Forever!

Good grief, it's been forever since I had anything of relative substance to say here. Not that I usually have incredible, high-level news, but still....

Summer is in full swing here, which means....I have made nothing recently. Well, nothing in glass, anyway. Actually, that's not entirely true.....at the beginning of June, I made these starfish beads, which I love love love! That's CiM's Creamsicle for the starfish, on a base of a variety of transparent and opaque blues, and some curdled ivory for the sand. Used Zoozii's SSL large trio for the shape (bead is made with the largest of the wells).

 And I FINALLY FINALLY was able to buy my new torch! A GTT Bobcat! It's so cute! And so much tinier than I expected! Unfortunately, for now, it's still sitting in the cupboard in my laundry room/workshop. I haven't been able to purchase the oxygen concentrator I need in order to run it. Hopefully that will be a purchase for this fall. After that, I will need to figure out a way to run it without scorching the wall behind my workbench. It's bee such a long road to getting this equipment, I can't wait until I have it all together and set up.

My oldest daughter finished eighth grade, and attended her first formal dance, which was exciting for both of us. She is so very beautiful, and I cried, I must admit, after I dropped her off at the dance. I think this is my most favorite picture of her that I have taken in a while.

After school was out, we drove to Miami to visit my Dad. THAT was a heck of a long drive, but it was a very successful trip for us, which means TRAVELING is now a real thing we can do without losing our minds! I'm very excited by the places we can go, and I learned a lot on this trip about how to make it all go well. Lesson #1 is: Make sure the iPads are fully charged and loaded with lots of interesting games, ebooks, and other stuff.

We used Savannah, GA, as the halfway point for the trip on the way down and the way back. I'd never been to this lovely city, and I was absolutely enchanted. My oldest wants to go to the Savannah College of Art and Design, so it was convenient to show her what college could be like in this place. The live oaks were everywhere, covered with moss hanging down, and everything was so lush and beautiful!

We took a wonderful tour by horse and carriage (our horse was Batman!), and learned so many interesting tidbits about the history of Savannah and it's people. There's the Savannah College of Art and Design's Welcome Center on the left.

More beautiful live oak trees!

Amazing architecture! This building is a shop now, but used to be a stable, built by a wealthy Middle Eastern man for his Arabian horses so they wouldn't get homesick for the look of their traditional stables! I got some great detail shots of the texture of the columns, too. Henry Ford bought the building and turned it into a showroom for his 'horseless carriages'.

No stop in Savannah would complete for the Girl Scouts of the family without a trip to the Juliette Gordon Low House on the corner of Bull Street and Ogelthorpe Avenue. Here we are posing at the iron gate in the garden. It's the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouting in the US, and I am happy we got to visit  Girl Scouting's Mecca, and take a tour of the interior of the house. We picked up commemorative pins and patches for uniforms, too.

The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful, just a long ride home culminating in some wicked thunderstorms right as we crossed the Virginia border. It was so nice to be home, though, after a week away. Since then, I've been spending LOTS of time at the neighborhood pool with the little kids, for swimming lessons and general playing in the pool. My oldest has gone to her summer at her dad's, and most days, it's just me, and Wren, and Noah.

There hasn't been a lot of opportunity for art-making for me so far, and frankly, since we just got through the worst heatwave I can remember, turning on the torch has not even been on the list of things I want to do. About two weeks of temperatures over 100* F with heat indices of 110 and over makes for a very unhappy HotGlassGirl. I even overwhelmed our heat pumps by baking hot dog buns one day, so running a kiln and a torch would be disastrous. Thankfully, the heat seems to have abated for the time being, but it's still too hot to melt glass.

I've been sewing, though, and trying to get into art journaling. I can't seem to wrap my brain around where to start with it all! I've got a ton of supplies, but I'm at a loss as to how to get started. Anybody have any good suggestions/resources/tips/tricks??

Anyway, there's the update for now. Hope all of you are having a great summer and enjoying yourself and making lots of things! 'Til next time....

Guess what I'm doing....

I am running my new kiln!!

So far, so good. I've never had a kiln with an electronic controller before, and the annealing cycle is programmed in it already....so there's a lot of anxious running back and forth while I watch the temps go up and down and try to figure out at what point in the cycle we're at. I wish I could turn on my torch, too, and make some beads, but my son (who's 4) is home with me. Not a good idea to play with fire while little ones are around. I guess I can wait til tomorrow or later tonight. Maaaaybe.

Anyway.

