Trying Things Out. Beyond the Round Bead.

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Right before my bulk tank ran out of gas last week — right before a foot of snow fell on Richmond, VA and made it impossible for me to get to my gas supplier — I embarked on a plan to try out some new shapes in my beadmaking. Now, I know that there probably really isn’t anything new under the sun, but I was getting tired of round beads. Have I perfected the round bead? Heck, no! But I was getting bored with making them, so I decided the best thing to do was to see what else I could come up with.

I wrote last time about my large-hole beads, which I made using mandrels that were  double- and triple-dipped in thick bead release. That was a happy discovery, but not so much a different shape, per se.

I really, really love manipulating the glass when it is molten, so I started with that. My personal favorite is the twist, where you stick a thin clear rod into a molten spot on the bead and give a quick twist to it to swirl the glass around. I covered a round, white base bead (horrors!) with some CiM Leaky Pen, and went at it with a clear stringer. Well, I went nuts with a clear stringer and this is what I got:

My other favorite molten-glass-manipulation technique is making ruffles. Put a thin disc of glass around the edge of a bead, and a pair of tweezers to crimp the disc up and down into a ruffly-skirt shape. Or, pull glass directly from the body of the (really hot) bead, and twist into a ruffly shape. These are the result of that technique:

And I had something else going on here, some dots that I was going to do something amazing with…..but this is the bead that was on the mandrel when the tank died.  Sigh.

Now the snow is melting, and maybe this Saturday I can get up to my supplier and get my tank filled. Then I can indulge in more hot-glass manipulation and see what else I can make!

Christine blogs and creates and occasionally sells her work in and around Richmond, Virginia.