In the tradition of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", I sent my husband Eddie off this morning to the local metal recyclers with the instructions to bring me home some copper that I can use in my jewellery. He brought home these 2 pieces of copper pipe, I am planning some pendants & earrings with them & many more when they all get cut up.

I tried out one of the new Double Helix silver glasses called Iaso the other day. Apparently you can get a lovely metallic copper effect all over from it, I tried a couple of things but this bead probably had the coolest effect. Jed from Double Helix has kindly done a video to help people with how to work this new glass as it seems to be quite different to the other Double Helix reduction glasses. What I did was I started off doing exactly what Jed did in his video, with a tiny reduction flame (lengthen the candles from neutral by about 2-3mm) passing the bead actually through the end of the candles right down close to the end of the torch & letting it cool after each pass. But everytime I passed the bead through the flame again after the first time, part of the reduction got erased. So I ended up with stripes of reduction, in different colours, some parts overlapping. There were also some parts that didn't seem to have any reduction at all. So then I turned my reduction flame up a little bit so the candles are about 2 inches long & twirled the bead in the flame about half way up (approx 5-6 inches from the end of the torch) & then took it out to let it cool. I did this about 5-10 times & I could see the red/copper colours coming out but it had a metallic marbled effect. So this is what the finished bead looked like, the second photo shows the metallic effect better than the first one, now i just need to see if it is repeatable.

I've been busy making christmas gifts for both my Etsy shop & other places I sell & as presents for my family & friends. Hope you enjoy looking at them!

Have been very busy selling on Facebook lately, here are a few of the beads & sets that I've sold through the FB auction sites. Hope you enjoy the eye candy!

I have been making a lot of different stuff since I came home from the Gathering, these are the latest. A fellow trivia player asked if I could make a cross for her sister who is very religious, so I tried making a couple in reducing silver glass & this is what I came up with. She liked them & ended up buying both, looks like I should try making some more! Laying them half down for the photos gives the best pic of the oil slick colours.

Had a great trip to the US to The Gathering, now to set up my new torch, make some beads & shells using my new glass (boro) & get everything listed in my Etsy shop so I can sell it!

I have been very busy lately, but I have managed to play with a few new techniques & bead shapes in my lampworking as well as playing with some silver & Rose Bronze PMC. Pics of some new PMC findings & beads coming soon!