The Aquariums at Regents Park Zoo, London

This picture heavy post focuses on some of the bright and beautiful fish in London Zoo's aquarium. To the left is a Royal Tang which is one of the few fish I have tried to recreate in miniature in the form of little glass murrini chips although I would like to make them all eventually.
Tang Murrini
 

Lion fish and Squirrel fish

Powder blue sturgeon fish

Angelfish

Blue Tang

Clown fish

Copperband buterfly fish

Foxface rabbitfish

Striped surgeon fish

Yellow Tang and a Royal Tang

Jolene x

Regents Park Zoo, London

Giraffe

It was my gorgeous son's 2nd birthday last week and for his special treat we took him to London Zoo in Regents Park. This post is image heavy, even though the day was overcast, I want to show you my favourite animal snaps from the trip.

Alpaca

Black Butterfly

Blue Morpho butterfly

Flamingos

Pelicans

Seahorse

Starfish

Iguana

Python

Rock Iguanas

Rabbit

Meerkat

Jolene xx

Colour Study - Peacock

As part of my blog-a-day challenge for October I am writing a series of colour studies from my own photographs - this image is of the free roaming Peacock that lives in at our local city farm.

I'm using a program called Chip It which is a free app that samples any image and picks out a colour palette using over Sherwin-Williams paint colours. The final challenge for me is to use representative colour palette as inspiration to select a pleasing palette in CoE 104 Glass.....

From left to right I have chosen

1. Reichenbach Intense Blue
2. Vetrofond Dark Turquoise 236
3. CiM Mermaid
4. CiM Cardamom
5. Effetre Dark Brown Special

This rich and vibrant teal blue selesction looks fab and is the sort of collection that I had hoped would come out of using Chip It to dissect this image. It is a really very restful colour palette though perhaps a touch of lime green or rich purple would give it a little touch more zing!

Jolene x
Frit N Chips lampwork supplies Kitzbitz Art Beads Buzzword Bracelet Beads

Beadathon: Post match analysis

I had the very best intentions of making a sort of photo diary of the beadathon weekend here, a photo every half an hour for a montage blog. As you can see here, that idea was a kind of epic fail, thankfully it was the only fail of the weekend. Heather Kelly and Laney Mead will have to suffer alone in having their picture up on my blog! These two amazing ladies got the project underway at 7.16pm and took the first shift along with Sue Reynolds. These three ladies were so dedicated they worked spilt shifts, Laney and Sue were back in the morning and Heather came back in the afternoon and helped to finish the last block along with the very lovely Kat Newman and myself.

 I would like to say a very special thank you to Ness Hearn and Sarah Thompson who worked so hard on the night shift with me, you girls were amazing and without your grit and determination this project would never have been possible.

I also want to give a very special thank you to Marlene Minhas who arrived pre-dawn through rolling mists on Saturday morning, all smiles with brioche and hot chocolate in hand at just at the right time to give the night crew a lift in spirits and thank you to Sue and Laney too for coming back at 6am and sending the night crew off to bed for a well deserved rest.

Next up I would like to thank my mate Michelle Ross for driving on her own all the way from Kent to give up her weekend to torch for the kiddies. Our youngest bead maker of the day was Rob, aged 12, supervised by his Mum, Sandy Fulbrook. Rob was just brilliant, he was determined to make a bead or two for Beads of Courage and he and Sandy did a great job. Lastly I'd like to thank Kat for propping me up at the end making me laugh a very lot. 

Above is a picture of my choc-a-block Kilncare Maxine kiln, which we ran for 16 hours. It is a superb kiln, a workhorse and very spacious and just the thing for a project like this.

I was so impressed with how well the Maxine held up to the task that I have been in touch with Lee at Kilncare and he is going to sponsor the next Beadathon by loaning us a second kiln, so no danger of running out of space next time. 

Above is Sues Paragon SC2, lent to the studio for the project, which we ran at the start and also at the end of the Beadathon to try to make best use of the annealing space we had. On the right are the very first beads we made, annealed during the night shift and cleaned and ready for show and tell when a photographer from the local paper came  to visit us at lunchtime on Saturday (I hold out no hope that I will look ok in the picture in the paper, 17 hours into the Beadathon, wild eyed and drunken on 3 hours sleep, oh well :-D)

I am thrilled to be able to say though that we smashed our just giving page target of £500 and donations are still coming in. Our page will still be open for another week or two so please feel free to add a copper of two to the pot, it is for a great cause.

I would like to take a moment also to thank every single person who dropped in to see us via the live web feed,  you cheered us on, made us laugh and made the whole experience special because we could share it with you.


I thought I would leave you with a mini gallery of some of the 179 beads we collectively made this weekend. I think they will make a lot of brave kids smile.

Jolene x

Mini Mo' Sept 2012 - Gorgeous Grapefruit and Luscious Limes

I had a wonderful compliment about this collection form one of my Mini Mo' ladies, she said that her daughter said that you can practically smell the lime! That means mission accomplished then! Luscious Limes is my first collection for September and uses Effetre Petrol Green 218, CiM Cardamom and Effetre Transparent Green 022

To the left is a tall and delicious summer Mojito choc full of lime wedges with a slice on the side.

Just for fun you can click here for a couple of super simple recipes Virgin Mojitos, the ginger ale version is nom nom nom.

Next up is a special Lush Limes bracelet bead collection created with a combination of delicious looking bright green glass including CiM Appletini, CiM Mojito and CiM Gooseberry.

To the right is a collection of scrummy looking chocolate beads decorated with Lime, Grapefruit or Leaf murrini and texture stamps.

My next colourway is called Gorgeous Grapefruit and it has been created using Effetre Light Lemon Yellow 404, CiM Lemon Drop and CiM Linen.

This set of Oak leaves featuring my ltd edition Lemon shards was my challenge entry for the Craft Pimp Forum theme challenge in September - Autumn

3 pretty pairs of bright Grapefruit big hole bracelet beads featuring Gorgeous Grapefruit twistie cane.

The last image I'd like to show you for September t is this one of some pretty oval choc beads. It was the citrus murrini in these two Mini Mo' collections that made me want to buy the Kati was here! La Patisserie press (tutorials here) that made me make the choc beads that made me experiment with sweet treat looking glass colours that made me fall in love with CiM Ghee - lovely!


Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies Kitzbitz Art Beads Buzzword Bracelet Beads

Colour Study - Pink Tipped Chrysanthemum

The third in my series of colour studies for October is this pink tipped Chrysanthemum. I took the image last week walking back form preschool on a rainy morning.

I'm going to use a free program called Chip It which is a free app that samples any image and picks out a colour palette using over Sherwin-Williams paint colours. The final challenge for me is to try draw out a representative colour palette using CoE 104 Glass.....

The glass I have chosen for this palette from left to right is

1. Lauscha Creme Brulee
2. CiM Olive
3. Lauscha Pink Opaque
4. Effetre Handpulled Rubino Ora (old batch)
5. Reichenbach Soft Violet

I think it would have been nigh impossible to put this selection together without the inclusion of the gorgeous Handpulled Rubino Ora. There are so few of these deep rich fuchsia/magenta shades of glass available to buy in CoE 104 glass and my whole selection is two shades lighter across the board than I would have liked to be able to create but I think the relationships between the glass rods is similar to the Chip It palette for this image. 

Jolene x
Frit N Chips lampwork supplies Kitzbitz Art Beads Buzzword Bracelet Beads

We did it!

The Beadathon was just amazing, too utterly shattered right now to be able to tell you quite how brilliant is was but I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part and supported over the past day and night. We reached our fundraising target and made amazing beads for the children and teens on the Beads of Courage program in the UK.

You guys rocked!

Night night, Jo xx

The Beadathon is go!

The Beadathon is live! You can see a peek of what is happening right now on this embedded live stream image or for a better look click on the link below the frame to go you my Ustream channel.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kitzbitz

Here is a quick summary on what the Beadathon is all about - 24 hours of continuous lampwork bead making by 10 UK Lampwork artists working in shifts through the night and day. All beads made and funds raised will be donated to UK based childhood cancer awareness charily called Be Child Cancer Aware for the Beads of Courage program which is a wonderful project!

Here is our Just Giving page

http://www.bechildcanceraware.org/beads-of-courage/

Please take a look Thanks, Jolene xx

Reichenbach Deep Black stringer reaction tute

Reichenbach Deep black does a really cool reaction thing giving the appearance of a central white line running through it when used as fine stringer over some base glass colours. I have not yet found many colours where it will "split" and do it's thing, just 3 so far.

This is the bead where I first spotted this odd but cool reaction, fine Deep Black stringer over Reichenbach Mystic Red. The fine lines that run around the circumference of the bead have been created with Reichenbach deep black stringer that was no more than 1/2mm wide (the photo is much larger than the bead in real life).


The lines that intersect the fine stringer work and look like thick spokes are also Reichenbach deep black but have been created with much thicker stringer. As you can see there is no sign at all of a white reaction line.




CiM Cirrus also has this fabulous central white reaction line with fine Reichenbach Deep Black stringer as you can see from this next picture.

CiM Gooseberry ltd run is the third glass I have found where there is a white reaction line with fine Reichenbach Deep Black stringer but you can also see this reaction happening with tiny Deep Black dots. It also causes dots made with silvered ivory stringer to pool in the center.

Updated 1st Aug 2013 - have discovered another fab colour that does this yum scrum thing with RDB stringer, to the right is CiM Green Lantern ltd run


Have fun experimenting,
Jolene x

Frit N Chips lampwork supplies Kitzbitz Art Beads Buzzword Bracelet Beads

Operation tidy that studio!

Yup I really am that disorganised and messy! It usually doesn't matter too much as most the time it is just me in the studio/workshop. I usually have a big clear up every three months or so, when having everything I have used over the past several weeks is still sitting there on my workbench which means that I can't find what it is that I'm looking for, lost beneath a pile of glass rod shorts, stringer and tools.

With the Beadathon on the horizon I thought rather than the usual spring clean that is was a good opportunity charge of the situation, move things about in the studio a bit to open up some space and finally replace the original cooker hood style ventilation here with the brilliant Progrow ventilation I've had here for a while to both torch workstations instead of having it just on my main desk for the Mini CC.

Here is a quick snap of some of the glassy goodies all ready for the weekend, rods, shorts, shards, twisties and tools galore!

These last two images are of the desks, to the left is the Carlisle Mini CC and to the right is the Nortel Minor torch, both are fabulous workhorses. I thought I'd show these because it will likely be quite a while before they are as clear as this again!

Last night I did a quick final test broadcast via Ustream  - http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kitzbitz as we are planning to broadcast the whole weekends event live from here if at all possible and it was looking good, Fingers crossed it will work alright on the night. We are getting the bead making marathon underway between 7pm and 7.30pm on Friday night (12th October) and I am feeling pretty excited about the challenge! Bring it on :-D

Jolene xx