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Vered's Glass Beads

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In this final post brought to you from Vered Kaminsky’s studio, we’re playing with glass. More specifically, glass beads. Vered has a little cabinet with glass doors in it, displaying some of the samples and techniques she has worked with. I think it acts as a tangible sketchbook almost, that you can pick up and inspect.

There was one thing in it that caught my eye. It was a little wire tree, with rounded glass at the end of each branch. I asked her what it was, and turns out, they’re melted glass beads! As always, I expected some super complicated process, but no, they’re really just glass beads placed carefully on the end of the wire, and melted into place.

She does use her pliers to flatten the wire at the tips just a little so the bead doesn’t fly out, and has something to hold on to. But that’s all.

Simple right?

Here’s a quick video of her melting a bead onto some scrap wire she had lying around.

Vered has given the thumbs up to share the information she shared with me during our studio visit + chat. For all posts inspired and influenced by Vered, enter "Vered Kaminski" in the search bar on the right.

Vered Kaminski shares how to melt glass beads on silver

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Vered Shows Us How To Break Rocks

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One of Vered’s largest collections of work in her studio are her broken rocks series. She was showing me box after box of broken rocks, and exclaimed “I couldn’t stop!!”.

It was quite funny tbh, but I can understand why she had a problem stopping. It really is very interesting to see the inside of rocks. They’re absolutely stunning, like hidden secrets that we’ll never know until it’s ‘broken’ or ‘destroyed’.

Without further ado, here’s what you need: a chisel, a hammer, and a rock.

I noticed that the chisel she uses is even on both sides. I assume it helps to break both sides evenly, but it should be fine even with a bevel on one side.

I would think that you can put the rock on the ground, position the chisel, and them hammer it. But Vered does it with a clamp. She holds up the chisel, positions the rock on it, and then hammers the rock with the pointed side. It’ll make more sense when you see the video of me trying (and not entirely succeeding) to break a rock.

The kind of rock you choose to break also matters. Softer rocks are always easier, and rocks that look like they’re made up of many tiny stones glued together are generally not a good idea (tried and tested, 3rd from left). I would think that stones that have crystals in them are also not the best idea, but you can try! The one I did try didn't work out too good (2nd from left).

Vered has given the thumbs up to share the information she shared with me during our studio visit + chat. For all posts inspired and influenced by Vered, enter "Vered Kaminski" in the search bar on the right.

Vered's Plastilina Moulds

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Sticking with the theme of concrete, today we’re chatting about how Vered Kaminski makes her moulds to pour concrete in. The way she does it is very clever.

Vered uses plastilina. Plastilina is an oil based clay, kind of like play dough. It never dries out, and can be reused multiple times, as long as you don’t get too much dirt in it. And it’s really, really affordable, especially when compared to other reusable mould making materials. I got a block of it at a local art store (in Israel) for 15.50 shekels, which is about £3.32.

Here, she’s making a mould of a rock. So she’s picked the rock she wants, and has taken a clump of plastilina to press the it into.

Now, she opens up the mould a little to get the rock out, and sets it on the table. It’s ready for the concrete!

She has a tip for us at this point:

If the pin is sinking in, toothpicks are great at holding
them up!

Do note that this method only makes 1-part moulds, which means that you will have one flat side of the piece you cast (where the pin is, in the image above). You will not get an object that has dimension / designs all around. One way around this is to make 2 moulds, cast them, and then glue the two pieces together.

Concrete is really difficult to work with once it has cured, so Vered makes holes, puts in the pin backs, adds chain, or whatever she wants to do with it while it is still drying. That way, there is no need for drilling or glueing or additional processes that can take away from the final outcome.

When it’s all dried, just peel off the plastilina, and it’s ready to be made into another mould. I’d say it’s one of those materials that’s always good to have in the workshop. And it’d probably work really well with resin as well!

Vered has given the thumbs up to share the information she shared with me during our studio visit + chat. For all posts inspired and influenced by Vered, enter "Vered Kaminski" in the search bar on the right.

Studio Tour: Vered Kaminski + Concrete Recipe

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Studio visit! These are the best, because you get to chat with makers, and see their space, and it’s almost like an all access pass into their creativity. Vered Kaminsky’s one of my teachers this semester in Bezalel and she’s the sweetest. And super open to sharing too! We got talking when my initial project for her class was nature and clay based. The project morphed and became all silver work, but we still got to talk about how she makes her stuff.

Vered makes beautiful works that are very detailed. Her metalwork is #goals because they’re so precise and perfected. And really genius too, the steel wire stools that are literally just woven together with no welding are amazing. They bounce and can take weights up to 100kg. Fun stuff.

She shared a couple of techniques with me, and she said it’s cool if I shared it. So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! Today, it’ll just be about her recipe for concrete. Basically, she eyeballs it.

I found this very helpful, but it could be quite overwhelming to begin with, simply because of how much information there is. So read at your discretion!

This is the recipe she uses:
1 tbs cement
1 tbs sand
Some water

Eyeball the amount of water you put in. Less is always better than more because you can always add more. If you’re pouring it into a mould, as is the usual method of working with the material, you’re going to want to think about how runny you need it to be to fill the finer details of the mould.

Vered’s bench for concrete work. From left to right, concrete pigments, drying rack, water in squeeze bottle, 2 kinds of quartz (fine and unsifted beach sand), and 2 kinds of cement (white and grey).

Now it’ll be good to know that cement is an ingredient in concrete. And sand is used as a filler because concrete is more expensive, so it allows you to fill up more space for less money.

One of the things I really, really, wanted to see were the moulds Vered used for her concrete pieces that look like tiles. I watched videos about how encaustic tiles were made a while back and have wanted to see how it’s made ever since. This is just one part of the tile making process, but it’s the part that creates a design. It’s not the same thing, and with different materials (I think) but it’s similar enough. And now that I’ve seen how her moulds were made, I can consider attempting the technique in the future!

There will be more posts up in the future with the other techniques that Vered showed me that day so no, I’m not going to hide what I learnt from you!

Vered has given the thumbs up to share the information she shared with me during our studio visit + chat. For all posts inspired and influenced by Vered, enter "Vered Kaminski" in the search bar on the right.