Dichroic glass or spinning this afternoon????What a choice.....

This piece uses an etched design of bamboo leaves (CBS glass I think) on a background of Bullseye black glass, with some tiny strips of turquoise dichroic glass along the edges, topped off with a slice of crystal clear thin glass - sounds yummy....good enough to eat.......

Time to make some more dichroic jewellery.....for Christmas, I have already been asked to show some more items to friends........so I am putting down the spinning this afternoon to make up a kiln load. I only have a small Paragon kiln but it is just right for the amount of work I do, some of my pendants are quite large but I can still get about 15 on the small kiln shelves. If I put in another shelf on stilts it seems to affect the firing temperatures and usually items on the bottom shelf towards the back do not fire properly. Sometimes it is still worth loading the kiln like this, I put my best items on the top shelf and my experiments on the bottom shelf. Items can always be fired again, especially if they are looking good.

This summer I was filling all the little spaces on the shelves with tiny 1/4 inch pieces of dichroic glass with a slightly larger piece of clear on top, these made some brilliant cabochons which I intend to use eventually to construct some three dimensional pieces. I will use a background made as I would normally make a dichroic pendant in several layers and then change the firing programme to a 'Tack Fuse' firing and balance the little cabochons on top. Hopefully they will just attach to the base piece and add even more interest to my pendants.

Help.......my husband has just collected the post, disturbing a buzzard on the way back which we have just rushed out to look at, and to make noise to keep it away from our chickens.......now I am torn between spinning or glass work......the packet contained some Wenslydale locks in some wild colours.......question is....can I keep my hands off it long enough to do some glass??????

I have diversified a little......

Spinning has taken me by storm.......I dug out my spinnning wheel, a castle form Haldane wheel, for the cupboard it has been hiding sin since we moved to France.

I had been particularly inspired by Tara of www.blondechickenboutique.com on Etsy and her web site/blog, and used her videos on You Tube to help me to self learn again to spin. 10 years ago spinning was very ordinary and I managed to learn to spin and ply some uite reasonable yarns in wool and llama. Now I only want to spin wild, chuky, art yarns but I only seem to be able to spin thin!!!!

I also spin left handed when I do everything else right handed????? Maybe that's because I was looking at people on the net as a sort of mirror image????

I have ordered some different types of yarns and a carding machine is high on my Christmas present want list. I have knitted up all the little scraps I have spun lately and have stuck them in a folder, even my 'failures', or what I consider failures but what now seems to be fashionable and desirable.

Pictures to follow

Autumn is here - time to stay in and get 'crafty'

Wet and windy here in our southern corner of France. All the autumn leaves are flying around and making a delicious carpet of colours on our drive. This has put me in a creative mood and I have recently posted some new items on www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com in autumn and winter colours.

I have also dusted off my spinning wheel and found some old fleeces we had stored for 7 years since our move to France. So I have washed, dried, carded and attempted to spin some yarn this week. When I frist leart to spin about 8 years ago, I was taught by an old lady in Wales who taught me to spine quite fine worsted yarns. Now I have really been inspired by a Blonde Chicken!!!!

Blonde Chicken Boutique is also on Etsy and has a website of her own and her yarns are chunky in the extreme...fantastic......so now I want to spin chunky yarns and I want to add in loads of additional texture from silk, banana fibres, locks of fleece, bobbles, etc., the list is as long as I can be inventive.

Today I have been collecting black walnut husks from our trees to make a natural brown dye for some of my Cheviot wool.


So watch this space for a little diversification from glass into fibres.

Up before dawn.........too early for me.....

Dichroic glass pendant - transluscent green
Green Goddess
www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com

Up too early this morning - our recent guests from the UK wanted to leave by 6am to drive all the way to the port in the north of France to sail tomorrow. Too early for me, but an early start means I can get down to making some more jewellery today.

Yesterday spring became winter again with wild winds, rain and a drop in temperatures, but we were cosy beside the log burning stove.

We ate lunch at a local restaurant, Chez Divine in Mouthoumet, Corbieres, 11 Aude. The only restaurant for miles around here and fortunately it serves good food and quite cheaply. The decor leaves a little to be desired, having changed the old fashioned chintzy wallpaper for fake plastic beams and stick-on fake stones last year. Ignor this thogh and enjoy the food.

After that I was giving a demonstration to the 'Troisieme Age' - the pensioners group here. They had asked to know how I made canes in Fimo, polymer clay for decorating little yogurt pots for making candle holders. The candle holders will be used on the tables during the village fetes this summer.

I taught myself to make canes by finding links on the web, they can be easy or complicated, either way they make spectacular designs and are really impressive.

I prefer to work in glass now as polymer clay requires too much kneading, pushing and rolling which affects the arthritis in my hands. Glass, once the cut is made is much easier on hands anf joints. I found a pistol shaped glass cutter from a mosaic website here in France which is easy to hold and use. Shop around as the prices are very varied.

Launching shop on ETSY.....www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com

Phew, I was holding my breath while adding jewellery items to my new Etsy shop - nerve wracking, and having to invent names for each piece too so much time.....is this essential I ask myself??? I will have to jot names down in a notebook as they come to me.

As my flash on the camera is jammed I had to take the photos outside - surrounded by chickens again.....I have now made up a small 'studio' on the table inside, and the photos can be readjusted on Photoshop, so I think I will get better at it.

I received some new glass pieces from Warm Glass UK yesterday so I will be making up some new items this evening. Etched glass is interesting, but etched, dichroic glass is spectacular. There are some dog tooth check designs and animal prints, which could give me some more masculin designs.....

Ready for the kiln

Here is a shelf load of potential items of jewellery ready to go into the kiln. In fact they are firing now as I write this. I cannot wait for midnight tonight when I can open the kiln. The firing process is quite long as the glass has to be slowly brought upto temperature, held at various points along the way, and then brought very slowly down to room temperature. The final process is called annealing and has to be done to strengthen the glass. If this section is skipped or done too fast, then the glass can crack and craze and can even shatter some time later, this would be particularly dangerous for a piece of jewellery worn close to the skin.

I tried to take the picture at a slight angle to show the different layers of glass, some pieces are two layers and some three. Some use thick glass and some think. I am still experimenting with the glass and my kiln, so I keep careful notes of each firing. As each piece looks so different after firing I draw a plan of the kiln shelf or take a photo when it is set up ready to go, then I number the pieces and describe what I did to make the different layers and I also list each particular glass type that I have used. You can see from the picture that the top layer is larger than the bottom one or two layers. This is so that when it slumps down in the kiln the top layer goes slight round the other layers to get a good seal on the edges. The difference in size is very slight, in fact in the photo the differnce on some of them looks enormous, it is not, that's just the angle and the light. As I am an artist and not builder, engineer or other precise craftsperson, I do not measure anything precisely, I use my 'eye. I do not want pieces to be so perfect and contrived that they look as if they have been made by machine.