TGIF

Thank God it's Friday!  It's been a rough couple of weeks.  Major family drama at home and lots of RAFO (running around and freaking out) at work.  It's finally starting to calm down, and I'm praying for a nice, quiet, drama-free weekend.

Aidan just started speech therapy.  He goes twice a week and LOVES it!  Craig has to trick, bribe or simply wrestle the boy out of the classroom when it's time to go.   I think he might have a little crush on the lovely Ms. J.  What's pretty ironic is the first really clear word he now says is "No" with the cutest little upward inflection.  I'm pretty sure this wasn't on the "first sounds" worksheet, LOL.

In the world of hot, melty glass I've been practicing making sculptural type beads.  Here are some little worms.  These are supposed to be suitable for children.  The first one I gave to Aidan didn't last a day, so I changed them up a little to make sure the head is more firmly melted to the body.  So far, the second one (made with the batch below) is holding up to the abuse a 3 year old boy can dish out!  These have a little secret, the blue dots glow in the dark.  What a fun surprise that will be for the kiddies.

 

this little guy appears to be worried about the Early Bird who gets the you know what...

 

and then some fish showed up in the kiln, maybe sniffing around for those tasty worms.

In the spirit of Halloween this little guy was supposed to be a Zombie Fish with crazy murrini eyes, but the one pink center murrini matches so well, that the other green eye side just looks like a weird mistake.

and then, my personal favorite of the bunch, a Tiger Fish

Flower Power

Since returning from Glass Stock West, I've been hooked on making these orchids!  The plan is to scale them down a little from lifesize and put a loop on the back so they can hang as necklace pendants.

I still have a long way to go just to get the basic shapes and sizes of the petals correct, not to mention getting them all hot sealed together in a somewhat correct and pleasing pattern.   

Attempt #3 (sadly #2 broke during the final loop attachment phase...dammit)

then comes the super challenging part of creating a hanging loop for the pendant.  It must be big enough to fit a silk ribbon or cord, not stick out too far from the base and at a spot that will allow the blossom to basically hang vertically.  The following loop fails on all three accounts, LOL. It's all good practice and each failure helps me get better the next time.

Attempt #4
this time, instead of frit, I added the spots directly onto the petals one by one.  The spots and lower petal are made from TAG Mai Tai which can turn pink in the kiln and probably still would if I put them back in for another annealing cycle. But, then the lower petal would get darker too and I'm rather fond of the pinkish center lightening to yellow at the tips.  Oh, yeah and just ignore the totally off center lip, still working out the best attachment angle in the flame.

the loop on this one came out better, still needs work, but at least it hangs on a cord nicely.

making these is a lot of work, but oh so much fun!

Earring Display case

As promised, my new jewelry display case.  This is made of completely re-purposed items (except the rods).

The loose design concept was: "simple, modern, could be part of a retro space show (Star Trek, the Jetsons) and not antique, crafty or Victorian"

• Deep, square picture frame about 20" x 20" at the Goodwill.  
• Removed the glass and backer board (which I was happy to find was a hard composite material like MDF, not cardboard as I thought it would be).
• Turned the whole thing around. This doesn't really change it in any appreciable way, but I needed the depth to be in the front so a simple mental switcheroo, and voila ... back is now front.
• Spray painted with my beloved silver (I don't know why, but I just love to spray paint stuff silver!)
• Drilled holes and inserted 5/8" wooden rods from Home Depot, cut to size
• Covered backer board in leftover blue shantung from my bedroom curtains
• Spray painted everything silver, many, many coats with sanding and spackling trying to hide the holes where the rods were inserted.
• Gave up on spray paint on the sides, decided to hot glue a ribbon on the edge. 

 By some miracle I just happened to have enough length of the right thickness ribbon of  the PERFECT shade of blue to match the silk inside.  I guess some things are just meant to be.

Worldview

If I decide to change my basic worldview from cynical to optimistic about the future of humanity, because I don't think it makes any difference to the world at large what I personally think and it's more fun to be an optimist, is that inherently oxymoronic? 

Further thoughts on this topic of what exactly is the influence on the future of humanity of how individuals think and consequently act.  If we assume that the future is a bleak war for basic resources unless humanity as a whole changes our impact on the environment, and that the only way to change that future is to change the way most people think about the world, then the way people think is critical.