We had a fun and relaxing family Thanksgiving celebration on Wednesday night of last week.

I know what you're thinking...."Isn't Thanksgiving on a Thursday??" It is. But the custody schedule with my older daughter has her needing to be at her dad's by 2pm on Thanksgiving Day every year. We didn't want to miss having her join us for a holiday celebration, so we just have our big dinner on the night before! Then we can all watch the Macy's parade on TV the next morning and eat leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast. We've been doing this for years and it works out perfectly!

Mmmm....pumpkin pie....I think there's still some in the fridge.....

I hope, if you celebrate Thanksgiving, that your celebration was a fun and relaxing one. I sure am thankful for each and every one of you, who reads and comments on what I write, who supports my work and encourages me. You all are a blessing, and I appreciate each one of you!

Stay tuned for some new work from me later on this week (I hope). I am dying to make some disc beads that don't explode from thermal shock!

What I've been up to....

Celebrating

Loving

Being goofy

Coloring

Gardening

And the other stuff...

I wrote about the custom order I recently completed for a friend of mine, the Encircled neckalce and earrings. In addition to those pieces, I had also made some pendants for her. The pendants were to be gifts for friends of ours who were involved this past weekend in cooking a very large meal for a large medieval event in North Carolina. It was my pleasure, and a whole lot of fun, to create this assortment of food-related beads and turn them into pendants:

All in all, I made about fourteen or fifteen different items, including some loaves of bread that didn't quite have the look I was hoping for (and so are not pictured above).

My personal favorites were the beer mugs, of course, and the turkey.

My eldest daughter had suggested waffles with syrup, a few weeks ago when I had been stumped for other fun foods. They turned out to be another favorite for both of us, and I just might have to make more of those:

I didn't post about these pieces before because the event was held this past Saturday, and I didn't want to spoil any surprise in case any of the intended recipients were reading this! But, now that the event is done, I am anxious to hear how they were liked, and definitely interested to know which of my friends received which pendant!

I love making the food beads, and now I might have to make a series of necklaces or bracelets that are meal-themed. I can see a breakfast one: eggs, waffles, a coffee mug....and dinner: a turkey, veggies, a wine bottle. Fun!

Up next, some work for another friend's bridesmaids, and a Tiffany-style beaded bracelet for another friend. Maybe I'll own my kiln by the end of this year! ;)

On Acceptance

Now that the first quarter of 2011 is nearly over, I think I have stumbled onto what my Word of The Year is going to be.

Acceptance

This past year, from my birthday in 2010 to my upcoming birthday, has been one of personal exploration, decisions, failed (and successful) attempts, and refining of artistic visions. I tried a lot of things (submitted to magazines, taught classes, did shows), was successful with some of them, and not so much with others. But through it all, I realized that I was allowing myself to get mired in negative thinking, spending way too much time comparing myself with others, and constantly thinking that whatever I did in a particular moment was somehow just. not. enough.

Which is ridiculous.

I mean, really.

So I hit a giant 'reset' button somewhere after the holidays, and took everything back about eight hundred notches. I thought about my plans and what I really want. I'm pretty happy with what I've been doing lately, which, compared to last year, isn't all that much. I've got a couple of custom commissions going on at the moment, and I was just asked to create bridesmaid jewelry for a friend's wedding this fall. And I'm making some personal projects that aren't all in the artisan jewelry realm. I'm also exploring my interest in art history, and dipping my toes back into the waters of my medieval living history hobby.

I have no plans to submit to magazines in the near future. I didn't do Lori's recent (and OMG awesome!!) Bead Soup Blog Party, but I am planning on joining the next one. I have signed up for no spring and summer shows. I'm taking it easy. Very easy. And it's nice! I'm finding that when artistic vision and inspiration really strikes me, I'm so incredibly productive, it's almost scary.

I can see now that there are only two more years before my littlest ones are in school full time, and after that there will be MUCH more time to get involved in all these things: shows, magazines, online stuff. Right now, I am doing what comes up and what I feel led to do in the moment, and that means accepting that what happens or what I do is simply enough.

It came to me over the weekend that 2011 is all about Acceptance -- of me as a person, an artist, a mom, all my various roles. Whatever I am doing is the best I can do at the time, and it's what I am supposed to be doing, and ALL I am supposed to be doing.

I guess this means I really can't Do It All.

