Spot encasing-tell me more

[Pam]

I am having a little trouble with florals. I have read some articles on spot encasing, I can guess what it is bit how exactly do you do it.
Also I know I am asking a lot but those that are happy with floral beads can you post a simplified tutorial I am not sure if I need to encase after vine and then again after floral decoration or place floral dots straight on the vine, somehow my flower or vine always seem to bleed though the encasing.
Pam

[MangoBeads]

Hi Pam - personally I place dots for petals on top of vine and only encase between flowers or I end up with a huge bead !

Spot encasing is just putting clear over the entire flower not always easy IMO.

Try and keep it simple to start place your vine and your flowers then encase just once - I heata large blob and push it round the cool bead - hope this helps a little bit! Good Luck

[LesleyMac]

Don't know about spot encasing but this is how I do flowers.

Make a small bead, roll in frit, add vine whatever.
Encase (thinly if possible)  - important ensure the ends of the encasing are pushed towards the mandrel to avoid any colour seeping through. Melt into shape

Make small dots for flowers, then transparent dots on top of dots for depth (lots of options here, you could even put three dots on top of each other depending on what you are doing)

Melt dots in slowly, shape and let bead cool a bit.

Spot heat centre of flowers and plunge into middle of dots with either tungsten tool or stamen cane or stringer or whatever.

Then I "dump" case, that is melt a big blob of clear and drop it onto the top of each flower then I fill in with dump casing all over the bead.  important - the bead must be cool or you will smear the flowers but not cool enough to crack, also after heating the clear wait a second or so before you dump case so its just a touch cooler.

Then I do the ends again and heat the whole lot up and shape.  Let it cool and then I put it back in the back of the flame to flame polish ( I know this is done other ways but this is all I do).

Hope this helps and that I haven't forgotten anything.

[Mary]

If you don't want to encase your vine, make encased stringers instead, using the opaques in the middle or covering those stripes with a transparent. It won't bleed as much. I prefer the depth of encasing the vines, but you can get round it.

[Pam]

Thanks Lesley, Manda amd Mary.
When i get home tonight I will post some pictures, I have achieved better results with flowers on top of encased vine etc but I always feel they are a liitle false looking, like Manda if I encase the vine then the flower i get whopping beads, also the flowers seem too big, my last batch -well you will see later some of the petals are lost or separated from the main part of the flower.
Also if I add the flower to the vine (not encased) i can only get 3/4 flowers and when finally encased the flowers are BIG, I want an abundance of dainty flowers without the bead being too big.

[Pam]

Here are my blooms that have upset me! Any advise is very welcome.

[LesleyMac]

I don't know how long you have been practicing these but they are not at all bad considering how difficult this is. I have to say I have made hundreds of flower beads much much worse than those.

Looking at them I would say the main problem is your bead is not cool enough when you are putting on the clear encasing causing some to smear, also I see what you mean about the depth on the first one, what if you tried just putting a smear of clear glass on top of the vines only, only problem though might be that it will end up misshapen.

I am no expert on encasing but from what I have read to get really thin encasing you have to heat up only the very end of the clear rod, very hot, but only the end and then swipe really quickly, it does take a lot of patience, everything about flowers takes patience though.  You have to be in for the long haul with flowers, you will find as you do more and more that you instinctively learn the heat levels.  I know its not a lot of help but its something you can't teach by telling I think you need to see someone actually doing it, maybe you should try to get on the Corinna floral course if you can afford it.

I also invested in some magnifiying glasses because you really need to get very small and its so difficult to see the detail.  Mine are just the clip on type that you can put over your own glasses if like me you are a bit shortsighted (my age you know).

Sorry I can't be more help but it will pay off if you persevere, I made loads and loads of failures but just kept going back to it, I am still no expert but thats mainly because whilst I love them I also like making other types so I am not totally obsessed.

[glassworks]

maybe kathy (my precious) will spot this - she is a demon at encasing, so much so we will be asking her to run sessions later in the summer!

[Redhotsal]

Hi Pam,
They're looking good to me, in fact. But you may find it easier if you make your florals very tiny. The encasing will magnify anything under there so you want to start off as small as you can. Most of my florals are made with stringer that is much less than 1mm diameter.
I'm a big fan of spot encasing as I find I put way too much clear on by the more "conventional" methods and I trap loads of air bubbles too 'cos I'm a bit slapdash. Make sure you have a very cool base bead and a very liquid/hot gather and you just "dot " the glass on. I even spot encase the vines too sometimes as I am a lazy so-and-so. But it works for me.

[Redhotsal]

Couple of other things I've remembered: Don't use anything remotely transparent as your flower base - yellow, red, stuff like that as they won't be "blocky" enough to show up the shape of the floral.

I use white and put a different transparent colour over the top. I love the corals and turquoises as they are alway very opaque.

Also don't get your base bead too hot when you melt the spots in to form the floral. Also don't blast them with a load of heat when you melt them in. Do it gradually and you will get a much better shape.

[Pam]

Thanks lesley for all the info and Sally, definately some things there that I need to pay attention to. Had another mini session last night, definately some improvement only problem was the clear bubbled loads, still the flowers were a wee bit better, I'll show you later after work.
Lesley when is Corina's floral course?

[MangoBeads]

Pam - just a thought are you nipping the end off your clear before you start- just melt in the flame and tweezer the end gets rid of tiny bubbles and scum !

[Pam]

Hi Manda, yes I did that, it may be there were inherent bubbles in the glass, which I shall look out for in the future. By the way great article in the Bead mag, wish I lived nearer you.

[Pam]

Pictures as promised(not very clear, sorry). I hadn't thought about a magnifying glass, I seem tohave trouble placing the dots, I hit the glass before I see it if you get what I mean. Do you think my dots need tobe closer together? The petal seem to float away from the centre.
Now moving on just a tad, how do I get a second layer of flowers (not petal) so I have say 6 or7 flowers in total on my bead without having a bead the size of a golf ball?

[Mary]

More layers need thin encasing, I'm afraid! And no, I can't do it right either! Looking good so far!