The current trends in shaping how people think about the world and the environment lean heavily towards terrifying us about the impact of not changing.  This tactic works only if people actually respond to the negative message and start thinking and acting differently.  On the other hand, if the natural optimists simply choose to believe that "someone" will come up with a "magic bullet" solution to the environmental ills, then optimism is a bad thing as the desired behaviour change will not happen. And therefore optimism can actually contribute to our ultimate demise.

So really, I'm back to square 1; cynical vs optimistic, no clear answer, but optimism does feel better from the inside. 

Glass Stock West 2011

Last weekend we headed up to Eugene Oregon for Glass Stock West.  It was basically like summer camp for glass workers, so very, very awesome!    I had an opportunity to meet some of the greats, Paul Trautman, the father of colored borosilicate glass, Bandu Dunham, who literally wrote the flameworkers "bible", Deb Crowley, the founder of Glass Stock and wonderful artist and many, many more. 

It was 4 solid days (morning, noon and night) of playing with glass, learning fun and very challenging new techniques as well as a couple of lessons in metal wire work for jewelry. 

The weekend started off with a bang on Thursday, watching Shawn Tucker make beautiful, delicate blown boro perfume bottles.   We got to try our hands at it after Shawn finished the demo and it was so far beyond my current skill level I just had to laugh at the epic fail (too epic for pictures).  I was pretty concerned at this point that I had gotten in WAY over my head and would never be able to keep up with the classes.  Luckily, this turned out not to be the case.

Below is Shawn in his "One Man Band/Inspector Gadget" mobile set up.  He makes most of his rigs, jigs and tools from thrift store finds and is very talented at putting them all together.  I think he is/was a drummer after watching him make some crazy, spinning moves with the hot glass rods.  He used a more traditional table set up for the demo : )

 

 Friday was fantastic.  The day started with a lesson in how to make Byzantine chain with Patty Pulliam.  She is funny and nice, there were only 3 of us all together so we had lots of laughs and made a couple of cool (in my humble opinion) bracelets. Here's mine (made with copper byzantine links and my own lampworked beads).

After lunch at the Laughing Planet (highly recommend this place for vegetarians and omnivores yum, yummy), it was time for the incomparable Deb Crowley to show a few of us lucky students how to make blown boro sea shells.  She is a great teacher, clearly explaining the whys and wherefores all the while throwing out valuable tips and tricks. I so wanted a third or fourth hand to take notes with.  We started out with a "simple" file type shell.  I finally learned how to add color over clear in boro tubing, this technique is basic and critical to learn and has eluded me for a long time.

Next up was a Rooster Conch, it took Deb the entire rest of the afternoon session to demonstrate how to make it, while we were all madly scribbling notes knowing we would have to make it ALL BY OURSELVES in the evening at Open Torch while Deb ran around organizing the evening activities.   This turned out to be a fun bonding experience as all of us students had to help each other get through it, yelling out questions and answers across the table as we sweated out our first solo shell efforts.  I'm proud to say mine came out of the kiln in one piece and looks like a shell (perhaps not exactly like the rooster conch as taught, but after literally 3 hours of sweaty concentration I kinda forgot what it was supposed to look like, LOL).

I missed most of what else was happening that evening, something about a crazy hat contest.  The winner was a young artist from Portland, Doloros D. Low, who made a glass hat modeled on beer drinking ball caps, only this was basically shaped like a bra, and of course named "the Beverage Brassiere", I think she's drinking a Screwdriver (OJ on one side, vodka on the other).

Saturday was another huge learning curve day starting with Eric Edner's class on Intermediate boro sculpture making orchids.   I was pretty happy I had gotten the hang of coloring over clear tubing the day before because that's the very first thing we had to do and I would have felt super silly to have to ask Eric for help on that as this was billed an "Intermediate", not "Remedial" class, LOL.  He was the most patient teacher!  The other torches in the room kept "POPPING" very loudly and randomly, people were yelling, the fans were going full blast and glass was shattering left and right, and yet in the middle of all that Eric patiently went around to each student and quietly helped them make it right! 

