Part three of my dilettante weekend - lampwork

You didn't think I'd let a weekend go by without playing with fire, did you? Of course not - so part three of my weekend game session took place in front of my torch, playing with gorgeous deep red and silver-white glass. Hurrah!

To start with I pulled a couple of stringers out of each rod to keep for decorating other beads later. Brilliantly, I found that (for me at least) pulling stringers means it's easier to get a clean wrap around the mandrel when I start making beads. Maybe because the glass isn't quite stone cold when it first comes into the flame, maybe because it doesn't have such a raw edge - whatever the answer, I'm just pleased it works.

This time around, I wanted to concentrate on really getting a good shape out of my glass, so my first three beads were plain and simple red glass rounds. As usual, the first part of the process was introducing the glass rod into the flame slowly, wafting it in and out so it didn't shock (I suspect shocked glass would mean singed carpet, which would be A Bad Thing). Once it was warm enough, I let the end of the rod rest in the flame and develop a nice molten gather. I've found that by resting my elbow on the desk edge I can get a lot more control over the rod, especially when it's long, so it doesn't end up in all different parts of the flame as I heat it.

With the gather in place I introduced the mandrel to the flame, heated it up and then wound the glass onto it. Now came the tricky part: getting a good shape. I'm not very good at winding my glass on neatly and evenly yet (but I'm getting better!), so after detaching the glass rod and setting it aside I swapped the mandrel into my right hand and got to work. The first thing I did was tilt the mandrel and let gravity help me, allowing the molten glass to droop first one way and then the other. Doing that let me get those lovely dimples around the mandrel which means the beads don't have sharp edges to damage beading thread when you come to play with them. Once those were in place, I kept the mandrel horizontal and rotated it slowly, making sure to keep the glass hot and runny. Eventually, with a lot of patience, I had nice round beads. When I thought it might be ready, I brought the mandrel up level with my eyes and watched the upper edge of the bead as I rotated it: when the edge looked as though it wasn't moving up and down, I knew the bead was round (thanks to Keiara for the tip!).

I couldn't let playtime pass without a little decoration, so my last two beads were in the silver-white colour with red dots and stringer decorations. The five beads look so pretty together, I'm calling them my first set. Even though they aren't quite evenly sized.

What do you think?