Artisan Lampwork Beads and Tubelined Ceramics.

As you see I have added my other site to this one, so I will also be putting updates with my ceramic creations combined onto this blog.
I have been making and selling ceramics for over 15 years now and my main ceramic designes are tube lining. I also write projects for Mayco to put in there community section, to help others with ceramics. My ceramics can be bought at Fairs that I attend or by emailing me.

I also love doing hand building work with clay.

The above platter is 16" round and was made for a wedding present.
I hope to add projects and ideas to the blog in the near future.
So here begins a new partnership for Avalon Designes, both Glass meets ceramics.
Also the odd update on my garden birds.

Cabs, Silver and Birds

As a update for those waiting for the Ringneck dove to hatch. Well she lost one egg which fell out of the nest and then the other one fell out, but I managed to save it on Monday and returned it to the nest. Mother sat on it and it hatched yesterday 6th April.

Then this morning, the nest was wrecked and the baby gone. Something had attacked the nest overnight....but what?

I have spent a day learning how to do silverwork, with the talented George Harper - East in Cirencester. I made some glass cabachons, which I took with me to have them set in silver.

I chose two from this group and this is what I made, with lots of help from George.

I then went onto The Falkland Arms at Great Tew, Chipping Norton, where my son Richard and Kate his partner are landlady and landlord.

 Not forgetting  Jazz their dog, who just keeps an eye on things.It is a Beautiful place like something off a chocolate box and I can recommend the accomodation and food.

 So I have had a lovely couple of days, now home to get busy in the studio.

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.

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.

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.

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.