How long did it take you??

[angie]

A question i was thinking about\\:D/
how long did it take you before you started making really good beads? (with OUT lessons)

im just curious on how long it will take [-o<

[ShepherdCreations]

I started about a year ago on a plumbers torch, got my National 8m in april, couldn't work over summer, boro in the fall, Barracuda (Bethlehem) in December, and now I'm making decent beads. Expect to practice LOTS before decent sellable stuff comes off the mandrel. Oh, and yes it's very frustrating at first ( and every so often when learning new shapes or skills). DH tries his hand at it every few weeks and gets frustrated, but he's actually doing really well for the hours he's put into it to be getting decent pendants. Good luck, and remember -- keep at it! It is SOOOO worth it!

[ShepherdCreations]

Oh, and also I work full time so really if you have more time to devote to it than just a few hours on each weekend, you'll probably be up and running in less than 6 months!

[Lisi]

Nowadays, I torch 6-8 hours a day, 6-7 days a week on a Bobcat and generator. In the very beginning, I used a HH for 18 months, and on average, I torched 3-5 days a week, 5-8 hours a day. About 4 months after I started, I began selling beads on ebay.

Don't worry about being able to produce perfect pressed beads and bicones, encased florals, etc. If you can make round/donut beads with nicely dimpled-in holes, and they are properly annealed, then you are ready to sell. Even your beads with raised and melted in dots, and triangles don't have to be absolutely perfect, just not so obviously uneven, or raised dots that have undercuts, etc.

Your designs don't have to be fantastic complicated artsy things to sell them. Customers love the simple things too. :)

[angie]

so a month isnt very long is it? lol
i can make a good round bead and im fairly good with dots, i think the main thing now is making beads the same size, no matter how much i try i cant seem to get them matched, and i find it even harder with presses, either not enough glass or too much glass.

[Mr. Smiley]

A month is a drop in the bucket. If this was easily mastered, there wouldn't be so many of us trying to do it. It's a life long process for me. If you are having fun and getting better, don't worry about the rest. it will all come in time. Just get lost in the glass and strive for a better understanding of how to work it. :love:

[Ro]

i still make pretty ugly beads most of the time, with a few nice ones here and there, i make them so infrequently, 1 or 2x a year maybe ill make beads a few days. so even after 4 yrs, i can make any shape, nice ends but designs, well leave a lot to be desired as my expression is mainly in sculpture usually and its hard to transfer my ideas to be expressed in bead design. i make good bubble traps, that was the last one i tried to learn, other than that, eh not so good. i just got some cz's from SuzyQ to try, so i guess ill give florals a go again, one day they will be nice:)
ro

[Emily]

It really varies from person to person. There are some people who seem to take to it like a duck to water, and there are people who struggle with it. I put myself in the struggler category. I can't really answer your question because I started out by taking a class, so I can't give you a "without lessons" answer. (Even with lessons, my answer is "it seemed like forever.")

If you're trying to make a matched pair, you can try to make two beads on a mandrel (some people make more, but obviously the more beads, the harder it is), or you can just make a whole lot of beads and pick the two that match best. Other people measure their rods, and say "I'll use 1/2 inch of the pink for the base" or whatever, so the beads come out the same. A lot of it is practice, practice, practice. This subject gets discussed from time to time, so you might try doing a search for past messages. I'm not quite sure what the best search terms would be, though.

For presses, here's a handy trick. Take polymer clay (Sculpey or Premo) and play with your press until you get a nice pressed shape out of the polymer. Now you know you have the right amount. Now take a hunk of mandrel (I cut a straight section off one that's got a bent part) and start forming that hunk of clay around the mandrel and pressing it until you figure out what shape it should be before pressing. Then form it back into your best recollection of the right pre-pressed shape and bake it (if you haven't worked with polymer clay before, it bakes in your home oven or a toaster oven). I have mine baked right on to the hunks of mandrel. Baked polymer doesn't really stick very well to metal, so you might want to superglue it after it's baked. If you have more than one size of a particular press, mark the size on your polymer piece. Now you have a reference for the size of the glob of glass that you need for each press. When I get out a particular press, I hunt down the polymer piece that matches that press and try to get my glass the same size before I press. It's still tricky, particularly when you're doing a design before you press, but it really helps.

For a lentil press, you want your glass to be a lemon or football shape before you press. I don't use the other presses enough to have a good sense what shapes they want.

[FourTailsLampwork]

I haven't dared sell on EBAY yet, but I've been selling earrings through a local shop and they are selling well, and I've been at this about four months. Remember, there's a difference between unacceptable (different sizes on a "matched" pair, sharp edges, no dimples, filled with bead release, etc.) and "saleable but not perfect." People like the simpler designs, too; sometimes you need your beads to blend into another design rather than popping out, or just like simpler styles. Then there's always the "One woman's trash ... " principle (which does not excuse selling trash, mind you!). I hand over my wonkies free to teachers in the area to use in their kids' art classes, and several have shown up the next week in MY class )I teach adults, including a lot of teachers needing back-certification) wearing jewelry they made out of them--things that I would never in a million years have considered useable for anything but eight year olds' art projects. That was what actually gave me the gumption to start selling the beads I thought were acceptable--that and getting a kiln to actually anneal the dang things so I *could* sell them.

For making matched sizes on a press, I do what Emily does. You want a fattish bicone for the Cattwalk tab press, btw, and a lemon shape for a crunch. For crunches, I cheat when I want consistent sizes: I make a round tab first and then crunch it :)

The other thing is to get a pair of calipers. I have an old set of my grandfather's, and I use those to measure barrels--one for width and one for length. Someone here posted a way cool tip about using flattened soda cans as measuring tools. Their only problem is that they can't be adjusted, but they are free, so oyu can have them in a whole range of sizes.

[dragonfly designs 56]

been doing it for a year, and my beads still suck! but i am not creative either....cant come up with designs on my own really, just keep making frit beads...