I had never attempted something this complicated before with multiple pieces & parts going in and outta of the kiln and complex assembly steps.  I still have a long way to go and must get better at bridging, but overall I'm pretty pleased with this first attempt (Eric made the goblet foot for me)

In the afternoon a few of us learned and practiced using butane fueled jeweler's (or creme brulee) torches to fuse silver links together.  The person teaching this class was pretty funny, his wife put him up to it and he was super nervous, I mean SUPER nervous!  He knew the techniques and had clearly made jewelery before so it all worked out and after the initial part where he had to demo the technique everyone relaxed (yes, all the students were really sweating it out in sympathy for Mr. Meow, you know that feeling when your friend is on stage in the Christmas pageant and all you can think is "oh God, please, please don't let her trip, fall, fart or forget her lines").  Here is the very happy instructor (class was finally over) and one of his proud students.

I love what Brenda did with her bracelet, it's a little hard to see in the picture, but she didn't stick to the basic lesson plan (see mine below), instead she fused scrolled curves together to make a delicate, art nouveau type cuff.  I just did the basic, hammered rings, wasn't really feeling creative with all the post fusing pounding to flatten the links giving me a massive headache.

 Saturday night was "Artist Auction" to raise money for GlassStock West (for new furniture and tools) and the artists, who got 50% of the proceeds.   I swore I wasn't going to bid on anyone, but then inevitably got caught up in the excitement and couldn't resist when Polly Bettencourt, of DragonArtGlass in Santa Cruz, can up for auction.  She is cool and interesting.  I won the bid (1.5 hours of custom work) and Polly made me this vortex marble with a dragon curled around it, wow.

Yet more fun on Sunday learning the tips and tricks for working the Trautman Art Glass (TAG) soft glass reactive colors.  Jenny Newtson showed us how to make the colors really pop.  One of the tricks to reducing TAG104 for a silvery effect is to use what's known as a "Dragon's Breathe" flame, all propane, no O2 and with a gap between torch face and flame.

The Sunday night BBQ was fun and a little sad as I knew we were headed home the next day. 

All in all, great fun was had by all.

Ooh, shiny stuff

We have had the grandson living with us since the end of June.  Whew, it's been a roller coaster.  We all have had to make adjustments in attitude, routines and expectations.  We are finally gelling together.  I feel like the grandson and I are forming a real bond, we laugh, hold hands and play games with each other.  And, I think it's deepening the bond between Craig and me, we have come together as a team to make this work out.  It's actually kind of a vulnerable feeling for me to really have to depend on someone else as much as I depend on Craig now.

I had a "summer day" from work and got some primo "me time", a rare luxury lately.

I put together some little, shiny objects

these are a gift for a professional coach I've been working with lately.  She really helped me push my boundaries and tackle something that has always made my stomach twist a little just thinking about my frustration with the situation.    So, for her; "Sunset at Red Rocks"

I picked a few glass colors that seemed to go with bronze wire and forced myself to stick to that palate until all the glass was used up.  The point was 2-fold, first I tend to overbuy glass (it's just all so shiny and pretty colors), and secondly I want to use the beautiful bronze wire I got from WickwireJewelry.

I couldn't resist wrapping these tiger beads this way, "Caged Tiger"

long time, no post

well, it's been awhile since I posted because our life has changed dramatically in the last month or so.  My daughter and her son have moved back to California, YAH!!.  It's been quite the whirlwind of activity.  Aidan is staying with us for now, while his mommy looks for a new job and gets settled in.  He is a real delight, full of giggles and mischief. 

As I have been focusing on family matters there hasn't been much time to torch or craft jewelry.  I did get the little guy to "string" some beads, but he didn't seem to be interested in sticking to any particular design plan LOL.

Capital Rose Garden

Yesterday I took a nice stroll through the gardens around the Capital building on my way to lunch.  Even though the weather has been strangely chilly and rainy, the flowers were still blooming beautifully.

The creepiest crawlie!

WARNING:  You are about to see a close encounter of the spidery kind.  Quick, avert your eyes and skip on to the next post if spiders are not your thing.

this guy was super fast and I was frantically following it around with the camera, kind of close, to get a Macro mode photo.  At one point it got a little annoyed; here it's definitely looking right at me and sort of menacing the camera with it's chelicerae (the blue mouth parts).  I believe it's commonly known as the "Bold Jumping Spider".  It was pretty cool, but looking at it now is kind of giving me the creeps!

Elementary, my dear Watson

I had some time today to put together a few more little pretties.

"Positron"

close up of the "Positron" earrings

close up of "Positron" pendant

"Gamma" earrings

"Epsilon" earrings

I've also been working on the display case and it is coming along quite nicely.  Maybe I'll get it finished tonight and post a picture tomorrow. 

