A blog dedicated to the creativity and the challenges of making and designing with handmade art glass (lampwork) beads.
About This Blog
This blog reflects the thoughts, passions and struggles of a glass bead artist whose day job is manufacturing food safe rubber stamps. I share the joys and challenges of making lampwork glass beads and rubber stamping. ALL images here are copyrighted unless otherwise stated and may not be used without permission!Contact Holly
Several amazing sales venues have popped up on Facebook expressly for artisan lampwork! I always share my current sales on my fan page there. But you can usually find me on any of the following groups:
To me, the shape of a bellflower pressed glass headpin lends itself perfectly to earrings!
Last week, an old friend purchased a set of purple bellflowers as a gift for her mom - who I love and adore! As the bellflowers were a birthday gift, I had to whip up something a little extra for Mom Dianne's special day. She LOVES purple, btw:
I had the two little lavender butterflys and I always have some Swarkie bicones on hand. I really love how they came out!
Here's another set of earrings I made from some discontinued CIM glass (Sigh... Isn't that always the case with CIM... fall in love and it's no longer made or not the same color...ugh!)
The earrings above are available here. Anyone ordering before 2/15/14, will get a refund on shipping! ;-)
Fresh Glass Beads! Rocking some great color with some silver glass and a basic black and white set for a jewelry piece I'm working on. And annealed bellflowers from the day before...
Well, honestly, I have more hair than two or three women. My hair is a force of nature, a weather condition of it's own... maybe even an eco-system. I find all kinds of plants in there after a hike!
And both of my jobs involve heat. So my hair is always up.
But I have a new favorite accoutrement for my always crazy hair do: my glass bellflowers!
Here are the Halloween ones listed on Artfire now. First, a long shot of my crazy nest of hair:
Other colors and combos:
I just love the metallic leaves... wouldn't these colors be great in a wedding???
Well, I did it! If you read my post yesterday, you already know I was running late with my Art Bead Scene entry. And I woke up with a dream of how to design the piece! In the end, the aqua bellflower wasn't enough but this Evil Dark Purple one was! It added the punch of pink I felt the focal lacked.
This March Art Bead Scene contest, inspired by the Van Gogh painting called Almond Blossoms.
ABOUT THE BEADS: The art glass beads were handmade by me, Holly Dare of Holly's Folly ~ Glass. The focal is made of layers of opaque and transparent teal glass for depth. The flowers are white with a bit of pink. I didn't want the pink to overpower the piece.
The Bellflower dangle is an opaque pink on stainless steel wire.
ABOUT THE PENDANT: The upper part is a wired wonder! The flower petal shaped bail, the roller coaster swirl and the large hammered flower are all ONE piece of sterling wire! I carried out the flower motif with a smaller hammer wire flower dangling from the large one. The bellflower dangle completes the piece.
In my efforts to continue to educate the folks about the wonderful Revolution Money Exchange, I am offering this pendant at a $10 discount to anyone who checks out using RME. The Revolution Money Exchange does not take money from vendors for using it's services (or from customers either!) It's FREE for both parties!!! Help a struggling artist keep more of her hard earned money and save money too! That's a bargain all around! Here it's $45.00. When I move it to my website the price will be $55.
I'm sure my regular readers know that I love to jimmy with my tools. I'm forever finding a way to make something work for another technique or make a tool work better.
I fell in LOVE with Jelveh's Key Mandrels. I first tried making beads on a key ages ago and was immediately turned off by how hard it was to shape a bead when you could not spin the "mandrel" - in this case, the key itself - evenly. Then came the key mandrels. I bought two and kept them loaded with keys in case the muse hit during a torch session. I love the tool!
But I'm never one to leave well enough alone... I recently invested in a Carlo Dona Bellflower press. I say invested because it's the priciest tool in my shop. I got on a waiting list for it months and months ago when I had a little extra cash... and it arrives from Italy when I'm broke. But a commitment is a commitment and that's what credit cards are for, right?
It had been so long since I looked at the tool, I had to take it down to my pal Donna for a quick refresher course. I was in love with what it could do... but, my red head sensibilities (it's a proven fact, red heads feel more pain than people with other coloring!) simply would not allow me to hold the wire in my fingers as I applied hot glass. I had burnt my fingers once doing that... the wire got so hot, SO fast... I said NEVER again!
I came home and tried placing the wire in a hemostat...hated it! So I started looking around for something better... something round that could hold a piece of wire. A pin vise would work...but I didn't have one. (Many lampworkers use a pin vise for making bellflowers.) Then I saw those key mandrels, ready to go. Hmmm...
I took our my round nose pliers and place a U in the bottom of the wire and secured it between the metal plate and the back of the mandrel. It WORKED! But I didn't like only being able to make two at a time... So... I tried cutting the wire to 7" in length. My thinking was that I could make one, place the flower in the kiln with the key mandrel sticking out, cut the wire in half and go back to the torch for #2; Cut off #2 and have a piece of scrap left on the mandrel. Quench, open the tool, release the scrap and hook on another wire.
This worked except, 7" gets a little unwieldy with hot molten glass on the end! I now cut the wire a hair over 6". I can still make two bellflowers without having to mess with the tool. Since I have two key mandrels, I can make four, set the mandrels aside to cool and reload them with wire after making a few beads! Here are some leaves, also made with the key mandrel and a leaf press. Next are the two bellflowers still in my key mandrels and the bottom flower with a U hook in the wire. I cut that part off.
The teal bellflower is to be part of this month's Art Bead Scene entry...Wonder what these will be??? I better get moving! See you Monday on the Bead Blog!
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