Lampwork

I took a class today on how to make lampworked beads. It was pretty scary at first with the fire and the melting globs of glass but once you get the hang of it and the teacher manages to pass on to the next student, it gets better. My first bead came out perfect. It's a little lime green gem. It was totally beginner's luck. The second bead came out a bit pathetic and the third surprised me a lot. On our third bead, we learned the dotting technique which is basically adding dots of another glass color to your hot bead. At one point the second rod got stuck to the bead while I was making a dot and it managed to crack the bead. I almost had an attack but stuck the little sucker back into the fire and that fixed it.

There were near misses with glass popping from the flame and making a beeline to my eye. Funny how stray objects always manage to make it towards your eye. Sometimes I would get distracted with something else I was doing and forget to twirl the mandrel or the glass rods. It was hard at first to keep track of everything - the glass rods, the mandrel, the fire and your fellow student's fire. There was a lady there who I thought was a bit fire happy. She'd open the torch valve almost all the way and light it like it was nobody's business. She was really scary but she managed not to hurt me. Thank goodness! I did end up hurting myself by foolishly grabbing a hot glass rod with my fingers. I have a nice little battle wound on my thumb. I bet you've never noticed how many times you use your thumb a day for any little thing. You don't notice it until you've burned it!

So, I made a purse pendant with my beginners beads. I think it came out pretty cute!