New Colors

In the past month I have: celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday with family from all corners of the USA; come down with the flu and beat it back into submission; gone aggressively apartment hunting and found a new place; signed up for a bicycle ride out to Montauk Point, a half share of a CSA project, and also bought tickets for the music festival that I attend each summer. Needless to say, I've been busy.

I still find time to squeeze my glass work in, though I don't always have a chance to take pretty pictures. But I ordered some shiny new glass colors, and here are some examples of them for your viewing pleasure! The ones I'm most excited about are called Penumbra (by Trautmann Art Glass) which appears in the bluish-gray flower and also the green dots, Butterscotch (by Northstar) which is the background on the light orangey spiral and the blue flower, and Double Amber Purple, which I don't believe appears in any of these. Other colors I got include Red Elvis, Double Mai Tai, Purple Urple, Bright Blue, and Apricot.

These pendants will soon be posted on Etsy. I'm itchin' to practice my reticello technique, so perhaps that will comprise the next update!

Speaking of Etsy

I just can't contain myself. I made the most adorable little snail shell earrings the other day!

And they are now for sale at Fine Specimen! Along with two other, and soon to be more, pairs of earrings.

And this pendant is also new. I really liked how the color combination turned out!

Snips & Snails

With a windfall of inspiration from my recent trip to Portland, Oregon (which was awesome for a number of reasons, including climbing a mountain, exploring tidepools, and a visit to a very cool fabric store, which I will probably expound upon in a future post), I've been whipping up a number of snail-themed objects.

As pictured in my last brief update, it began with three-inch long clear-bodied snails that sit upright, which were cute, but I was ultimately unhappy with the quality of the bodies. The shells all turned out to be very visually engaging and striking, only they were perched on bodies that disappeared into whatever surface they were sitting on. I find that it is easy for clear glass to sort of melt visually into indistinct forms if I'm not 100% careful and deliberate.

So I did away with the little snaily bodies, and pared my designs down to the shell. I made them a bit smaller and attached a clear loop on top, et voila - it's a pendant! (Is it just me, or am I sensing a trend here?)

Now these guys I'm pretty happy with. Right now these are made with a color stripe pattern overlaid on a rod of clear glass, which has had the result of the color thinning out during the twisting process (which makes the stripes go all twirly around the shell) and being somewhat translucent by the time the piece is finished. I'll be working this week on making them as opaque as possible, because that's when the colors are really going to pop against each other.

Also: Chess Set Progress Update #2 - I now have three whole pieces done: a bishop and two knights. I know I know, I'm going pretttty fast here on this project... Realistically, it is probably going to continue to be a very slow process, but I think that's okay if I want to end up with a finished product I'm pleased with.

I'm pretty happy with my black bishop. He turned out nice and evenly-shaped. The knights are probably the hardest to make balanced and symmetrical, so I'm hoping for smoother sailing once I get to the less organically-shaped pieces.

Shop Local!

Despite the fact that there has been an underwhelming amount of snow so far, it is pretty much that time of the year when people begin to shop in masses rather than small groups, and when it is the most important time for me to make sure I have my products out in the world for people to notice.

So, here is my little tidbit for your valuable holiday shopping information: if you live in the Rochester area and would like to procure one of my pendants they are available for perusing and purchasing at Archimage and, as of this past Monday, at Zak's Avenue (in the photos), at which location there are also a number of earrings for sale. Shop local!!

 

Also - Happy Thanksgiving! A small list of things that I am grateful for:

• pie
• bicycles
• sunshine
• YouTube
• the Great Lakes - both the enormous fresh water source as well as the outstanding brewery
• having a job that I do not dislike
• my family & friends

Eye Candy

Sorta. :) Here's just a few pendants. I did have some newer ones but they immediately went out into the display case at Archimage for sale. I will post more photos soon! My next big production day is Monday...

And here is my fish Charles and the coral I made him. He digs it.

Setup

Today I finally set up the torch I bought a year ago in my friend's basement! And her flame is beautiful! One of the pendants I made this afternoon - I think - turned out very clean, but we shall see when it comes out of the annealer. Here are some pendants for you to peruse. The ones in the boxes will be auctioned at a silent auction on April 1 to raise money for the Warehouse Arts project, a new venture which one of my friends from Alfred and some of his friends are trying to get off the ground.

Glow In The Dark

Perhaps I was inspired by the bright-colors-and-lights bike ride I went on last night when I decided that tonight I would finally experiment with the glow-in-the-dark glass powder I ordered. (It is not cheap, but how cool is glow in the dark glass?) I hope these puppies turn out! There was a cautionary note packed with the powder about lots of little air bubbles forming and causing thermal shock problems, and the end product potentially cracking, but I'm pretty confident that I used the stuff correctly.

So here I am starting out making a pendant. (I actually have process photos for a change!) At this point I think I've flattened the end of the clear rod, put a colored glass dot design on the flattened surface, and begun imploding the color. (Imploding basically means melting the glass at an angle and allowing gravity to pull the clear glass over and around the colored glass, so that the colors end up inside of the clear glass.)

Here's pendant #1 in mid-implosion. I wasn't sure if the glow-in-the-dark powder would come out opaque or transparent, so for this first one I decided to put a colored dot on each of the glow dots so that the colored dot would ultimately end up inside the glow glass. Not sure how that will turn out, but I'll find out in the morning after the kiln has come down.
And for pendant #2 (this is before imploding) I made the central dot with glow glass, surrounded it with blue dots, surrounded those with glow dots, and made a final (somewhat sloppy) ring with the blue. (It will look blue when it has cooled.)

And here is that same pendant #2 after I've imploded it, put a backing color on, and puntied it onto another glass rod. (Sorry about the poor quality photos.) The final step is to put a loop on top to make it into a pendant.

Implosion

I finally have some pendants that are ready to be displayed for sale! I got a hold of some cords to string each of the pendants on, some little boxes to house them, designed a little insert for them, which I scanned and touched up and saved to a thumb drive, and finally went to Kinkos today and had them printed on fancy card stock. I cut them all out, made slots for the cord, et voila!

Also currently happening is an exhibition at a new studio called Collier Craft in East Rochester. I have four-ish pieces on display as well as a number of pairs of earrings. The photos of the opening didn't actually turn out so well, but one of these days I'll give you a visual of the exhibition. It's pretty cool! My first show since my senior show at Alfred. It will be open until January 1st if anyone would like to check it out.