Encasing Problems!

[Crafty1]

I posted in the garage sale for the book Encase It by Deanna Griffin Dove. I was wondering if this book helped anyone that has it. I have been practicing encasing flowers. There seems to be a fine line between the base bead being to cold and it cracks, or too hot and the design smears. Even when I think I have it right I think the clear is too hot and smears the flowers. Is this possible? I am also having a problem with regular donut beads. I place my dots then apply mounds of glass in the center, melt it down to drag the dots to each side. My problem there is that the clear never reaches the edges and looks like crap. I tried to add more clear, but the bead just gets bigger and the clear doesn't seem to work its way to the mandrel. When doing these beads I work below the flame so gravity plays in my favor, but it dosen't seem to work. Any help would be great. At this point I am just wasting glass and time as each bead seems to take 30-45min and it looks bad.

Thanks

Tamara

[Crafty1]

Nobody can help me

[Calypso]

Tamara, there are several tut about "encasing" in lampworketc and also on YouTube.

good luck,

Ana María

[mariak]

I read somewhere that Corina Tettinger says her base bead cracks sometimes when she is encasing, and she just finishes the encasing and melts it all back together. Also, I wouldn't recommend practicing with white or ivory flowers, because they'll smear really easily (on the other hand, if you can handle those, you can deal with anything. ) What I do is do a round of encasing, and if the base bead seems like it's getting too hot, I melt the rod off and let the bead cool a little before I keep going.

Maria

[Margrieten]

Hi Tamara,

Perhaps my tut on youtube can help you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWm6in9MtMk

[Crafty1]

Thanks, I see how winding glass from one side to the other might help instead of the big massive glob that I try to apply. I'll also add small amount of glass to the sides and see if that does the trick.

Tamara

[Henrywashere]

Tamara when I encase I dont do round the world or side to side. When I do my flowers I spot encase over then with large dots of clear glass, this stops the flowers from smearing. When I have covered my whole design I then fill in the gaps with extra glass, then I melt the top of all the dots down and pat with my marver - pat dont push or you will distort your flowers, then its just a matter of melting all the clear glass round. If I dont have dimpled ends at that point I do a ring of glass around the mandrel with a thick stringer melt it in and voila dimple ends. Hope this helps.

[Crafty1]

Thanks for the info. Last night I made the best one I've made yet. I'll try adding dots over the flowers and see what that does for me.

Thanks for your help

Tamara

[Beadanna]

Margriet that's a great video - thanks

Anna

[ellyloo]

I love the dotty method too! Especially for florals.

[2xMI]

Margriet, the video was very helpful. Thanks!

Mimi