Behind the scenes........
A sneak preview of the current projects I am working on and an insight on the work involved in some of my designs
I was totally over the moon when I received the great news that I had been accepted as a finalist in Bead & Buttons 'Bead Dreams' Competition. I was reading an article written by one of the judges, apparently they received hundreds of entries from all around the world and when given the chore of judging the images they were not supplied any information on who created the entry or from which country it was sent. It's such a wonderful feeling to have been amongst the amazing finalists, I feel very honoured. The finalists' entries are tentatively booked to be published in October's issue of the Bead & Button Magazine. That's one issue I'll be buying more than one of! Here is a sneak look at my entry -
Click here to see enlarged photo and close up
I decided it was time to have some fun with my competition/exhibition entries, so I entered the Ugliest Necklace Competition! I don't know if I'm happy or disappointed that I wasn't successful. I thought I would put a smile on your face and show my entry here, along with the poem I wrote which was a necessary part of the entry.
I titled my entry 'Butt Ugly' and made lampwork beads in the form of cigarette butts which even if I say so myself, looked the real deal, and of course with a title of Butt Ugly I had to throw in a few bum beads.
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My Poem -
'Butt Ugly'
The sparkle of a gem
The gleam of pure gold
Nothing but the creme de la creme
And perhaps a little bold
To be graciously worn by a celebrity
With great pride and joy
Passing through generations with amazing longevity
Worn proudly by the adventurous and the coy
But alas my design changed it’s course
Instead, cigarette butts and bums appeared
I submitted against the force
To create the ugliness I had feared
Combining two butts - lethal and cute
A little bling to add a touch of grace
Some may say, wow that’s beaut
I say - that’s one Butt Ugly necklace
Lorraine Allan
These are my virtual ribbon awards I won from participating in a challenge set up in my favourite forum - Starving Jewelry Artists We were given the challenge of making beads/jewelry with a design feature of a butterfly using a colour palette selected from a great site - Colour Lovers . This is the palette I chose and my wearable art piece -
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With all my wearable art pieces I begin with a colour palette only, having to add the challenge of a strict theme to follow by resulted in adding an extra dimension to my finished work with what I felt to be a very pleasing end result. I had never attempted to make a sculptured butterfly and admittedly this wasn't my first attempt, the first two looked more like a torpedo about to be launched! I never would have thought that deciding to enter into a forum challenge would change my outlook on the way I create my art. Firstly I feel I have increased my skill in glass and thoroughly enjoyed making the butterfly in what lampworkers refer to as the 'off mandrel' method. That meaning the butterfly wings were made first by shaping a molten blob of glass on the end of the glass rod, decorated, then each wing section was placed on a hotplate to keep them warm and therefore preventing them from cracking. Next I made a round bead on my steel mandrel, picked up the pre-made wings and gently introduced them back in the flame and by heating the necessary point, melted the point onto the round bead. Once they were all in position and well heated I added partially raised dots down the centre to represent the butterfly's body.
This experience has changed my method of creating my wearable art pieces. Since the butterfly necklace I have made pieces in different themes of 'flowers', 'landscape', 'fire', 'Africa' and the next one I have began making the beads for is 'grafitti', and there are a ton of theme ideas waiting to be put down on the drawing board.
I use to be a very well organised person, but over the years I seemed to have slipped in a few areas. I finally got to the point where I thought - no, I just can't work like this any more. It is a work in progress trying to transform my studio in a much cleaner and tidier workplace, but I'm finally making an attempt. My metalsmithing bench was a mess, I had silver wire in bags laying everywhere, and always had to sieve through a huge pile to find what I was looking for. I had no idea of how I could store my wire in a way that would be tidy and easy to find a particular size of wire. So, I asked my friends at the Orchid Forum for some suggestions. This one suited my needs the best so I thought I'd pass on the tip in case you find yourself asking the same question.
I bought myself a couple of 3 ring binders and a heap of plastic wallet inserts. I keep my silver wire in the plastic bags that they arrive in so as to keep them from tarnishing and place each bag into an insert which I label very clearly. So tidy and no more confusion. I also bought some cd sheets to place my extra links I have already cut, after I have put them in sealable bags and labeled each one with the size of silver wire used and the size of mandrel they were cut on. I've added photos of both to give you a visual. Hope it is helpful!
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I needed to create a piece that was unique to what I would normally work on, and was something that couldn't be worn. I wanted to include my mask beads and had been researching my Oceanic Art for ideas. I liked the concept of having feathers and fibre coming from the top of the masks and relayed these thoughts to my husband. He immediately said 'Pickled Heads', I gave him a very worrying glance, but then he explained his vision of a jar full of heads with bay leaves and peppercorns in some form of a pickling substance which would hold the mask beads in place. With much experimenting we found that clear silicone did just what we wanted. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed working with Pete, we hadn't done a collaborated art piece in many years. Without further ado here is the result -
Unfortunately the judges didn't share our enthusiasm for this project and it was not chosen to be part of their exhibition. There's just no accounting for taste sometimes!
