Golden Harvest is finally finished!

Golden Harvest is now offered in my Internet boutique Poladora!

Since the last update below, I have quilted the front to a backing of coordinating fabric - a beautiful and elegant leaf patterned fabric in the same color way as the top, with golden outlines of some of the leaves. This fabric made up some of the pieces in the top as well.

The bias binding is made from another coordinating fabric that I also used on the top, with swirls and golden dots.

To see close ups of the detail of the embroidery and beading, click on Poladora and take a peek!

Attracked to the Flame - Part V

Here you can see my kiln with its front door open. Inside is a collection of waste glass (bad work or trouble with annealing), that I'm reheating so I can remake it into something else. (In order to do that, I have to make sure that all of the release agent is removed from the inside of the bead.)

The little "tray" is enamel-coated steel and is filled with popcorn salt. This is a great way to place your marbles in the kiln for annealing and not have them either roll around - or worse - roll right back out of the kiln and into your lap! The popcorn salt is fine enough that if you place the marble into the tray at the right moment of hardening, it will not make any marks on the marble's surface.

If I am not making marbles, I remove the tray and lay my mandrels with finished beads on them right on the floor of the kiln, which is coated with a thin layer of popcorn salt in the back. (The inside of the kiln is short enough that the mandrel can still stick out a bit at the end.) The "trap door" of the opening, with its soft insulation layer, wraps itself around any mandrels that may be sticking out of the kiln to seal in the heat.

Different glasses need different temperatures for annealing. I am usually working at an annealing temperature of between 950 and 1000 degrees F.

Attracked to the Flame - Part IV

In this picture, you can see some of my mandrels laying on my work surface. (My work surface is metal in case some hot glass spits off of a rod I'm trying to heat, or if the glass gets so hot that it literally drips off of the rod and onto the surface of my desk.)

The mandrels are the metal rods and are made out of stainless steel so they don't rust. They look lighter in color at the tip because I have just finished running each of them over my hubby's belt sander to get a nice roughed-up surface for the release agent to adhere to. The release agent is something you stick the rods into and allow to dry before using the mandrel to make a bead. This allows you to remove the bead from the mandrel after it has been annealed in the oven and cooled down. If you did not use release agent, the melted glass would stick right to the rod permanently. You can get release agent in dark gray or light blue. I prefer the light blue since you can never remove 100% of the release agent from the hole in the bead, and anything left over, if light blue, has a cleaner look than the dark gray, which tends to look dirty. If I have a really clear bead, I like to do the extra work to get all of the release agent out, which takes a lot of sanding with tools with diamond bits on them, and then finish the piece by coating the inside of the hole with a clear laquer.

Golden Harvest Progress...

I have finished the "embellishments" on the top of this mini Pizzazz quilt. I've used shiny metallic thread to outline some of the prominent golden outlined elements, and beaded where I thought it would make the most impact. This is the part of the process that takes the longest amount of time.

This represents the beading I did in the center of the daisy mums. The size of the beads are 11/0 in a matte brown with some speckle.

This photo shows the beading I did to enhance the berries. I used a lighter color in the center and darker cranberry beads around the outer areas to create a three dimensional look. These beads are also 11/0 glass beads in a shiny-clear finish. The center beads are clear on the outside and colored pink on the inside.

This last photo represents some of the gold beading I did to follow the swirling on one of the coordinating fabrics in the piece. These are precision made Aico gold coated glass beads, size 11/0 in hexagon shape and a matte finish.

The next step is to sew the backing fabric to the top and begin "quilting" the two pieces together.

Attracked to the Flame - Part III

Speaking of getting burned... This is the kiln. When I bring the temperature up to around 1,000 degrees F. to anneal my glass work, the outside of the kiln gets hot to the touch as well - especially the metal parts! However, these warm surface areas outside of the kiln become a very useful tool. (The white top you see does not get as hot.)

In the first picture, you can see some glass rods and "frit", along with some stringers up on top of the kiln. The reason they are there is to warm them prior to use. If you warm your rods before taking them to the flame for melting, it is less likely that they will crack or break. Broken rods can shoot hot glass across a room and if it lands on something that can be burned, it will leave a permanent scar - not to mention if it hits your face! (Although, typically it will shoot away from you - so be aware of what is lying in front of your working space.)

