ABS July Sous La Mer necklace

Sous La Mer necklace

ABS has this fantastic mermaid, under the sea ( Sous La Mer) inspiration for their July Challenge and I was hoping that I could make something out of glass in my lampworking class for the challenge.
As you might had read in my last post, I struggled quite a lot with fire, literally burning a hole through my skirt ( and my skin in this process) and my thoughts being scattered all over the place as I was working on another project while planning a work-cation so I ended up without a mermaid inspired piece 🙁
While we were making the pieces, some of the participants came up with this idea of coloring our glass doodles with glass paints and alcohol inks. Our instructor asked us to try and I went one step further and used patina inks on glass.
The result is a oozy-doozy slighly opaque and textural to touch piece that looks like a fantasy piece which I thought resembled the polyps at the left bottom of this picture. So here it is my totally experimental handmade glass bead necklace. Lampworking veterans please excuse me as this is my first attempt as lampworking.

 Sous La Mer necklace

 

Sous La Mer means under the sea in French. I was inspired by the tentacles and polyps in the visual to create the focal beads using clear borosilicate glass tubes which I have then colored with alcohol and patina inks giving a combination of opaque and transparent feeling to the piece. The focal is strung on to a fish scale finish silver leather cord (pointing to the shimmery scales of the mermaid) wrapped in a satin ribbon and accented with milky beads and chain. I used the muddy yellow, green and blue colors on the focal and I picked the pinkish red color from the picture (not in the palette) as my accents as I thought that the reds given as too strong for the design.

  Inspiration
The Little Mermaid, 1911 by Edmund Dulac
 Making the necklace took just a few minutes but I had great trouble photographing this piece. Yes! it does look much better in person 🙂  It has too many transparent portions and shimmery components that almost all the pictures I took look heavily posterized. I think I really have to learn to shoot such surfaces.

I hope you find it interesting
Cheers

 

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  1. Michelle L. avatar

    I really love that! The coloration makes it so fantastical.

  2. motidana avatar

    Wow congratulations!! That's definitely an achievement!! Working with glass is definitely difficult for the first time ( which I learnt to my dismay ) but you have really created a marvelous focal . I love the texture and the swirling colors of this pendant .

  3. Divya N avatar

    Oh did you take lampworking lessons as well? I would love to see what you made

  4. Divya N avatar

    thanks – it has a unique – never seen before feel to it

  5. CREATIVE MIND avatar

    How cute.. very pretty Divya!

  6. bairozan avatar

    So you went further experimenting with coloring the glass bead you made! The colors are just the right ones for the challenge!

  7. Divya N avatar

    I colored it once when I made it and then altered and added more shades for the challenge

  8. Radhika avatar

    so pretty piece Divya I love it..you are working very hard on bending glass .. even not caring burns..like your spirit..:)

  9. lavina agarwal avatar

    Beautiful work divya

  10. freshbakeddesigns avatar

    This is one I'd just love to see in person…thanks so much for sharing your artistic adventure with learning lamp work. Way to push through the challenge!

  11. Kristen avatar

    I'm very impressed at your first attempt at lamp working! The bead and your necklace is lovely.

  12. Divya N avatar

    Thanks – yes , it does look a tad better in person 🙂

  13. Divya N avatar

    Thanks, hopefully I'll get better with time

  14. TesoriTrovati avatar

    I have always wanted to work in glass. But it does scare me a bit! I love this bead. It really looks like a treasure from the deep. Thank you for participating in the Art Bead Scene Challenge for July! Enjoy the day! Erin

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