More plasma

You all knew it was only a matter of time before I came up with a blue version of the plasma doughnut nuggets, didn't you?! Yes, predictable old me, here they are. They go really well with blue denim, I have got a big batch of these annealing in the kiln as I type so they'll be turned into jewellery before the weekend. :-)

I have gone a bit mad on these plasma beads, I know but I will be doing something different soon, I promise.

This is a PS I got today in an e-mail from my sister, Sandy. She commutes to London every day on the train; she's so funny, she should have a blog herself!

P.S. You know how wet it was this morning - well, it was when I was waiting for the train anyway .... I was trying to fold up my soaking wet brolly whilst fighting for a seat this morning and the bloomin' thing sprung open again and soaked everyone in the carriage! - ooops! (it's an automatic one and you really have to struggle to get it to click) - I was very apologetic and I think the passengers saw the funny side - I kept giggling for ages after though!

From pears to pairs

First of all, here's a picture of some pears growing on the West wall of our cottage. This is our third summer here, the first year, we didn't get any at all because whoever pruned it before we arrived, did it at the wrong time of year and cut off the flowering branches. Last year we got lots of teeny weeny pears which we left to the wasps. There are fewer this year but they look far more promising (which they have no right to do at all as I haven't done anything to the plant at all!)
So ... clever link coming up here, from pears to pairs (of earrings!) These are the earrings that I made for my sister and I to match our pendants, Sandy has already seen the photograph, though she hasn't got her jewellery yet (soon, Sandy, I promise!)

I wasn't going to blog about these at all as they won't be for sale on my stall however, the earrings have a new component that I'm introducing to my work which I realised today I haven't told you about - the little silver bit at all top is made from PMC. The idea behind this design is that the earring is a stylised flower. The PMC silver bit at the top is the covering of the flower bud reflexed back after the flower opened. The two glass beads together are the flower, the closest flower I can think of shape-wise would be a fuchsia (though the colour is way off!!) and then the trailing bits of silver chain hanging down are the stamens.

I liked the shallow reflexed item a lot but thought it would be a lot more dramatic with lots of petals and more finely divided so I some eight petalled versions but unfortunately, at the greenware stage whilst I was refining edges and sanding out minor blemishes, this happened - I have four like this! All attempts at repairing them at the greenware stage have ended in frustration and the broken ones now look much worse than the picture - they will be recycled into PMC paste I think.
Out of six, I did manage to get two made without breaking them and here's the result on a pear (ha!) of earrings made with a couple of my orange/red plasma doughnut nuggets and some 8mm carnelian rounds. I clearly need more practice in being gentle with PMC at the unfired fragile biscuit/greenware stage. Fortunately, once it's fired, its indistinguishable from normal fine silver and can be handled normally.

The bead that got away

Out of the many experiments I did last week, this week I chose two colours of my new plasma doughnut nugget beads to make jewellery with. Here are earrings and a bracelet in an orange/red combination.



When I made the orange/red plasma doughnut beads, there was one that just wouldn't come off the mandrel. The irritating thing from my point of view is that the bead moved about an inch but then wouldn't come off the end; I've never had this before. Very occasionally, beads will get stuck but generally, they stay stuck to the part of the mandrel they were made and it's usually a failure of the bead release during bead construction. You can see gouge marks made by my pliers as I tried to grip the mandrel whilst pulling with all my might but I have had to admit defeat.

I took this photograph of some emerald plasna doughnut nugget beads yesterday. I have made a bracelet and two pairs of earrings out of them but the light had gone by the time I finished making them so no photographs of those; the beads look lovely combined with citrine and green aventurine.

All the jewellery is available to be viewed and purchased at my stall on All Saints Art & Craft Market in Cambridge tomorrow. :-)

Multi-colour plasma beads and first anniversary beads

Here are some more plasma doughnut nuggets made using a multi-coloured frit blend and clear glass. Encouraged by how they turned out, I gave myself the day off making annniversary beads today and experimented with making more doughnut nuggets using lots of different frit blends and also different encasing glass, not just clear. It was great fun and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of the kiln later!

Yesterday I was all discipline and got 25 or so anniversary beads made and it took all morning. Groan! The glass is much thicker than Bombay Sapphire, Perrier Water or wine bottles that I also recycle. The shards are even a bit thicker than the Cava bottle that I've got used to. These champagne bottles take an absolute age to melt even with my Mini Carlisle torch which is supposed to be an entry level torch for Borosilicate glass.


Here are about half of the beads I made yesterday, I'm still not crazy about the colour of the glass but I'm confident they will look completely different once I get them teamed with other beads and gemstones. I'm steeling myself to make a load more tomorrow and hopefully I won't have to make any more!