I use stainless steel items to place my rods in so that they don't roll around while on the the top of the kiln. The tip of the rod that I will be melting in the flame is placed on the kiln, while the other end (handle), is placed off of the kiln as far as possible without it falling off. This keeps the part of the rod you will be holding cool enough to handle without burning yourself when you pick it up. It also keeps the paper tag from burning, which I like to keep so I know what colors I have used up and need to reorder.

Contained in the colorful dishes on the top of the kiln in the second photo are what I call recyclable waste glass - in other words, mistakes! Many beads and marbles do not work out to my high standards of perfection. If that happens, I remelt the glass and use it for something else - usually marbles for my grandsons (I have plenty). It is always good to preheat these larger pieces of glass before trying to reintroduce them to the flame since they can crack, split, explode, break into a million pieces and fall onto your work table below (or your lap!), and the list goes on. So I warm them ahead of time on top, and if I'm going to actually introduce large pieces into the flame, they're actually placed inside of the kiln for a while.

The tiny pieces of glass you see are called "frit". When pulling stringers (a subject for another day), they tend to spit off a tiny tip of the pull spot and leave it on the work space when you pick up the frit for sorting and storage. Depending on what the stringers were made for - some can be striped or swirled, or very colorful - these tiny tips can make for some very interesting color combinations (or "confetti") on top of an already formed bead as a last step. I like to use the inside of marble with a lot of clear in between so they seem to be floating inside.

I guess the bottom line here is to warm your raw materials as much as possible before carefully and slowly introducing them to the flame for melting. Things will go much smoother if you do.

Attracked to the Flame - Part II

One of the most important tools in my shop is in this photo - give up? It's the WATER! Yes, water. When working with a flame you will get burned. It's not a matter of "if", but rather "when"...

The water that I bring out fresh each time I go to work on my torch, is kept close at hand (hand being the key word here). The first place you want to stick your hand if you happen to burn yourself, is right into that water - and keep it there while the cool water draws out the heat of the burn. If you happen to drop a marble in your lap (done that), and your clothes burn, you can simply grab around the outside of the burnt hole and dunk it in the water.

The water serves other purposes as well. When working with tools such as pliers, tweezers, mashers, etc., you can dip the end of the tool in the water to cool it off so that it does not get so hot that the glass piece or the glass itself doesn't begin to stick to it. Even if it does, a quick dunk in the cool water and a bump on the bottom will release the glass that was stuck to the tool.

Another good use of the cool water is when you are making marbles and using steel punties (handles, instead of the "mandrels" used to make beads that need a hole in them). As soon as you remove one punty to switch to another to work on the opposite side of the marble, the hot punty goes right into the water. This way, you don't need to worry about placing it on some surface nearby that may burn - and the punty is now ready to be used again for the reverse side during your work if needed.

The towel you see next to the water is soaked with either water or window cleaner so that I can wipe off any new glass rod that I am about to heat up in the flame. While most dust and debris tends to simply burn off of the glass as you heat it, I prefer not dealing with that process - especially when working with clear, which has its own set of problems in terms of keeping it clear throughout the process for a sparkling clear end product.

Attracked to the Flame...

...does that make me a bug? No wait - I already asked that question. I should keep quiet before someone actually answers it!

I thought some of you may find it interesting to get a little peek into Poladora's Lampwork Shop. There's so much to show and tell that I'm going to make it a multi-part series. ("Oh No - she's going to do the same thing she did to us with 'Verna'!!") Don't worry - Verna is alive and well sitting on my dining room table (no place in my home is safe from my projects). Oh, wait, my lampwork shop is in an outside garage/shop that I share a corner of with my hubby. There are NO torches, kilns, or Oxygen or LP fuel tanks in the house - thought I'd better clarify that.

Above, you can see my torch, my desk, and a few supplies and tools. You can also see my prescription safety glasses for lampwork. These enable me to look at my work in the flame. Without them, I could do serious damage to my eyes and, I would not be able to see my work when it is in the flame. Mine have a magnification because I'm old...

This is a picture of my kiln. It can open from the top or from the front - see the little trap door? I open the front door to place newly made beads and marbles into the kiln for annealing without opening the top and releasing all of the heat in a whoosh.

As you can see, the top also makes a nifty little "warming pad" to warm glass prior to using it in the flame (so that it doesn't explode!) This will be a discussion for another day - along with other useful safety tips...

Oh - the warm top of the kiln also makes an excellent spot for your cup of tea!