Any easy bead ideas

[alan]

Hi,

As a newbie, I'm still learning how the glass flows and reacts and I'm happy with some beads I made yesterday using gravity to make a random stretched pattern. I have tried dots from stringers but the end results are poor. While I'm still practicing, are there any other kinds of beads that are relatively easy to make (without dots!) that I can try - my enthusiasm is pretty low at the moment as apart from my gravity ones, everything else turns out a bit naff so I'm looking for ideas that are simple and have that wow factor.

Thanks

A

[Nicknack]

Frit beads are easy.  Just make your bead, roll it in frit and melt in, either partially or completely.  They look good, too.

Nick

[Skyblue]

Hi Alan
Another easy one, just make a round bead and then add a stripe round it with a different colour, they look pretty effective too. Or after adding frit like nick suggested, once its melted in, then add a thin stripe around .

[lampworklover]

Just sit and play.

When I started, I got a pile of cheap(er) glass, and just sat and practised making different shaped beads. It was only really after that that I worried about surface decoration, dots and stringer control etc. I found that the satisfaction in mastering a nice bead with puckered ends was enough to spur me on...

[ajda]

When I started I was useless at fine detail - dots, stringer control, etc - and I'm still not great, thanks to shaky hands! I found it good to concentrate on colour combinations rather than particular patterns or designs. Sometimes I'd just experiment at random, sometimes trawl through pictures of other people's work shamelessly borrowing colour schemes that I liked.

Some colours just look great together - or not - others produce interesting reactions. This set I made in my first week or two of beadmaking, just daubing random blobs of opaque turquoise onto ivory (though I later etched it which had the effect of making the colours and the dark reactions between look a bit crisper and cleaner)


This set, made at about the same time, was just several transparent and opaque greens mixed and mashed about in the flame then pulled out into a crude rod before winding onto mandrels - nothing sophisticated, but an effect I was well pleased with


I think that by simply exploring colours without worrying too much about end results, I was learning almost unconsciously how to manipulate the glass in ways that worked for me - and then the more controlled, deliberate patterns and effects just seemed to evolve naturally out of that. To be honest, that is still largely how I work - I just play until something happens that I like... and then I try to make it happen again!

[Lynnybobs]

A good tip for practising stringer is to use the same colour as your base bead and if it goes wrong you can just melt it in and have another go without wasting the bead and glass.

[Jane C ♫]

Lynnybobs - that's a genius idea! Will try it!

[DementedMagpie]

One of my favourite simple designs is swirls. Whether they're made out of frit, stringer, dots or just plain and left raised a bit, I like them all.

[Lynnybobs]

It's helped me Jane but can't claim it as my own idea the lovely Sally Carver gave me that tip!

[Angie]

Get 2 rods of any colour, especially colours that you don't go for or think won't melt together, hold one in each hand and melt enough together for a largish bead, twisting and squishing them to mix. Melt off one rod. Heat mandrel and just slap or wind the glass on to it in a blob. Now concentrate on the shaping and learn heat control. The bigger the bead, the easier to control in some ways as you have a kind of lapse time between applied heat and glass movement. You will be amazed at the colours you get...always a winner.

Also try making loads of twisties and stringers, a skill that will serve you well later.

Try making strange little creatures......just made up ones, there is no right or wrong way, you can't go wrong in art! Good luck and show us your photos.

[alan]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Some good ideas to keep me going.

A

[Shirley]

I can recommend having a look on here and on Lampwork Etc at the free tutorials. Lots of great ideas there.

[Dietmar]

Get 2 rods of any colour, ...

If you clean up your bench there will be leftovers of different colors. Assort them roughly into golor groups, you know they will not go ugly on mixing. For example go for greens and blues and take about 10...20 grams. Heat up the end of a glass rod and attach the leftovers to the end. Melt out as much air as possible while doing this and attach a second rod for mixing and better control. Don't mix completely and pull into a thin rod or fat stringer.

Start making beads with that marbled glass. Just winding round the mandrel will give beads with stripes. If you start with a tiny winding and adding fat dots to the equator, the pattern will be totally different after melting the bead into shape. For larger beads start with a medium bicone from a cheap glass. Add a fat layer of marbled dots to the equator and melt the marblked glass round and flat. You can "pull" the colored glass with heat and gravity to the ends of the bead, one end at the time. Shape the bead inro a long olive or a bicone and you're done.

Adding just random dots of the marbled glass to a base bead is easier and gives a totally different pattern. Experiment with separate dots or a fully covered surface. The results are different.

Add stripes of marbled glass to the length of a cylindric base bead and cover the whole surface of the bead. Melt the bead round and reshape or let the middle section do "the wave".

A totally different design needs tuequoise glass abnd clear. Make a base bead in turquoise and reduce the surfave. Add some squiggles or other pattern with clear stringers, melt flat and burn away the reduced surface. Swap the decoration and reducing the surface without burning away the reduction.

Add fat clear dots to a marbled bead or a bead with frit decoration. Melt the dots flat or leave them raised.