Ranasp's uneven progression

[Ranasp]

So I started lampworking just last summer. Some friends were torching in their garage while our SCA meeting is going on. (Society for Creative Anachronism, basically mega nerds that love historic and do-it-yourself shit, I love it) They pull me over, sit my ass down, and I make my first bead, and am thereafter hooked.


As you can see it's teardrop shaped, uneven, and has two bubbles in it that I had no idea I had put in. I made just that one bead that day since I had to run, but that allowed it to settle in my mind...

Next few sessions, I experiment a bit. Mixing colors, seeing how stringers act, figuring out how to make beads round or oval instead of egg shaped.



A few sessions later, I start getting good enough to get mad when the bead has a mind of its own. I also discover using the pick, and how smashing and dragging color around then encasing it can result in some pretty funky effects, and that it's pretty fun for dragging surface colors around too.



I'll stop there for now as this is pretty pic heavy.

[Ranasp]

Onwards I moved, onto playing with dichro and tools, some successful, some not so much.

This one I wanted to see what happens if I pick dichro. Cool stuff, as it turns out.


Second attempt at a Boo from Super Mario Brothers. The first one was alright, but I had forgotten that they have a tail. I wanted to work on it more, but found out the propane was running out, and did in fact sputter out just was I was finishing up.



I am not so good at encasing, as seen on the two clover beads I attempted it on. This was me getting used to the razor blade, the red one was a fairly recent attempt which turned out much better than expected. (the black shit is soot from the torch being cranked to an odd setting and I hadn't noticed, but in person it looks like marble so it's alright)

It was around this time that I was told if I want to get decent at something, I should make 100 of it. So I decided to go for 100 wave and dot beads, the only thing I'm changing on them is the colors in an attempt to learn some stringer control. I'm about halfway through and I've been learning a lot about how the different colors interact together and individually with heat, and how they behave as stringers.

Some of these beads are from months ago, some are from last week. I'd like to say the wonkiest ones are from months ago, but the truth is that it seems like I really nail something one day and lose the capability to get a decent shape the next. I can say that repeating it over and over has made my overall quality go up, and that I've ended up swirling a lot fewer beads as time has gone on. (fortunately the swirled beads end up looking pretty neat too so it's not like it's a total loss.)

Also tried playing with wavy beads but of course I can't do anything normal so I ended up messing with black, white, translucents and strikers. I have a hatred for strikers right now, until they actually WORK. It didn't help that on this one I mistook the yellow for the red, so I ended up really cooking an area that didn't deserve it...

Kinda reminds me of the Simon game.

Anyways, that brings me fairly current. I didn't post everything I've made so maybe I'll fill in some gaps, if anyone's interested.

[Ranasp]

Each week I'm getting some torch time in, pretty lame compared to most of you people here but I have a day job and other things that take up my time so I don't get to play with fire nearly as much as I'd like. Anyways, made another version of the above bead, but this time I was more consistent with showing the white behind each translucent dot, and just using two colors. Next time I'll try for showing no white at all. I'm pretty sure I scorched the glass, or picked up some of the underlying black to make those speckles, but I was pressed for time so I was more aggressive with it than I'd have liked trying to get it to melt down in time.