The Trials and Tribulations of a Newbie Lampworker!

Dots. I hate them. I just can’t control the blasted things and they end up all over the place, all sorts of different sizes, or just plain splodgy. Practise, practise, practise? Bah, I don’t have the PATIENCE for that! I want perfect dots and I want them NOW!

Why do I want to be able to do dots? Well, I see everyone else with their beautiful dotty and bumpy beads and I want to be able to do the same, but without the wasting of glass and gas and time and energy and.... well, you know what I mean. I’m mean.

And I hate the frustration of it too, I find I get so wound up that I just don’t want to do it any more, and I give up trying and go do something else which does not require blasted dots! In fact, I gave up trying dots within my first month of lampworking.
My early "dots". Oh dear........

I am only just now, five months on, giving them another real try.
And it’s painful, it’s like pulling teeth or fingernails. It hurts. But I am going to persevere this time, and I’ll tell you why.

Dots deserve our love. That bright yellow dot in the blue sky, the millions of sparkly dots on the night sky, the dots of Braille that enable people to read, a baby’s beautiful big eyes......Without that dot at the end of a sentence the sentence would never end. Dots are everywhere around us and deserve love and respect. Yay for dots!
And to all those of who have made the time and effort to practise and perfect those lovely dots, I applaud and respect you, and I apologise for being mean!

Last weeks Dots, much better! Still needs PPP though :-)

You can find me on Etsy :-)

The Trials and Tribulations of a Newbie Lampworker!

Hello again! I am back as promised with some more "Rules" that I have discovered on my brief lampworking journey, I hope you enjoy them!

Rule number 3: You always have to have every new glass that comes onto the market immediately and without regard for the size of you bank balance. This is just a plain fact that you cannot escape. But I will let you into a secret.......this is not a problem that is only suffered by Newbs. No siree. Even the old hands still suffer from this one. You are not alone, you should never be ashamed. It is a part of the addiction, for which there is no cure. Just accept it and move on. My personal poison is silver glass, even though I have a really hard time getting it to do anything on my HH, a new one becomes available, someone makes a gorgeous bead with it, and out comes the Debit card without a second thought! (“Dinner darling? Oh, I though we should be frugal and use up some leftovers. Yorkshire pudding with limp salad and cold spaghetti will be just fine, won’t it?”) Here is a photo of an early Aurae **ahem** "experiment":

Rule number 4: You will never have enough space. This is an unavoidable side effect of following unwaveringly rule number 5:
You will never have enough tools. And I tell you this my friends, there is no point trying to avoid this rule. Everywhere you turn some friendly type is flogging something that you suddenly really have a need for, or some equally friendly type is receiving new stock from a new or a favourite supplier. These people are feeding the addiction and we love them for it!

Please remember to post a comment with your suggestion of what a lampwork addict should be, I will give a prize for my favourite!

Thanks for reading, I'll be back soon :)

You can find me on Etsy :)

The Trials and Tribulations of a Newbie Lampworker!

First, an introduction. I am Vicki, and I am a Newbie Lampworker. And I am addicted, does that make me a lampaholic? A glassaholic? A flameaholic? I’ll leave you to decide that one. In fact, leave your suggestion in the comments and I will give a prize for my favourite!
There are rules to follow when you are a Newb, apart from the obvious safety aspects of the hobby/job of course.
Rule number one is: You will always try and run before you can walk. Not that I am saying I run around my flat with a rod of molten glass you understand, it’s just that thing, when you realise that you can wind the glass onto the mandrel without big blobs of glass falling on the work surface or without burning your home down or without burning yourself, but a simple single colour wonky spacer bead is never enough. Lets face it, you’ve spent weeks looking at all the amazing and beautiful things that everyone here has produced, and you want to do the same. And it is with a certain amount of arrogance that you think to yourself “ It doesn’t look like that should be too hard to do.......” So you try it. This inevitably leads to rule number two:
There will be “faliures”.
Now, this is where it gets harder. Nothing that you produce with your own fair hands is ever really a faliure, but that can be difficult to believe when you are staring down at an enormous gob of yucky, mis-shapen, ugly glass and saying to yourself “That’s definitely not an angel, it’s more like a piece of dog p**” Well, take it from someone who has produced their fair share of p** looking beads, everything you produce is part of the journey, you learn something every time you wind that glass onto that mandrel, even if it’s what not to do next time. It’s all part of the journey. Try putting your first bead onto a piece of string, then add your second and third and so on. Your first few are bound to be entirely experimental (because of course you will be obeying the first rule), but you will see some progress, even at this early stage. Then every time you try a new technique, add the first bead to the string as a milestone marker for your journey. You will start to see just how quickly you do progress!

I have more rules to follow soon, (with pictures!) thanks for reading and happy lampworking!

You can find me on Etsy :)


www.veebeads.etsy.com