First Miss Tanzania Necklace

What do you think?  She is made of wine and beer bottle beads, antique copper beads and wooden beads.

                                                                      

Miss Tanzania, Recycled

Well, here she is...Miss Tanzania, made from a recycled beer bottle.  All dressed up and ready to party!  I played around with etching a bit.  This one is etched using a chemical that I bought for the process awhile ago.  I etched some of the smaller, accent beads with baking soda, while they were still in the flame and I think that I like that look better, as they look more "aged".  Interestingly, all the beads that I made yesterday were from an amber colored beer bottle.  The ones etched with baking soda look almost blue and this one looks black.  You'll see the others when I complete a necklace with them...hopefully in the next week or so.  She stands 2 inches tall and has a shallow crack in her forehead, but I think that adds to the antique look.  Hopefully the next one will have boobs.  What do you think?

                                         http://www.flickr.com/groups/1867825@N21/                                    

Miss Tanzania, 1981

I'm continuing with Tanzania and with glass.  Not bottle glass yet.  I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with my green bottle beads and I want to get the bugs out of Miss Tanzania in glass before I break a beer bottle for her.  I just happen to have some (gluten free!) beer in the refrig in her perfect color!

First:  I must introduce--the original--Miss Tanzania, 1981:

                                                                  

She is a wooden sculpture--4 feet tall that we purchased in Tanzania in September.  So named because, when we were admiring her the salesman told us that she was an antique.  When I asked how old she was, he replied that she was about 30 years old.  What does that make me?  Anyway...for some time now I wanted to see if I could make her in glass--somewhat smaller and just head and shoulders.

Here is my first attempt:

 Of course, she's still on the mandrel because of a telltale crack in the middle of her back.  You already know about my cracking troubles.  This time it's due to the height of the bead.  It's still difficult for me to keep larger beads evenly heated in the flame. Though he didn't work in glass that I know of, now I know why Van Gogh cut off his ear!  This bead--at about 2.5 inches tall is almost twice as tall as my birdies.    I did manage to pierce her ears though.  You wouldn't expect me to let her go naked, would you?                       

      

My First Bottle Beads

Well,

Here are my first bottle beads:

                                                 

My observations--and a disclaimer--I did not use this brand of wine on my beads--though it is a very nice wine!

1. It wasn't too bad making bottle beads.  The most difficult thing about it was overcoming the shockiness of the glass, which I did by preheating the glass shards in the kiln.  The only problem with that was, it took a LONG time.  I preheated the kiln at a ramp of 200 degrees per hour, so I wasn't up to bead annealing temperature for more than 4 hours.  Next time I'm going to try to ramp it up faster.  I did start making some beads and putting them in the kiln long before it was at annealing temperature.  It didn't seem to harm them at all.  I started playing with some shards after they were at about--maybe 350 degrees in the kiln and were still a bit shocky.  Not long after that, they worked out fine.

2. My bottle beads seem to be crystal clear.  That's good, but a bit disconcerting!  Why is it that wine bottles destined for the trash make crystal clear beads and glass rods--which can be very expensive--can be scummy?

3.  Wine bottles come in a rainbow of colors--provided that the rainbow is different shades of green!  Any donations of wine--or booze--bottles will be greatfully accepted, but NO GREEN, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

4.  You don't want to see me start drinking more, do you?

And the Winner is...

                                                                    Happy Feet       


                                                      Thank you, Kate Behrokh,

                                              and to all others who participated!                             

Shanga

I'm leaving South America for awhile and tavelling back to Tanzania (in my mind only!)  My first love was always glass and I've been getting back into it.  And, more successfully, I think!

While in Tanzania, I had the priviledge to visit Shanga, which employs handicapped people, mostly deaf to create glass beads and jewelry. http://www.shanga.org/

 Needless to say, I was on cloud 9 when I found out that was going to be our first stop on day one of our trip! Being deaf--I had cochlear implant surgery 5 years ago--which was nothing short of a miracle--and making glass beads myself the visit to Shanga was a big highlight for me.  They make their glass beads out of wine bottles and their process is somewhat different from what I am used to.  They melt the glass in a kiln, dip in a mandrel--no bead release--, pull out a blob of glass, shape it into a bead, then remove it immediately from the mandrel and cool it in a fiber blanket.  I don't think I got a good picture, but I'll look.  I thought that I was going to get to try to make a bead while there, but, do to the language barrier, I missed my chance!

Here, he's dipping the mandrel into the hot glass to gather the bead.

Removing the hot bead from the mandrel to place in the fiber blanket to cool.









 
 

                                         My new Shanga friends with our guide, Ahadi.  They're holding up

                                         glass beads that I made for them.

So--my next glass adventure is going to involve (trying to) make some glass beads out of winebottles.  I have some ideas of what I'd like to do, but I'm going to wait to post til I have some decent bottle glass beads!

My thanks go to Cecelia Cohen for her tips in the book The Glass Artist's Studio Handbook.

http://www.glassandlight.blogspot.com/

And my future thanks to Bronwen Heilman for the bottle bead class that I'm taking from her at the Bead & Button Show in June.

http://www.bronwenheilman.blogspot.com/

Two Nameless Birds...and more on the frigate!

I never thought to bring this up, but this frigate is a male.  The females have a white belly.  Just in case you want to name him!  Back to the feet--which I had some trouble locating a picture of--and, again, thanks to Wikipedia for the information--they are pretty unnecesary, as these birds can stay in the air for more than a week.  Thanks, again to Betsy and Mark Blum, who graciously offered to allow me to post one of their photos on my blog.  Alas, I couldn't copy it from Facebook.  I hope you're priveledged enough to be one of their friends so that you can view the magnificent shot of a frigate in flight--from below.  Much better and more detailed than the one that I posted!

Well--here's my frigate--remember the plume on the head is my addition!

And...my pair of birdies!

Remember--they still need names.   And...due to the underwhelming response to my contests--if you REALLY want my frigate, besides a name, I'll need an essay (under 500 words, please!) telling me why you can't live without him and, either subscribe to my blog or become a fan of Goulash Designs on Facebook.

Email entries to my by Saturday, February 4.  If you chose to subscribe to my blog instead of, or addition to becoming a Facebook fan, mention that in your email.

susan@goulashdesigns.com

And, remember--deadline for the Blue Footed Boobie's naming looms near--it's tomorrow!