Implosion Beads

One of the skills I learnt on the Marble Class was how to do implosions.  Now I have touched on these once before .... way way back in February 2009 when I had a class with Laura Sparling.  I didn't practise the skill once home as I was concentrating on encasing, which is what I really wanted to learn to do way back then.

In the marble class we did an implosion within a marble design. My interest in them was reignited, so once home I sat down at the torch to play...

Implosion beads are not for the impatient. You have to, very slowly, allow the glass to drop which drags the 'petals' down. There is a lot of practising required to get them anywhere near decent, never mind perfect.

First I tried some regular sized beads, but I was unhappy with how the glass didn't have enough room to make the pattern drag properly.

I felt the beads needed to be bigger to get a good effect, so I made some teardrop shaped ones.  I was quite pleased with these - a long way to go, but a good start.

This one was a double imlposion, I did a teardrop first, then added more glass and imploded it the opposite way, then shaped it into a barrel.

Now, if you want to see some perfect (and I mean PERFECT) implosions within marbles, check out this page.
http://www.kobukiglass.com/mableinfo.html