Well the leather wrist band was a big success but I forgot to take a photo of it when I had finished it, duh! Another project I was working on has been finished, it's a wall hanging and I have titled it 'Somebody's Watching You'. It was terribly hard to take a photo of it, but here it is to give you an idea.
It seems I've been obsessed with eyes of late, but I'm over it now! I'm currently working on another project which is giving me all sorts of worry, it involves a glass jar and my mask beads, and that's all I'm saying for now.....aren't I mean.
Something else I thought you may be interested in viewing....My husband worked with glass many years ago also, and made quite a lot of 'drop' vases which were made in the kiln. These were made by using a process where he made a mould which had a hole in the centre, he'd load the glass on top of the mould and when the kiln reached the melting temperature he would have to very quickly and precisely open the kiln and cool it down so it would stop the flow of the glass just at that certain point. Well with such a precise task there were many rejects, so after they had been sitting in the studio dust for years he decided to make a garden sculpture out of them which I just love. He also made a water feature with a couple of reject bowls he'd made.
Click for a larger view 
Click for a larger view
I have two projects on the go this week, only one worth mentioning at this stage. I'm in the process of making a piece of 'wristwear' for a male friend, I don't like the word bracelet for a man, way too feminine. He is a saxophone player in one of hubby's bands, and due to the fact that the sax restricts him from wearing anything around the neck whilst playing he had asked me to make him something to wear around his wrist. He is from Sweden and his name is Ulf, which is derived from 'wolf'. He requested a bead that connected to the wolf, and gave me the freedom to interpret his request however I wished. I stayed with the first idea that entered my mind when he mentioned it and that was the wolf's eye. He asked me for this about 6 months ago and I've been trying to come up with a way to make something masculine. Unfortunately my time has run out as he was hoping for residency in Australia but his work contract has not been renewed and he has to return home this month. I had some really nice fine leather so I decided to go in the direction I'm most comfortable - weaving. Here it is so far -
My journey towards developing the ideal mask bead.......
I decided it was the right time to head in the direction of finally refining a 'signature' bead for myself. I thought of all the designs I'd made over the years and realized there was no particular style that I really wanted to evolve as my 'own'. The bead I've most admired and secretly craved to make myself but never having the confidence to even try is the Mask bead. The biggest attraction to creating the mask bead is that there is no one particular style, they are so vast and varied from the colourful, theatrical Japanese masks to the tribal African masks and so many in between, and as I am one who cannot work on one design alone I think it's a perfect choice. So this is how my journey began -
To enable myself to create the eyes of the mask I felt it necessary to make my own eye murrini. A murrini is made by building the molten glass in layers starting from the inside of the eye, therefore the eyeball, encased in a layer of the iris colour, then white as a thick outside layer. This results in a large ball of glass which has to be thoroughly heated right through and then pulled out to form a length of glass the thickness the eyes need to be.
This is not meant to be a tutorial, it's just an outline of the process so as to give you an idea of the work required. Now of course I had to make quite a few attempts at these beads as I have done very little sculptural work in glass, so I am basically teaching myself a new skill. I know I must be crazy but I am going to show you my first attempts, a pre-warning - they're bad!
1st attempt - Oh what a mess! This one appeared to have just gone the first bout of a boxing match and lost. Messy nose and is that suppose to be a mouth?
2nd attempt - The nose has improved a little, but the mouth is a real problem
3rd attempt - This poor guy seems to have lost his eyeball. When I've pushed the eye murrine into the hot glass I've managed to smudge it. The nose isn't too bad. The mouth well this seems to be the main problem area, have to try something else.
4th attempt - I was quite pleased with this one, the nose turned out fine and finally I felt I had the mouth right. The main problem here is the positioning of the mouth, a little too far to the left.
I have finally achieved the results I was hoping for. Check out my focal section. My next step will be to achieve an array of different styled masks and constantly improve my skills and hopefully be successful with them!
Nearly 600 lampwork beads later........
I finished weaving this project at 1.40 this morning. Yes, I do seriously think I need my sanity levels checked.
The story.....I was interested in entering a competition/exhibition which was labelled 'mixed media'. I enquired if jewellery was acceptable as a submission and the reply was 'no' with the suggestion that I create something with my lampwork beads that could hang in a window or on the wall. My first reaction was 'no, forget that'. I walked away from the email and within minutes I had reconsidered, why not? The concept was drawn up within an hour, a woven hanging sculpture depicting a waterfall cascading down a cliff and flowing into a pool of cool blue water. I didn't realize at the time of what an enormous project laid ahead of me. I made close to 600 lampwork beads all woven into 3 pieces about 14"/35cm each in length, along with hundreds of seed beads and gemstones. It is quite a heavy mass all together and I have loops on the top ready to attach to a rod of some sort for hanging. Yes, I've done all this hard work still unsure of how I am going to hang them, but I'm confident that part won't be too difficult. I've just quickly photographed them to give you the idea, but they do look very pretty with light behind them. I was too scared to count the hours it took to weave them, but I worked on it at night over the last 15 days, so approximately 70 odd hours is my guess, and ofcourse I haven't factored in the hours on the torch making all the beads. When it's complete on it's hanger and I have a nice photograph I'll add it to this page.
