Sunday's beads

I found a Flower Marble Tutorial on the WetCanvas site and adapted it to try to make an implosion pendant. Simply, this is a pendant where the pattern is in the centre of the glass, much like childrens marbles. Here's one of my better efforts, although not very good, but it's a start.
Implosion pendantImplosion pendant

All the glass is Moretti. Outside is clear with colours inside being blue, lavender and white. I took the photo with the bead submerged under water held in a black plastic food tray. I tried with a white tray but the clear glass didn't show up as well. Again the tip to photograph beads under water to minimize reflections was from the WetCanvas site.

White barrel with stringerWhite barrel with stringer

This second photo is of a white barrel bead about an inch long with a blue, green and lavender twistie ( where the three colours have been twisted whilst molten like a red and white barbers pole of old) Really I made it to use up a small length of white moretti rod left over from making other beads.

I have another implosion pendant cooling in vermiculite at the moment and can hardly wait for the 3-4 hours before I can take it out to see how it came out. I attempted to start with a bigger gather of clear glass and to make the base more rounded. I'll post a picture if it doesn't crack apart when I take it out of the vermiculite. I batch anneal my beads when I have sufficient to fill a shelf in the kiln.

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Pat from Canvey's picture

Picture position

By the way Kat, although I tried to fiddle with the positioning, I still couldn't get the second picture to move down and to the extreme left. Can you give me a short tutorial?

kat's picture

Try 'Center'

I've found that the best alignment to use that's easily implemented when you want to acomplish what you are after is 'Center'. It pushes the text down to the next line and therefore you get good seperation.

kat's picture

Better Explanation

In order to get the centre alignment, click the add image button, choose your image as normal.

The title and description are as normal.
Under link - I guess 'link to image page' is the one you normally need. It's the one you used above.
Size you can keep as 'thumbnail' unless you would like to specify a larger size.
Alignment - choose 'center'.

Then click 'insert'.

Does that help? I figured maybe I'd not made it explanatory enough in the previous comment...

kat's picture

White Barrel

The white barrel with the stringer bead looks like a prime example of a bead that you should try that underwater photo technique on you emailed me with.

Pat from Canvey's picture

Changed

No Kat, You've changed it to what I don't want by using "Centre" twice. The first picture should be left assigned as it occludes some of the text now. I'll wait for you to change it back again. I did understand what you meant in your first post and changed everything accordingly. I'm busy trying to make different focal beads now as I may have a possible shop buyer. By the way, the white barrel was photographed under water as was the implosion pendant. Apparently if you are using clear glass in the bead or pendant you get better outline definition under water.

kat's picture

Browser Differences

hmmm - I just checked in IE and yep, you're right - it does occlude some of the text. I was looking in Firefox which looks fine as it is now. I'll have to play more deeply as the way the different web browsers are interpretting the page is having an effect.

kat's picture

Left Again

OK I put the first picture back to left and it appears that both Firefox 2 and IE7 are displaying the post in a readable form. Is whatever version of IE you are using displaying it in a readable form now?

Pat from Canvey's picture

Yes, and here are the latest

Yes, and here are the latest offerings. Not a very good picture I'm afraid. I was getting all sorts of reflections due to the beads being supported on clear glass. This is the only way I can think of to get the most light travelling through the transparent beads.

Burst of EnergyBurst of Energy
The longest bead, 3rd from left on the bottom row is 35mm. I've been asked to make some focal beads for a local retailer so I intend to make some more of some of these in different colourways. I might even get carried away and make a red, white and blue one.