Carribean Spice Tutorial

I listed this set today. It is so warm and exciting! Makes me crave summer! I used a really cool color of Lauscha for this set. It is a striking orange encased in clear. I pulled stringers from it for the little white beads with the raised dots. It makes the dots look swirled, they also glisten when light passes through them. I also used that rod to make the puffy petal beads. It makes them look layered in clear and orange. It is fun making these puffy petals. You need to make sure you have a good pair of thin scissors, I use some old cuticle trimmers I have, they work perfect. Then you want to make sure you have your stringers pulled if you want to accent between your puffy petals. Also, if you want to use frit for your puffy petals. You can decorate them however you want before you actually shape them. Once you have your base bead made you can decorate it. I rolled some of these in frit on the base and melted it in all the way. Once melted in you take the bead out of the flame to cool just a couple seconds, until your glow is gone. This will keep the bead from distorting and keep it evenly balanced while making your puffy petals. I heat one side to a glow then take my scissors and clip from the outside of the bead towards the center, be careful not to touch the mandrel. Then I make sure my petals are evenly balanced, if they aren't centered you can usually just barely push them into place with the point of the scissors. Then I turn the bead to the complete opposite side across from the petals I just made, to make sure I cut evenly, and follow through with the same steps on each side of the bead. You are making a total of 4 snips. Once you have cut all 4 sides you want to make sure the petals are all evenly separated and even, using the tips of your scissors to push them into place. Then I reheat my bead in the flame keeping my mandrel rotating at an even pace, watch your petals they should be rounding out but not closing in. Once you have your petals shaped the way you want them, use your stringer to evenly place a dot in between each petal. I like to use transparent colors for this, but you can use any color you like. Then you keep turning your bead in the flame till you have melted the dots a little, but not melted in, you want them to stay raised. They look like little jewels in between each petal. Voila! You have your puffy petal bead, make sure you anneal your precious petals in a kiln to eliminate any stress. I hope you can use this to create some awesome beads. Please feel free to post me some pictures of your finished product. Thanks for visiting my blog. I will post more tips on different styles of beads I make in the future. Until next time Happy Beading

Adsense

Ok, So when I was setting up my account with Blogger I was asked about adsense, I did it because I am new to all of this stuff, and I didn't really know what I was doing. Now there is an ad on my blog, you can see it below, the picture of the family I do not know. I guess the ad is for utube. I changed my mind I don't want it on there. I have tried everything to get it off. So I guess I'm stuck with it, unless someone knows how to get adsense off your blog. If you do please feel free to post an Adsense for Dummies manual. Till then I guess you will be looking at people that have nothing to do with my blog. There is no telling what other kind of ads will be on there in the mean time, so please just ignore them.

Artfire

I've been listing on artfire. I still have alot to do there, but it's starting to shape up.

<a href="http://www.artfire.com/users/Torchdbeads/sell-crafts">Become an ArtFire Pro with this link and get your 3rd month free!</a>

Had a great day. Looking for some snow now. So far just a little dusting. I stocked up on gas just in case.I would hate to be snowed in and not be able to torch. BUMMER! Going to check out the inside of my eyelids now.

It's Been a Long Time

Ok............So I'm not that great at keeping a blog, pretty lame actually. I checked and I did one post and set everything up, never came back. How crazy is that? So I'm lampworking full time now. I love it. I take the kids off in the morning, and then home and on the torch. I've been having loads of fun with it. I've started making head pins. They are pretty fun to make. I've been pretty busy with them actually. Here are some pics.

I have more, they are in my Etsy and Artfire shop. I know something wonderful can be made with them, maybe I'll catch some time to make up a pendant or some earrings later. I've also made a lot of beads this week.

My favorite is this set of floating pansies. You pull several stringers before you start your bead. You need a dark transparent color, I used Vennacia purple for these. I just love this purple, alone it is so dark it is almost black, but on white it is a deep transparent purple. I also pull me some opal stringer, it makes your petals look light and feathery. I used opal light pink. After you have your base bead made, you take your transparent stringer and make small dots in clusters of 3's and 4's leaving a little space between the dots so that when you melt them in , they won't make a blob. Then you take the opal stringer and make smaller dots and place them on the tip of the dots you've already made. Once you have applied all your dots, your ready to poke your flowers. I heat each cluster one at a time in the middle of the dots, then I take my tungsten poker and poke a deep hole, in the center. This causes the petal to draw in, plus once you heat it all back up it makes a pretty little bubble in the center of the flower. Once you are finished poking all your flower centers, heat the bead all the way through making sure you don't distort the shape. There you go! Floating Pansies!