Do I feel the insistent pull of "Sign up for shows!Submit to a magazine!Get yourself Out There!Be Involved!!"? Of course I do. I am a goal-oriented, responsible, achieving, first-born child! It's my Job! *snicker*

But I am consciously reminding myself (pretty much daily) that the most peaceful and happiest path I can be on right now is one in which I possess and define boundaries that allow me to not feel rushed, stressed, overwhelmed, ragged at the edges, and creatively spent. I don't have to be everything to all, and I don't have to do everything to be a successful person. Sounds like comprehending that would be a no-brainer, right? I mean, duh! But it's remarkably hard for me to grasp that and integrate it.

It's all good, though. And it's going well.

Oh, and here's a shot of my latest custom order....

Fun stuff!

So, my question to you is...how are you doing with your chosen path this year?

Glass in all its forms

When I was on my odyssey of discovery at Liquidation Warehouse the other week, one of my purchases was a few crackled-glass ornament balls. I love glass in all its forms (no! really!?), and these ornaments just really spoke to me. I've wanted, for a while, a few of the blown-glass witches balls to hang in my kitchen window, but I've never found ones I liked. Since Christmas is almost upon us, I thought these would be beautiful instead.

Some of my very favorite glass colors are blue and red. These are so good-looking in the light of my window that they may just stay there through the winter.


Isn't that red just stunning? I love love love that deep ruby red. Just delicious. (and for the record, I hate the word 'nummy'...)


And the blue....at some angles it is almost cobalt, at another, it appears violet. Straight on, it's one of my current favorite shades of transparent blue Moretti glass -- dark blue tranparent.

(This is the part of this post where I wish I had something better than my little Panasonic Lumix camera to take my blog pictures with....oh Santa, I wish you could bring me a Nikon like Cindy's!)

Ahem.

Next year's large purchase will have to be an oxygen concentrator, to go with the torch I haven't bought yet. Of course, that is after THIS year's large purchase, a Glass Hive kiln, which I also have not finished paying for...

But I digress...

I also wanted to show you all some of the results of my studio time. My glass beadmaking Muse apparently is elsewhere today (maybe playing in the snow at Kerry's place!), but in an effort to not let myself get sucked into the negative that goes with a crappy torch session, I decided to salvage the time and make frit. I've wanted to make frit for some time now, not being able to justify buying crushed glass when there are so many awesome rods to buy. There are a couple of methods to crush and mix your own glass, but the one that seemed to make the most sense, and was the simplest to deal with, is the water-shock method.

Basically, you heat the end of a rod to glowing, flatten it into a paddle at the end of the rod, reheat the paddle til it's hot, then plunge it into a jar of water and let it shatter into tiny bits. You then strain it out of the water and spread it on a plate or something to dry out so you can use it.

I made two small batches today, one a blue-green mix that I am hoping will be sort of an underwater-looking blend:


And the second batch, which is my end-of-the-day mix of all the rods I used while beadmaking this morning:

Let's see...what's in there....CiM Sangre, dark ivory, CiM Ghee (which normally looks terrible for me), Moretti dark trans blue, Moretti electric yellow trans, some CiM Peace, and I think some dark and light topaz. Oh, and some medium brown, I think. I was practicing making chocolate hearts for Valentine's Day.

So, the frits are currently drying, and I hope to get some torch time tomorrow to play with them. If anything comes out interesting, I'll post pictures. The rest of this week will likely be taken up with birthday party prep and sewing costumes for the preschool Christmas pageant.

I think it's time for more tea.

When You Give Some Kids Some Mannequins....

....you have the Brandel Family "Adventures of Frank and Jane"!

This is Frank.
...and this is his lovely companion, Jane...
They came to live with us this week, along with their two little friends, the Red Imps...
Everyone seems to be getting along well, although there have been some issues with the Imps and attempts to push each other off the ledge...
I think Jane got a little bent out of shape about their behavior, too because this was the scene yesterday afternoon...

Shoving the Imps into the basket of pinecones was a noble attempt at silencing them for a while so Jane could at least TRY to read a magazine.

Frank just doesn't know what to make of all of this....

(and my oldest daughter cannot resist a goofy picture attempt)...

Honestly, Jane was exhausted from dealing with them, and Frank wasn't really much help.

Eventually, though, things got under control. One of those Imps even helped Kira with some homework last night...

...but they do get bored easily, and are prone to bustin' a move, even when there's no music...
Jane worked out her frustrations with some exercise and yoga (modified reverse plank)...
...and that helped, along with some quality time hanging out with Frank. Ultimately, though, Frank and Jane survived their first day here, and it was definitely a cause for celebration!

Stay tuned for further Adventures with Frank and Jane!