Fire and Glass.

One of the benefits of going home (other than seeing my lovely family, of course!) is that I get to play with my torch (Actually, I share it with my sister, so it's our torch, too bad she lives in Baltimore). And when I have an order for another 4 dozen earrings for the gift shop I worked at in Medora, ND, it gives me an excellent excuse to do so.  I took a couple of photos, which are less than stellar because it's hard to take pictures of fire and molten glass, but I think you can get the general idea.

This is our torch and some of the set up. And all of our glass rods in the organizer thing.  We've been making beads for almost 10 years (?! wow, thats a long time!) so all the pieces on top are the short ends of rods that are just about used up.

In this picture you can kind of see the spiral in the end of the glass.  I take one rod, add a stripe of another color (or 2) and twist them together with a pair of pliers.  

Then I let the whole thing get super hot and drip ( very carefully so that it doesn't get too thin or fall off) and then break it off and let it cool down in a fiber blanket before reheating the skinny end and curling the loop over.

Some finished earrings!

A layered one.

Detail of a spiral pair.

Fun with some with color / transparency combinations!

Well, there is some of the magic that is playing with molten glass. not even close to seeing it in person though, so if any of you Holland-ers are around when i'm home for christmas, feel free to stop by!