A Pictorial Tutorial - Encased Florals
 

Hi Everyone, here are the pictures I took of Oenone/Melanie making her beautiful encased florals today. I am just about to post the first one to ensure they size correctly and are of decent quality first. More on the way soon.

1. She started out making two small donut beads side by side and rolled it into a barrel. I make my barrels differently but we both end up with the same result. She allows it to melt enough so the ends become a little pointy. She says this enables easier encasing

Marvering into a lovely barrel shape

Apply your vines

Marver your vines in, keep a nice barrel shape

Start your first layer of encasing. Melt a pea sized amount of clear and touch down on the left side of your barrel. From what I observe, she starts on the "shoulder" of the left size and swipes the clear around and pulls off. She does do the round the world method but not continuous . She continues this way around the bead , heating up the clear swiping the next layer down, butting up to the previous layer until she reaches the right "shoulder" of the bead.

Melt in the clear and marver your bead again , keeping the barrel shape.

Btw Melanie, if you see any errors in my explanation, please feel free to jump in. I am going a lot by memory as my notes are chicken scratch lol

Apply your dots however you want your floral to be. She did five dot flowers with a pulled 1mm stringer, opaque for base and transparent on top of the opaque dots.

Here is the tool she uses to poke the center of the flowers. I forget what she calls it. Nail something........She says she likes it because it is tapered.

nail setter :)

Haha, yes thank you!

Now you are going to do your second layer of encasing, exactly as you did the first layer. Starting on the left shoulder of the bead and working across to the right side. If you do not have enough clear glass on the sides , add more to the clear itself ,not the bead! Then use your favorite tool of choice to heat the glass on the ends and push the glass closer to your mandrel without touching the mandrel.

This shows her pushing the glass to the mandrel on the left side.

And the right side.

Let's melt that sucker down. I actually don't remember this step fairly well but I do remember her showing me to hold your bead under the flame and let the flame just kiss the top of the bead and turn slowly as you melt down your clear. You don't want the bead to get too hot.

Your bead is ready to go in the kiln.

If anyone needs a larger version of these pictures , just let me know. I had to resize them down so they could be accepted here.

For me there were a few light bulb moments. I have been using 2mm stringers for my floral dots for years. I also was not getting my clear glass hot enough. This in turn has been giving me some huge florals when often I wanted them smaller. I would end up with a wider and fatter bead than I wanted.

Also, it is imperative that you get that encasing glass as close to the mandrel as you can without touching it. This enables your bead to be melted into a nice shape without the clear pulling itself to the mandrel taking your flowers along with it. Did I get this right? This is my understanding anyways...

And today it has been decided. I am upgrading to a dual torch this year when finances allow. Woooooooooooohoooooooooooo

oops sorry for the double pic

The End.

YEAH for you! See, a new torch, a new view on the whole glass thing! It is sooo much easier! Thanks for the tut!

I know I need a new torch. I came home to work some soft opaque peach glass from Bullseye for a floral and no matter how low I kept the heat and how high up in the flame I worked, the glass would turn icky. I assume the hothead is the culprit?

How old is it? Carbon build up maybe? since you are on a bulk tank right? do you bleed your hoses after each use?

The torch? Less than a year old. The propane tank? Just a couple of months old

No I don't bleed my hoses. Ack, that is a very lazy bad habit I have had. I can't seem to remember to do that.

That is likely part of the problem, I never worked on bulk and a HH but I do remember De saying you can hang them up and let them drain the guk out. I bleed my hoses on my torch after every use, it's just a habit. :)

Wow, Jacqueline, you've been busy :) I just got home from the studio a little while ago and there's all these pictures of my hands. lol.

Just so it's clear, I'm in no way claiming to be an expert floral constructor. But I had fun today showing Jacqueline how I do them when I can force myself to make a small bead.

I had my aha floral moments after I got Kimberly Affleck's encased floral tutorial. I didn't make florals like Kimberly's today but I did use the things I figured out about encasing while I was working from her tutorial last summer.

The key things I learned when I was working on florals were:
- A layer between the vine cane and the flower lets the flower stand out from the bead, and gives the bead some depth.
- The clear has to be soupy-hot and the bead has to be cool and firm or it makes a great, big mess.
- It doesn't much matter how the clear goes on for the encasing layer, as long as all of the petals are covered. The important thing is to push it over close to the mandrel holes and to even it out before you melt everything in.

My favourite new tool for moving my encasing glass around are the whimsicalities micro shapers. I heat the clear and then roll the tool over it like a rolling pin. I don't use the tip of it, just the area between the coloured handle and the tip. It works great :) if the microshaper is buried under something, I can do the exact same thing with the end of my nail set.

I have hung the hoses before but I have never ever seen anything come out of them.

Okay I will bleed those damn hoses starting tonight. So basically when you are finished a session you just turn the propane off and keep the torch on until the flame goes out?

Hehe , yes I wanted to get them up and surprise you when you got home. Thanks for filling in the info here.

I am exhausted but happy, thanks again for today.Yes I did try two florals tonight but I did not have good results. I just need a good night's sleep. I will try tomorrow and hopefully I will have something to show you. I have promised to give Melanie the first floral that turns out well for memory sake :p

Well that might not be the problem, but it is a place to start. I personally have to lug my behind up from my basement to turn off my propane out side so I turn off my flame first, before I bleed because I don't like the idea of it burning while I'm not RIGHT there, then while bleeding I just re-ignite and let it burn its self out.

Wait, I don't get what bleeding is. Are you saying you hang your hoses after each session?

No.... You just need to get the fuel out of the lines so it doesn't sit and collect and cause muck. God no, if I had to disconnect my lines and hang them every time, I'd never torch. :) let the fuel out of the lines, that is all.

So please then explain the steps for bleeding again. I am missing something here.

I just noticed, but two of the steps are mixed up near the beginning. I made the black barrel, the added the vine cane, then let it get pointy on the ends before I encased it. It's a little detail, but I think it's important :)

I turn off my torch (but I'm using a minor), turn off my propane, come back down open my propane valve at the torch re-ignite it and let it burn the excess fuel out of the lines. Then turn off my torch valve again and shut my wall valves. (I have it piped thru a wall so there are shut offs on either side of the wall as well.) Basically there is "unspent" fuel in your lines and you need to get it out or it gets yucky.