Misha is recovering very well from her recent brush with death, I'm taking her to the vet tomorrow for a check up just to make sure.

Creepy Crawlies

It must be almost June, because these little beetles we saw everywhere today near Putah Creek are called June Bugs or June Beetles.

 and then this striking black & red caterpillar, this guy was really on the move, maybe it wasn't too comfortable sporting those bright colors hanging out in the open with all the little swallows, robins and bluebirds flying around. I googled it and think this guy is a Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar.

Here is a nice link to learn more about the Pipevine Swallowtail (it's a beautiful butterfly). The site explains how a caterpillar of this size is likely poisonous to predators. But still it would be a really bad day to get pinched in half, by a bird, then dropped from the sky when you taste bad.

More Bling

In between dealing with Misha and other family crisis, I found some time to get lost in making pretty baubles.

"Bex"

"Kalinda"

"Madame Rose"

"Neria"

I figured out how to add text to my pictures and as you can see I've settled on a name for my little glassy stuff, Amorphous Designs.  I had to get on this as a hair salon owner I met in Ione recently offered to let me show my stuff in her store. I'm sort of besides myself hoping this is good enough for other people to actually lay down cold hard cash.  I plan to start out with a sign indicating that "all the profits from the sale of these items will be donated to the local animal shelter Spay & Neuter program".  Having actually seen too many 50 gallon drums filled to overflowing with euthanized dogs and cats makes this cause close to my heart and I cannot wait to cut my first donation check!  Now I only have to figure out how to make a display case and price these babies.

Days of our Dogs

I swear it seems like the dogs are taking turns having soap operas.  As I was pulling in the parking space at home on Thursday I saw Craig standing at the door looking freaked out and covered in scrapes and blood.  He had just gotten home from taking Misha to the vet. 
Earlier in the day he was getting ready to go to the store and Misha was running around the front lawn while he opened the truck.  Across the park our neighbors were walking their dog, that dog saw Misha, broke his lead and came hell bent for leather to attack Misha.  Craig threw himself into the fight, eventually getting little Misha freed from the larger dog's jaws.  Thanks heavens Craig didn't get bit.  He was able to scoop her up and get her to the local vet who patched her up. 

She came home with us the same night, so we were able to make her as comfortable as possible.  She is doing really well now, walking around a little and putting some weight on her back leg.  It looks like she was lucky and nothing vital was injured.  If Craig hadn't rescued her, I think the other dog might have killed her. Craig is our hero!!

Post Modern Fossils

Inspired by the awesome concrete designs seen on the Modesto Garden Tour, I am attempting to make an ammonite (fossil mollusk), cuz' I think they are so cool!
 This is not a great attempt, but I'm happy with the proof of concept and believe it will get better with practice. I've still got 2 of the twisties left to practice with.



lessons learned:
1. it may matter which direction the twistie is melted while spiraling onto another surface, it seemed that my twists were getting "untwisted", but this is totally unverified, I need to test this idea next time.

2. it's really tough to make the spiral directly on the bead, make the spiral with the twistie alone first, garage in kiln, then apply to target bead

3. don't freak out if the spiral gets wonky with melting etc, just use a stringer to redo the spiral twist in the center at the end of melt-in.

BLING!!

you might think with all the mad scientist experiments, dental origami and garden touring that I'm not getting much glass and jewelry done.  Well, your probably right, but I did get some stuff finished up recently.

flower-like decoration on enamel "ombre" beads. I'm really loving the enamels right now, I got a sample pack with 42 colors, so yeah, I think I will be playing with these for quite a while.

frit beads with silver spirals

more enamels and some flower looking murrini, this will eventually be a pendant and earring set

completed necklace and earring set, every bit of this was handmade by ME! It's my personal favorite so far.

sweet hearts for a sweetheart of a daughter

and now some fun with aquarium themed murrini & blue GLOW powder, woo hoo

 

  

I just love the goldfish, even if his brother got fat in the smaller earring bead

on a more serious and elegant (I think so anyway) note, I present these little pretties made with bronze wire

The next glassy adventure is making some drawer pulls for Mary's new built-in desk.  After several fails I've got one success sitting on my desk at work and another (success I hope) in the kiln tonight!  Pictures to come when the whole set of 9 is complete.