One thing about being the girl with the torch, and lets face it, there aren’t that many girls with torches out there, friends find things they’d like you to make. I don’t do particularly well with special requests. Often times they want something I don’t know how to make. My friends are always so sure I have the talent to make want they want, it’s kind of flattering when they try convince me to give it a try.

When I do attempt a special request I worry that my interpretation of what my friend wants may be different from what they envision. Because they are so stressfull I rarely take requests. The best I do is take suggestions, things I add to my “list” of potential projects; ones that I will only do when and if I’m feeling inspired. The list is in my head only of course, as a written list would be too much pressure.

I have to admit that there some special request projects I just never get around to. One of these was the duck bead. I have a crazy friend who has pet ducks. Lots of seriously pampered pet ducks, so pampered that he built a dome over his duck pond so it wouldn’t freeze in the winter. The crazy duck man has made lots of duck loving internet friends, and quite a while back he asked me to make a duck bead for a friend who’d lost a favorite duck.

I’m not good at sculptural beads, or painterly beads, and was clueless about how to make a duck bead, so I kept putting off trying. For months. Ugh. I’m a bad friend I guess. Eventually the duck man realized I’d probably never make the duck bead (please remember I never promise to honor requests) and decided he better make his own duck memorial.

He chose to make a brass duck, and thought it would be cool if his duck had a nice glass eye. That’s where me, the girl with the torch, got to help. He drilled a hole where he wanted the eye, and his vision was a glass rivet of sorts with an eye on both sides of the brass duck. I thought it would be hard to do, but it actually worked pretty well. I melted the end of the glass rod and drew the glass out thin enough that it would fit through the hole. I melted the end into a ball. I then held the brass above the flame and heated the rod until it melted through and formed a ball on the other side. A few black dots and voila, duck eyes.

It took a little juggling to keep both eyes warm enough to avoid cracking, but much to my surprise the duck came out of my vermiculte pot intact. The duck was a bit too big to fit in my kiln, so the eye was never properly annealed, but judging from my freezer test and dropping it on concrete test I think it should survive just fine.

He was pleased with how it came out, and it’s given me some ideas for the future. I may turn the tables on my friend and ask him to cut me some (non duck) brass shapes to embelish with glass rivets.