Monday, January 28, 2008

Flop Sweat


MayABS

For some reason, Blogger is not letting me post photos tonight, so I'm actually writing this post through my Flickr account. Anyway, I've been busy trying to finish up my piece for Ornament Thursday...and I've been completely choking. I've had about four false starts (actually, some of those false starts will probably turn into regular blog entries - God forbid I should waste an opportunity to prattle on about virtually nothing, after all), and I'm sitting here at my dining room table surrounded by beads, staring blanking into space. So, I thought I'd write my blog entry, to procrastinate a little longer. Ahem.

Flop sweat, nerves, performance anxiety - call it what you will. I think being part of the massively talented group of people that have come together to form Ornament Thursday is getting to me. I'm just so certain someone is going to notice pretty soon that I don't really know what I'm doing (shhhhhh). Sigh.

Anyway, as I mentioned previously, I'm not much of a heart jewelry person. This necklace is the exception - these hearts, I love. They are Colorblast Candy Hearts by Sarah Moran (the non-heart lampwork is also by Sarah) and I love, love, love these beads. I strung them with spacers that I made myself from Vetrofond Rainbow Red. I learned how to "strike" a color making these spacers, with a lot of help from a friend. For non-lampworking readers, this is simply a technique for a certain type of glass - to obtain the "true" color of the glass, you have to "strike" it - apply the heat of the torch in a certain way. The original color of the Rainbow Red as it appeared in the glass rod was closer to a deep amber. I finished the piece with chunks of composite amber.

Okay, enough dilly dallying - back to work. Thanks for visiting! See you tomorrow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a lovely piece and how clever you are to be able to craft something like that.I only wish that I could.

Melissa J. Lee said...

Thank you, gladys! I have to say, though, most of the credit goes to Sarah Moran for creating such beautiful lampworked beads.