Well, here’s a picture of my lampwork ‘beads’ (I have come to the conclusion that I exist to make other lampworkers feel better about their skills *G*). Even though they’re a bit ..eh…I love them anyway!
I like how the blurriness of the photo just seems to highlight the faults, rather than hide them.
Lessons learned from my first forays into lampworking:
There’s little demand for beads melded to a mandrel.
There’s even less demand for beads melded to a mandrel and a whole glass rod.
Looking up from playing with an extremely hot flame to find a bee hovering two inches away, wanting to know what you’re doing, is extremely disconcerting.
Hot glass is ….um, hot.
Vanity is soon discarded in the face of a flame and the wild outdoors(my lampworking uniform is a high-neck jumper, old baggy coat, purple bobble-hat, and saftey glasses held on with masking tape and a red ribbon. Stylish!)
A new appreciation for bumpy beads comes when you find that’s the only technique you can do.
Buying more boxes of matches is the most expensive part. Ignite, damn you, ignite!
When you give up on a bead stuck to a madrel, and use the other end to make a new bead, the old fugly bead will come unstuck afterwards, leaving the nice new one stuck. It’s like the circle of life.
Roundness is highly over-rated (she says, while drinking sour grape juice)
