Overwhelmed - Advice for a Newbie

[Blue Weaver]

The 40 bead challenge sounds like a great idea for a beginner, especially saving the beads on chronological order. I am sure it would help you figure out the different parts within the flame and how far you can push or pull the glass.

[Metamorphi]

Originally Posted by 1knitchick

So, after my long winded rambling, I ask you again - how did you all start? I would appreciate any insight!

Welcome to the fold! I started in much the same way as you. I took a few lessons learned how to shape beads with gravity, dots, stringers, basic flowers and hearts.

The first thing I did was focus not on decoration but on shaping. Almost every bead I made for the first six months was "organic - overcooked and full of reactions" and was hand shaped with a marver. I figured out a lot about heat sinking, control and how to use gravity.

The second thing I really wanted to get my head around was pulling twisties and different sized stringers to make dots. So again, I spent hours pulling stringers, learning how to pull nice twisties and of course applying dots. I bought Deanna Griffin Dove and Brad Pearson's book on dots, which was most helpful. Dot application has been valuable. I love dot decoration so I'm happy to spend 40 minutes on one dot bead.

Scroll decoration and flowers is what I'm working on now. Someone once told me, that if you like how it looks raised, leave it. If it looks dodgy raised, melt it flat and decorate over it.

The challenge presented by Heather Trimlett is a good idea, but don't be confined by it. Practice as you want, but practicing your skills is never ending. It's part of the joy of lampworking

[Emily]

Buy a sample pack of glass that has the basic Effetre colors -- the opaques (also called "pastels"), the transparents, and the "special" colors, which are the reds, oranges, yellows, and browns. Buy extra black, white, clear, and ivory or dark ivory. Try to resist the urge to buy anything called a "hand-pulled" color. Not only are those more expensive, they sometimes behave weirdly, and you need to get some experience to learn when a problem is caused by something you're doing versus some quirk of the glass.

Play with all of the colors -- you'll learn that some colors are much softer than others. In general, for Effetre glass, the opaques are soft (with ivory and white being really soft) and the transparents are stiff (cobalt is probably the stiffest). That means that a dot of opaque on a transparent bead will spread out when you melt it, and a dot of transparent on an opaque bead will sink in. Many of the dot techniques (like flowers) rely on this effect.

Learning to make a centered, balanced "round" (that is, doughnut-shaped) bead is essential, so give that some practice. After you've got that reasonably well under control, work on cylinder or barrel-shaped beads.

If you want to practice encasing, you could try encasing a white base bead with a dark transparent. Those beads look pretty when they're done right, but let me warn you, this is a challenge! Because white is so much softer than the transparents, keeping a white base bead cool enough to encase (because you want whatever you're encasing to be relatively firm) while getting the transparent glass nice and hot to encase it is tricky. If you master this, you'll be in good shape to try encasing beads that have a pattern on them.

Be prepared to waste a lot of glass. It's a learning process, and you will undoubtedly make your share of turkeys. That's one reason that you want to postpone playing with the more expensive colors if you can stand it.

If you're a disciplined person, try to start out every session by making some spacers -- small, perfectly centered and balanced single-color beads. Not only is it good practice, spacers are useful when you start stringing your fancier beads. Once you have it down pat, try making more than one spacer on a mandrel. Yes, it can be done!

If you can, try to spend some time every session pulling stringer. Work on getting even, straight stringers of various sizes. That doesn't mean one stringer that starts out really skinny and then thickens up as the glass cools. It means saying, "I'm going to pull a thick stringer (or medium, or thin, or hair-fine)," and then pulling one that's pretty much entirely the size you wanted. Pulling stringer will help you develop a feel for how glass moves in response to heat, time, and gravity.

Then have fun. Play with colors, play with shapes, play with some of the stringer that you pulled. Heat part of your bead and tilt your mandrel to watch the glass move, or heat the middle of your bead and spin your mandrel slowly to watch the glass droop. Hold your bead out of the flame for a little while, then learn to reintroduce it into the flame without shattering by starting way way out in the flame and gradually bringing it toward you.

Experiment with holding your bead at different positions relative to the flame. You almost never want to have your whole bead right in the middle of the flame. Even when you're winding glass on, you want to have the bead a little below the flame, with the flame hitting the place where the glass rod meets your bead. When you're decorating a bead, you usually want the bead to be firm, so you're holding it near the flame (above, below, or to the side), but not right in the flame. Experiment with stringers -- hold a stringer away from the flame, to the side, then gradually bring it closer, and look for the point where it starts to soften.

If you like someone else's bead, try to copy it. I absolutely don't recommend trying to copy someone else's design and selling it -- that's a cardinal sin in the bead world -- but figuring out how someone got a certain effect can improve your skills and even lead you to your own designs.

Mostly, be safe, have fun, and don't stress about results for quite a while.

[1knitchick]

Originally Posted by Emily

If you like someone else's bead, try to copy it. I absolutely don't recommend trying to copy someone else's design and selling it -- that's a cardinal sin in the bead world

Ah yes, it's a cardinal sin in the knitting world too! But I can see where it's useful to try and figure out how someone achieved a certain look.