About Me

My photo
I live in a small market town in the South West, with my husband and our cocker spanial called Lacey.We have one son.I have a small Ceramic studio and also am a U.K Lampworker. I have a studio which I produce handmade ceramics and lampwork glass jewellery, along with silver work. I attend craft fairs and sell in local galleries.I do one to one sessions on Ceramics, Basic silver smithing and Beginners Lampwork. My lampwork can be seen on my website or Flicker page under Avalon Designs.

Friday 25 March 2011

The Birds and Bees

Well looks like the pair of Ring Neck doves have found a place under our porch, in the honeysuckle to have their family.

They are very good parents, taking it in turn to keep the eggs warm.

Raspberry Fizz

I have been playing around with this lovely colour, I am calling them Raspberry Fizz.
Now that is what I call a grown up Pink.

Monday 21 March 2011

Saturated Silver Blue

It has been really hard to go in the studio, with this lovely sunshine. However I have some new beads for you to see. These are lovely silver reactive glass, reduced then as soon as you see the metalic, encase in clear.
I was so pleased with these. Look at those lovely colours, there are 4 large beads with 4 small matching spacers, they are on sale on ebay at the moment.
You really do get a beautiful effect out of Doule Helix when it strikes right.

Thursday 17 March 2011

Colour Reactions

When you open your kiln, never say that it was a bad beading day, just a learning curve.
I tried some silver brown yesterday, Shaped it in a nutrual flame then turned my propane up and reduced in the top of the flame, you need to work at this, dance it in and out until you get the metalic sheen, then encase in clear. Melt your clear really slowly in not to hot a flame. I got really lovely blues and greens and got really excited. Then I over heated it and this is what I got,
Next I had a go at copper green base with Triton, then encased in clear.
Quite liked this.

Next experiment was Base colour in Efftre Rosato Cover in silver foil , burnished and melt, add some frit Iris Gold, Aura, and lavender. Melt in then reduced. This bead came out to metalic and so lost the other colours.
So as I said it was a learning curve.

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Welcome to my World

After such a really nice sunny day yesterday, I thought I would do some torch work today. So first I took a look at my glass stash
Think I will have a play with some new Cim glass and some frits, so light up the torch and away we go.
I will blog tomorrow with some pictures of what came out of the kiln.
I have some Big Holed cored Beasd on ebay at the moment, so do have a look and if you like them, try bidding you never know you may win. Pop this number into search 110660914665

This lovely bead has storming effect captured  inside the little windows, it is cored and capped with sterling silver. 

Sunday 6 March 2011

Organic Blue

Here are a couple of sets that are on my ebay for sale.
Organic blue beads with silver Ivory base and lovely silver glass, encased in clear.
This next set is made from Cim grape wrapped with S/S then encased in Amythist and then trailed with fine silver. Again for sale on ebay this week search number  110656870877
Trying out a few new Big Hole Beads this week, so will show and tell next wee.