Monday, January 25, 2010

Wire Wrapping-1st attempt


Here's my other new technique that I played with over the weekend, not as exciting as playing with molten glass, but alot easier than I expected it to be... I've always admired this technique, and I love these results!! Here's a cool website for tutorials on this technique and many others: www.jewelrylessons.com/tutorials/all

Glass Fusing-1st attempt!


Over the weekend I played around with some new techniques, first - glass fusing, which I've always wanted to do... After 3 failed attempts, my husband and I finally "mastered" the process for full fuse, and got pretty good results for my 1st try ever. Since I had a kiln from my metal casting days, we had a head start!! In case you want to try this too, here's the formula...

1. Slowly bring temperature up to 1200 over 2-3 hours, let sit at 1200 for 1/2 hour. (to let bubbles squeeze out)

2. Ramp up to 1450-1500 as fast as possible (point where glass will "melt"), let sit here 10-15 min for a full fuse, then open door to kiln to flash vent and lower the temperature to 950 as fast as possible (to get past the yucky devitrification stage), let sit at 950 for 1/2 hour to anneal.

3. Let kiln cool off naturally, don't bother glass until it's room temperature...

Voila! Now I'm hooked, so fun and so cool!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

HUGE lot of resin!





I've been a busy girl, making a HUGE batch of resin jewelry for Valentine's Day and to beef up my Etsy store stock... Here they are in progress... Comics, conversation hearts, etc.... I found out that candy sprinkles are OK, but sugar sprinkles dissolve into the resin... Who knew??
I'll be posting the finished stock soon on my Etsy site, check me out!

Monday, January 4, 2010

Lap Blanket- Finished!



Finally finished my lap blanket, it's small, but WARM!! Probably coulda made it bigger, but I quit when I ran out of yarn!! This was fun yarn to work with, Gedifra's Super Gigante from Italy...