, post 3 and post 4. Go have a look, there's a ton of pictures :)

Spending a whole day looking at beads can make you fall in love. This year I brought home this fun and colourful mushroom from Martina and the fabulous glass pen below. And I didn't need a full day, it was love at first sight :)

Glorious, aren't they? And now I just need some ink. Martina had brought some, but it never crossed my mind that I would need that too. I just loved the glass as it was. Yum!

Then I went shopping for materials. I got some glass, light ivory, sea colours and pinks, and also some tubing so I can try the blowing technique we saw saturday night.

And some leather cord necklaces, some copper wire for leaves probably, and 3 magnetic locks with inlays, so I can make either bracelets or necklaces on wire. Can you believe I have never made a beaded bracelet?

I also got 3 large neckdisplays and a hollow mandrel with a blowhole for hollow beads.
Yup, definately a great weekend :)

Lene

Back from a Beadiful weekend (part I)

Hooray! What a wonderful weekend :)

It is such a treat to be able to visit the one and only annual lampwork event of the country. This was the third year I got to visit the lovely south of Jutland and spend a full two days on nothing but lampwork.

Beautiful clouds over the flat land of southern Jutland

The first day, saturday, is for members of 'Foreningen Danske Glasperler' only.

We started out with Thomas Risom, who told us about glass beads from the times of the vikings and the first glass bead maker in Denmark, located in Ribe. He was very entertaining, and I enjoyed hearing him speak even if ancient beads doesn't interest me much.

Later he showed us the bead volcano he had made himself from clay, sand and horse droppings. It does not go as hot as our torches, but it goes up to about 900 C which is enough to round out the beads. You can see more pictures of his process at his vikingblog.

Thomas and Jesper working the bead volcano

Then Jytte Petersen showed us how she makes the decorative pins, known in Denmark as 'nipsenåle'. I was looking forward to this because I have made a few of them myself.
Jytte makes them in the old fashioned style. They are quite adorable, tiny little creatures, all with a very happy body language.

Jytte Petersen making a bird pin



Grooming bird, seahorse, horse, elephant and a happy, happy pig :)
The seahorse and the elephant went home with me,
along with another seahorse and a simple bird


Later Martina Schlemminger showed us her mixed colour beads. The green/yellow combination is very popular in Germany this year.



Martina Schlemminger spinning a bead




Martinas Bead Candy, Yum!

 and Christiane Strauss of Ombos showed the chrysantemum bead.



Christiane Strauss making a chrysantemum bead

In the afternoon Tom Lundsten showed us the process of making a beadstamp. He is working on making a product for Ravstedhus, where you can mail off a drawing and get it made into a brass stamp. Exciting!

After dinner at the local Inn, we went back to hear from Tina Moeslund. She showed her set-up for engraving beads and also a super easy way to center a 1 wire bracelet into a 5mm magnetic clasp. It involves a centering bit which also makes it very easy to get a very secure and tight closure.

Finally to end a wonderful day, Jens Christian Kondrup blew hollow beads from blobs of molten soft glass, and it didn't even crack from cooling off in open air. I got myself a couple of tubes so I can try this at home :)

Phew. You can certainly learn and experience a lot in just one day!
I only got a little bit lost on the way back to my B&B :)

More pics in my next post, including the contest beads ...

No shopping notice!

I'm back, and the shop is open again :)

The shop over here
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is closed till monday, when I return from the lampworkers get together.

I'll be off in just a few hours, Yay!!


Have a great weekend <3