So it’s difficult when you sit down in front of the bench and don’t have to make anything in particular.   So many choices, what do you make?   Make a marble because it’s fun?  Make a pendant because it might sell?  Make a bottle because they’re pretty?  Make that pen that your wife asked for?   How about beads you’re making as a charity donation?  Or do you try something new as R&D?

Well tonight I did a little bit of all of that.   I have an appointment with a customer on Sunday that wants drawer pulls, and one of the colors she liked was one I don’t use often, and wasn’t totally certain on which one it was.   Well I narrowed it down (Momka’s Silver Tears for the glass geeks), and I made a marble to test out how it reacts with powdered white.   It was the glass I was lo0king for AND I made a marble.   Now I just have to figure out how I did the pull that she bought a sample of.  I most certainly made it, but it was made differently than I do them now, and that was a while back.

I also made my wife’s pen body.  And you know what?  It was the third attempt, but, if it doesn’t crack in the kiln, it came out pretty awesome.  She asked for Borostix blush with TAG Heavy Blue Leprechaun and so far I’m on pen body 3.  the first one was mostly Blush with a HBL stripe; it cracked.   the second was more HBL than Blush, but I screwed up the bottom opening on the pen and it was to short.   This third one..I did it my way.   I took the body from attempt 2, and melted it down around a pulled Blush rod.   This new rod I then wrapped around clear, raked it some, and mixed it up fairly well in the heating process before pulling it down into something that looks kind of impressionist.   If it doesn’t crack it’s going to look awesome.

The extra takeaway here, is that in the course of making body number 3, I think I finally figured out how to do Shannon Hill’s technique for making hollow beads.   I had seen his video, tried it, and it didn’t go well.   That was a couple of years back and I’ve gotten a wee bit better.    So another time, I’ll have to give it a try again.

Finally, I did a ‘have to’ bit, where I made some hummingbird feeder tubes, but here again I learned something as I was reminded of the way I was making them last year, and doing it better than I have been.

And finally..I did a fun piece.  I started a perfume bottle that’ll need to anneal overnight and be finished tomorrow.

Oh…and I managed to get 5 glow in the dark beads in the kiln towards my goal of 60 to send to Beads of Courage.

Not a bad haul for a late start.

Starting with a string of beads spelling out their name, the children then get beads to mark milestones and procedures.  Go for a blood draw, that’s one type of bead, chemo another, x-rays, heart operations, etc, etc, etc…all stuff distracting kids from the business of growing up and being a kid.

In short, BOC is a group of nice folks.

They rely on donations of beads from bead makers all over the country and world that work in glass, polymer clay, wood, felt, metal, you name it, and when they don’t have enough of a certain type of bead, they have to buy and supplement that type with plastic beads.

Recently I learned that the kids that undergo radiation treatments get glow in the dark beads, and that BOC’s been supplementing with plastic beads.

I’ve decided to do something nice, and I’m making an effort to make 60 glow in the dark beads to send off.   This is a lot of beads for me, since by and large…I don’t do beads.  But I have glow glass, I have mandrels, and doing 10 beads a session isn’t a whole lot when they’re on the smaller (not 1/4″ rod) mandrels.

I think I got 11 in the kiln tonight, so I’m ahead on the next session.