The Brit with a Blog: Win a minion :)

Hi, I’m Jenny’s English friend, Louise and I’m a glass addict.

Jen obviously wanted a break because she asked me to write up a guest piece for her blog about what I do.

I began by making jewelry as a hobby about six years ago. Pretty soon I’d made so much that I didn’t have room for it so I started to give it away. I had so many ideas that I wanted beads in different styles and colours but I couldn’t always find what I was looking for. Then I got impatient. So I started reading articles online and discovered lampworking. It sounded scary. Gas, fire, hot glass. Undeterred, I got a starter kit for Christmas and I read lots of books. I was terrified the day I turned my torch on for the first time so much so that I didn’t do it again for a few weeks. But for the last four years I’ve played and practiced. I’ve wasted a lot of glass, time and probably money, but I’ve had so much fun. It’s only recently that I’ve dared to start calling myself a lampwork artist. “Ok” I hear you ask “So what’s that?” Well basically I melt glass for a living and make it into cool/cute stuff. In case you’re still none the wiser, I’ll try to explain – this time with the aid of pictures. A picture says a thousand words after all...

In case you’re wondering, my workspace is in the garage – bare walls/concrete floor - there’s very little out there that I can damage. This is my torch. This is where I melt glass. It’s also where I melt my fingers and burn holes in my clothes, but enough about that... The glass I use comes in different coloured rods. Don’t tell my husband, but I have thousands of these rods stashed away in a cabinet and it doesn’t matter how much I have, I’ll always want more.

So to the actual melting... Mostly I make beads with holes, known as “on mandrel”. A mandrel is just a rod of stainless steel that comes in different sizes depending on the width of the hole you want through your bead. Wrapping molten glass onto steel would mean it was stuck there forever so the mandrels have to be dipped into a sort of liquid clay called “bead release”. This is left to dry and then the fun begins.

The rod of glass is gradually introduced into the flame – gradually is the key here. Too fast and the glass can “shock” which results in red hot shards popping off and flying all over the place. It’s a known fact among lampworkers that if you have bare arms or are wearing a new top, the popping hot glass will find that part of you and burn right through it. I have the holey sweaters and burn-scarred skin to prove it!

Once the glass is glowing hot, it’s time to wind it slowly onto the prepared mandrel. (I apologise that there is no picture to accompany the winding on of the glass – I was my own photographer today and I did try, but it’s impossible to capture this process with only two hands).

This is the best I could do – a shortly after winding on pic. Mine looks a bit wonky at this stage, but gravity can be your greatest friend here (or your worst enemy). The idea is to get the bead hot and then rotate it outside the flame so that the glass distributes evenly.

Once you get to this stage you can do all sorts of different things with your bead. There is an endless amount of tools, presses and gadgets available to help you achieve the look you want. You can shape it, mash it, decorate it, roll it in silver – the world is your oyster. It doesn’t have to be round either, it can be any shape you want, it’s just about manipulating the glass gently. I’ve probably made it sound easy but it’s not, at least not to begin with. I’m not sure if practice ever really makes perfect, but it sure does help.

Once the bead is finished it needs to be annealed. Put simply this just means heating and then gradually cooling to remove or prevent internal stress. If left in the open air, the outside of the bead will cool faster than the inside and depending on the size, it could cause the bead to break. A lot of beads (especially the cheap, mass produced ones) are not annealed and prone to breakage. This is my kiln and all my beads all go straight into here.

That’s enough of the technical (boring) stuff. Here are some examples of the kind of pretty things that have emerged from the red hot little box. (His name is Anthony btw – because the make is a Chili Pepper kiln).

Some beads/jewelry made by my own fair hand: