EllyLoo Creations-Lampwork & Jewelry

I’ve been able to take this tool home to evaluate it!

So far, I’ve only done a few beads… I’ll let you know how things go!

Here’s a picture so far!
It’s one of my firsts, so it’s not as perfect as I’d like. I still have a learning curve.

Nortel told me it would be about 300$ Canadian, all inclusive once they start selling it. In boring grey or rocket red! 
Dwyn from Dragonjools has a great writeup about it that you can read for now, while I learn.

Hi! I said I’d show you what I cooked up using the optic mold 2 posts ago, and here you go!

This is a striped stringer that I made. 

I plunged soft glass into the mold until it came out with a nice clean shape–and by the way, this will take a few tries!  You have to make sure the glob fits into the hole without catching, tamp it down, bring it out, melt a bit more on the rod just behind the shape you just made, fit it in again, tamp it down… etc etc… until you have a nice inch of ’shape’.  Take a stringer of whatever stripes you want, and then lay them down in the grooves.  Take another glass rod or a mandrel, and use it as a punty, attaching it to the end.  Melt it down, keeping the stripes straight, and when you have it soft enough, pause, take it out of the flame, count to 3 and pull!

Why did I make yellow on clear?  I would like to put cute little stamen in the middle of my flowers.  Here’s my first try. I decided I need more practice.  Like… I don’t like how the stringer melted a ring around itself…I’ll have to experiment more.   Anyhow, please also ignore the scorched glass, my clear clearly wasn’t cleaned right! I do the last moment “armit swipe”, hoping it’ll get most of the gunk.  But I DO like the cute little stamen it leaves behind! 

There’s another striped stringer used in this bead, can you spot it?

This is one of the most common questions I’ve heard about this type of bead.  It’s quite flattering! 

There actually are no real flowers in this bead!  Even if I tried, the poor flower would vaporize in the flame I use to melt the glass!  Everything you see, each design element, is made from different colours of glass!  This bead is made from layers upon layers of glass. 

The bottom layer is black, and I drizzled colours on top of it that make it look like vines.  Then I “encase” it all with a thick layer of clear glass.  Once I get the basic shape I want, I start adding the ‘flowers’.  Each flower in this bead is comprised of 6 very thin layers of glass! 

Pretty suprising, even to me, when I just counted it up! The design is made up of dots of glass, melted in, and layers of dots on top of it.  It still looks like a bunch of dots, until I take a sharp tool, and POKE the center down deep into the bead. This makes the dots all of a sudden become PETALS.  And if you look closely, you’ll see a bubble trapped in the middle of each flower, sparkling and special.  This is done deliberately.

Since each floral like this has so many layers, the time taken to make it can range from 20 minutes to an hour!  It all depends on how many flowers, layers and other details are included! In this bead, I put a little bit of Dichroic glass into it for a beautiful delicate sparkle.

This bead is made into a pendant already, and if you purchase it, will come ready to wear right out of the box!  It’s a lovely size.  Don’t forget to tell me how long you would like the chain!  
$50 + shipping($6.50)

Chain Length?

I had a number of people ask me how I do my pictures.
I’ll say first, that I’m not a professional photographer, and MOST of my camera remains a mystery. I still have to learn how to set white balance and fstops etc…
BUT, I think that good pictures can be achieved with any decent digital camera! I only bought myself a digital SLR because I wanted to bring it out side and perhaps see if photography was my thing. It is, as long as I remember what settings do what…and my brain is notoriously like swiss cheese…mmmm….cheeeeeese.

ANYhow, what was I saying? Oh yeah!
So, you have a bead or some small object.
You want to take a picture of it.
Set your camera to “macro”.  On most digital cameras, it looks like a flower.  This means you can be really close.   Take as MANY pictures as you like until you get it right!  For every shot I show people, there are about 5-10 discarded ones.  I have my camera set so that I can hold the button down and take multiple shots, so that if one is shaky, there will DEFINITELY be one that’s not!  It’s digital! Be free!  Dare a little!

This is the set up I have for the wintertime:

  I have a 2nd hand light tent that I bought from a friend for about 20 dollars, but I think you can find something similar at walmart, or a reputable place on ebay (be careful!!).  You can rig up your own as well…you need a fabric that will diffuse the light and not block it, not cast shadows from any sort of pattern on it…try frosted glass or plastic, that might work well!

I have at least 3 lights.  As you see, 2 are clip on, and one is not, that’s just because it’s what I had available.  Clip on’s are very convenient, and bendy necks are great to position!  I could probably do with more, but my outlets are full.

I have a greyscale  background, but you can pick anything you like. You can find places on the web to print your own greyscale background out with or you can go into a program like publisher and make a page that’s nothing but gradient, and you make your own! It will be out of focus anyhow when you take a picture, so you could use a square of fabric or whatever your heart desires. Experiment!  Leave it blank for a clean look!

My riser is something I also got second hand–all it is is a piece of white plastic bent to make a shelf.  Use something that won’t pick up dirt and hairs and dust.  Something that doesn’t have a pattern.  I’ve seen people use mirrors or even clear glass to make it seem like their piece is floating on air!  (I still want to try that!!)

My lights are daylight bulbs. Not the yellowy electricity saver ones, but crisp white light.  

Here, Let me show you:        

 In the summertime, I prefer taking the tent out, putting it on the roof/hood of my car and letting sunlight be my lighting.  It takes WAY less ‘after’ work when I do that!

My after work is this:  I crop my photos, fix the colours if they’re off (I told you, I’m still learning about white balance), and if the picture is dull, I fix the levels to brighten it a bit.  I do what I can to make it as true to reality as I can.  I add borders if I want, and then I’m done!  It’s off to Etsy and Deviantart, and other places to show them off.

Let me know if this helps you!  If you have any questions, feel free to comment!

I am getting ready for Christmas right now! For me, this means, torching whenever I can, and putting together as many pendants and jewelry as I can stand.  Usually, when I need to do a load of laundry, I stay in and make up pendants.  Why? Because the house is wired so that if the washing machine AND the kiln are on, I short the whole basement out!  heheh.

This year is neat, because my “Fairy Godmothers” or “lil ladies” are getting in the spotlight…Would you like to see how I make them? Let me see if I can successfully embed my one and only Youtube video tutorial I’ve ever made.  It’s very dark, forgive me, but when I make more, I’ll be better.   I call them ‘Fairy Godmothers’ sometimes.. they have wings, and they remind me of the lil chubby Fairy Godmothers in Sleeping Beauty.  You’ll also hear them called ‘goddesses’, because they’re reminiscent of the ancient fertility goddesses.

 
So I have this piece in in my shop right now…and it has little floating bubbles in each clear dot.
These bubbles are suspended in the glass, and each one was done on purpose.

How does one suspend a bubble in glass?
Here’s what I did on this one:
I placed a small dot of clear on the bead, and poked it with a sharp tool (a sharpened pencil will even do!  Just don’t burn the wood!)  Don’t focus the heat on the divot, or else it’ll suck back together, and fill in the hole.  Get another glob of clear, and make another dot on top of it, trapping the air inside.  Now you can melt the dots into each other to form 1 dot. 

Easy as that!