Floral lampwork bead gallery

As I'm very much on a floral kick at the moment, I thought I'd pop up a quick and dirty gallery page showing a few of my latest floral beads.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

The anatomy of a Lampwork Mojo Box and a little about Mini Mo's too

When my daughter was born in September 2008 there was, as you can imagine, very little time for making beads. I kept my glass melting addiction fed by making twistie cane and occasionally blowing some shards. By the end of that year I had graduated on to making my very first simple starburst murrini too and it occurred to me that these elements should all belong together in pretty little colour coordinated collections to dip into from time to time for lampworking inspiration.

In Jan 2009 I put together my first collections, Southern Belle, Wisteria Gem, Summer and Red All Over. I don't bring out Lampwork Mojo Boxes often, as I tend to work on a collection over a long period, adding to each when I discover new and beautiful elements. I usually make just two boxes in any colourway which makes each collection very special.

The Mini Mo' Colour Club was a wonderful idea given to me by the talented Kaz Baildon of Cheeky Cherub Designs. She suggested offering Mini Lampwork Mojo collection of glasswork on  a monthly subscription basis and so Mini Mo's were born. I absolutely adored making these collections from the start, working hard each month to make beautiful glasswork even better than the collection before. When I started blogging at the end of 2009 I began to post about them here too.

I fell with my son at the beginning of 2010 and had a difficult pregnancy second time around which led me to make the tough decision to take some time out from lampwork. With two preschoolers on my hands it has taken me much longer to get back in the saddle than I had anticipated. After just over a full year out from making lampwork beads, Mojo Boxes and Mini Mo's I got back to the torch full time in April this year and must confess that I'm loving being a self employed glass artist. In addition to the 12 regular places in the Mini Mo' Club I offer short term subscriptions to the Mini Mo' Colour Club in my Etsy glassy supplies shop, Frit N Chips and also lampwork beads at Kitzbitz Art Beads.

If you would like to see some of my Mini Mo' blog posts please click here.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Mini Mo' November 2011 - Point Break and Secret Garden

My glasswork collections for November are named after films but inspired by thoughts of the ocean and of country gardens. Firstly an apology, this post is going to be much longer and picture heavy than previous Mini Mo' posts for a couple of reasons, one is that I've managed to get more time at the torch than usual through October and the other is that I've used many of the elements in Novembers Mini Mo's separately rather than in combination.

The glass I have used in Piont Break is CiM French Blue, CiM Hades, Effetre Cobalt Lapis, Reichenbach Multicolor and a medley of blues in the ribbon cane.

I've used some of the ribbon cane from Piont Break to make these raised etched floral beads (you can read a bit more about them here).

This set shows Point Break shards over CiM Commando and Effetre Transparent Dark Teal. These shards are infused with fine silver leaf and have some beautiful organic patterns as a result.

This is what Point Break murrini look like when they have been applied, poked whilst still partially raised, capped with clear to trap a small bubble and then encased.

I was very lucky recently and received a bundle of the newest CiM Ltd run colours to play about with - one of the glasses was called Submarine and so I just couldn't resist the temptation to have a crack at making a yellow submarine murrini with it. Although these submurrini are the result of my just mucking around for fun, they sort of whispered in my ear as I was packaging my Point Blank glasswork and they jumped in the murrini pots too as little fun extras.

These are Multi and Hades twistie over CiM Electric Avenue. The colours in these beads are so pretty but much much subtler than my original twistie test bead over Effetre Ivory (note to self get out test bead and take pic). I am planning to pop these back in the kiln at the start of my next garaging session and see if I can kiln strike out some stronger colour definition from the Multi.

My second colorway, Secret Garden, uses CiM Sherwood, Reichenbach Multicolor, Effetre Dark Silver Plum and a medley of pinks and purples in the ribbon cane.

Dark Silver Plum shards over CiM Blush and Mojito. These shards react strongly to flame chemistry in both a propane or oxygen rich flame. I favour the oxy rich flame to get this pretty silvering effect as turning the propane low to get a smaller flame means that the shards shimmer up as they are being applied.

This set is made with DSP shards and Secret Garden Murrini. I have melted the shards and murrini flat and shaped each one with graphite to bring out colour in the the Multi. I then distorted the murrini by spot heating and twisting the glass about with a DSP stringer.The base glass here is CiM Eggplant which is a deep opal purple. There ia an interesting effect on these beads as the silver sheen appears only as a halo outline on the shards.

A set of CiM Mojito raised florals using a single 6" strip of Secret Garden ribbon cane. The central focal shows the cane used under encasement too.

The core of this vessel shaped bead has been wrapped with CiM Sherwood and Milticolor twistie which has been melted flat and then encased with Effetre 006 to magnify.

This bead used the same twistie cane as rasied vine detail, the effect is subtle and shimmery, much more noticeable in real life than I have been able to capture in this picture.

Lastly a little collection of beads that shows a variety of effects using the ribbon cane, twistie and murrini, both on the surface and under clear encasement.

Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies and Kitzbitz Art Beads

Lampwork bead giveaway

CP-giveaway-beads, originally uploaded by kitzbitz art glass by Jolene.

These pretty little blue beads have little yellow submarines in them! They are looking for a new home, pop by Craft Pimp Forum and pop your name down if you would like them to be yours. I'll draw the winners name out of the hat on Saturday 6th of November.

Ta, Jo x