1st commission

My friend Philippa came round to see me before she went off on her travels to New Zealand. She aims to walk the length of New Zealand hoping to raise £3000 for the Earl Mountbatten Hospice where her sister spent her final days after sadly succombing to cancer just 5 months after she was diagnosed.

Please take the time to read Philippa's blog where you can follow her journey and make a donation if you wish

http://floppyadventures.blogspot.com/p/blog.html

Philippa is the friend who started me on my jewellery hobby. I was showing her my lampwork studio and saying that I could do with a project to get my teeth into rather than just randomly playing with glass and the next thing I know she is giving me my first commission. As she is going to be away for Christmas she asked me to make a necklace for her Mum. I had 2 briefs, either pink and green colours or the colours from a peacock feather. I started with the pink and green but was soon struggling so switched to the peacock colours as I have far more choice of glass colours to choose from.

To create the beads for this necklace was quite a learning curve as it involves several techniques. To create the beads I make 2 discs of glass, one in the opaque and one transparent and then slowely melt them together. This cannot be hurried, impatiently the first few I made and encouraged the glass to meet, this results in a bubble forming in the middle of the bead.

Once the two glasses merge, I used a round bead roller which I bought from Pegagus Lampwork Tools to shape the beads, adding a bit more glass to the edges if needed. Using SIS (silvered ivory stringer) I ran a line over the join and melted in. For the final florish I added 3 wraps of silver wire, partially melted into little silver balls.

Here is the final necklace: