Terranova

This has to be my favorite color (Terranova) to work with so far!

Rats!

With Andrea's family they open ornaments on Christmas Eve so I made her sister an off mandrel rat since she wanted a real one. I was happy with how the first one came out, picture of it below, so I made a family yesterday :) Still working on some soft glass pendants as well and haven't touched boro for a while now besides the one day to finish up some ornaments/gifts.

Candle Holder

My grandmother is coming home from rehab today!!! Anywho I was working a little with boro yesterday and this is one of the things that came out of the kiln
today :)

Studio

I took a few pictures of the studio this morning to test out Photosynth
http://photosynth.net/edit.aspx?cid=26a10e24-2428-4286-bbd3-6966dc81d65e&wa=wsignin1.0

Later tonight or sometime tomorrow I'll get more pictures for a more detailed view

More Soft Glass Pendants

I worked on a few more soft glass pendants yesterday. Ended up with 8 new ones and only one I didn't like so that made me happy. I tried making one with flowers that I haven't tried before. Came out pretty good just needs some background next time.

Soft Glass Pendants

It has been a while since I've tried soft glass pendants, over a year ago, but here is two from yesterday. Second one is my favorite :) It is quite cold in the studio but going to try making a few pendants today before heading out.

I've been wanting to post here daily but it's been cold in the studio and need to get some wood for the woodstove to heat it up. Also my grandparents got in a car accident so been visiting my grandmother who has been moved into rehab.

Here's a group shot of most of the marbles I've made in the past few months and one of a jellyfish.

I didn't realize until the other day that I haven't posted an entry for about a month! We have been to a few Microcredit business meetings the past month and been working on a business plan. We are planning on selling glass rods and supplies on our website since there is not a supplier near us. When we start selling glass rods we will most likely only carry 104 (Moretti, DH and CIM). Once we get going we will try to carry all of 104 brands. After that we will work our way down in coe (96, 90 and then 33). We are very excited and should be able to start stocking up in a month or two :)

We placed a small order from Frantz of 104, we have been running low because our last order was Sept of last year! We got some good odd lots and uniques so those will be fun to try :) It should be here next Wednesday so I'll post some pictures of whatever we make.

I have been making quite a few marbles since the Kobuki class. I've made a few jellyfish and flowers but mostly other styles. Monday I did try something that I've been thinking of making for a while, I took two frit implosions and mashed them together. They came out better than I thought they would! I'll get some pictures of the marbles sometime this weekend.

Here's a picture of a test candle holder I made recently. Next time the base will have color. I thought I wouldn't need a base but it was very wobbly with the alien as the base.

GTT Cricket

Our Cricket came! It runs amazing compared to the Nortel Minor on 2 small concentrators especially for boro. I made a large marble yesterday and was surprised how much heat the little torch produced and how fast it took to make a marble. Andrea made a few boro beads last night and they looked really nice :)

Demo and Kobuki

Last Friday I did my first demo, it was with Marta's class. It was a snowflake/star bead demo, I saw a lot of the ones the students were making and they were amazing :)

I left before open torch that day to head up to the hotel in Maine for Kobuki's class. His class is amazing and if anyone has a chance to take his class I'd highly recommend it if you enjoy making either pendants or marbles. I got to see five demos, he did one I missed the night we headed back, four of them were flowers and one was the jellyfish I have been wanting to see really bad! This week I have been making so many marbles! Most of them are actually coming out decent. I tried two jellyfish yesterday, first one came out alright but I fixed my mistakes one the second one but it cracked! Not completely sure why it cracked but it still went into the kiln and will be part of my collection :) Here's a picture of the first marble I made after getting back from the class, really happy with it :)














Not sure if I posted before but we got a new car finally, it is a 2002 Ford Focus. The car is really fun to drive. It is a standard though so getting used to driving one since never really drove a standard around.

Farmer's Market Video

Teacher's Assistant!

I have been talking back and forth with the director of education at Sharon Arts Center and I had an interview with her yesterday about being a teacher's assistant, and possibly teaching in the future. The interview went well and starting tomorrow and continuing on Fridays till 11/6 I will be Marta Bernbaum's assistant!!!! Her beautiful work can be seen here. I am very excited at this amazing opportunity :) While being an assistant I will earn "Learn and earn" time which for every two hours I volunteer for I earn one hour towards a class!

I also signed up this morning for John Kobuki's marble making class for 24/25 of this month! Also very excited about how much my marble/pendant skills will improve after that!

Adventuring into Polymer Clay

We were at Henniker Riverside Artisans shop yesterday to place some of our work on consignment and the owner had some polymer clay beads that were really neat. Today we ended up buying a small sampling selection, hopefully it will be here by sometime in the week :) I'll post plenty of pictures of the cane and whatever else we end up making :) Ultra excited to try something new :)

I switched our website over to a new host and been working on it a little bit. So far I like the layout better, just have to work quite a bit on the Zen-cart part of the site.

Anywho, here is some murrini getting listed on Etsy tonight by Andrea.

More Murrini!

Here's the first batch listed on Etsy :) Pictures show murrini on test beads

Murrini!

I made a 7 point optic mold the other day and Andrea has been working on some 104 coe murrini. Here is some of the ones from the first few days, they keep getting better! Will have some listed on Etsy within the next few days :)

Murrini and New Design

Andrea and I, mostly Andrea, has been working on some soft glass murrini recently. All sorts of different designs and will post some of the close ups and test beads with the murrini on them. We will have some listed on the website and etsy soon.

Here is some new soft glass beads from me, I had a lot of fun with the new design.

Flower Sculpture

I've been getting some really good torching days going the past few days. Boro sculptures one day, 25 boro buttons (felt like I was going to go insane after that many) the next and yesterday made some soft glass beads. Always strange to go back to soft glass after only doing a few beads everyone once in a while with it. Probably more soft glass as I wait for my order of boro clear to come in on Thursday.

Here's one of the scultures from Saturday :)

Maxiene RIP

Maxiene (Pomeranian) passed away yesterday morning after recently starting to feel sick.
4/12/96-9/5/09

First picture is from a long time ago and the others are more recent

Etsy sale! 15% off!!!

We are having a 15% off sale in our Etsy shop Sept 3-7! Enter "weekend deals" in the message to seller to receive discount :) We will be adding plenting of work thought the sale

Pictures

Here's some pictures of one of the dreamcatchers. The other will be posted soon.













I've been working on some sea creature sculptures and here's a turtle :)

Monsters and Dreamcatcher

I finally came up with some feather designs out of boro that I like for dreamcatchers and made several yesterday. Ended up needing one more of two different colors to finish up two dreamcatchers. Probably post those finished or unfinished either tomorrow or Monday.

Finished up my resume for Sharon Arts Center and having Andrea's sister proofread it while I work on portfolio. Also worked on class descriptions for a few classes; pendants, buttons, paperweights and beads. Really hoping I can teach there this winter semester, January and February :)

Here is some of my monsters from last month. Going to start working on some more again this week :)

Monster with candle, mom with egg, beholder and tripod kitty

Future studio?

We have been looking in our area to possibly move our studio into a new location, outside of the house. So far we have found three locations that interest us; Concord, Nashua, and Wilton. Concord however is a fifty minute ride each way so that is our last choice at the moment. Our favorite would be the artist mills in Wilton.

We want to move our studio so the public can wander into the studio, watch us work, also maybe have a little gallery section. Hopefully eventually set up some extra torches and teach some beginner classes, both soft glass and borosilicate. We would also try to stock up on some supplies so we can sell starter packs, tools, and supplies to people locally. If it picks up then we would try to order more in bulk so we can start to sell supplies online too again.

At the beginning we would probably just do private lessons since we already have the second torch and extra tools :)

We are going to contact a few local places to see if they would be interested in having me teach a beginning boro class sometime soon since there has been a lot of people asking lately. Not completely sure what subject I would teach yet, I enjoy off mandrel work the most so that would be my first choice :)

Here is a set Andrea made yesterday, picture taken by cellphone

New booth setup :)

Here's some pictures of the new booth setup we had for maybe a month now :) Much easier to setup and the wind doesn't take away the displays :P

Been sick the past little while so haven't got much torching done lately but here is the pendants I forgot to post. I've mainly been working on a few guardian monsters, also some new monster designs, and lots of focal beads. We started listing on ebay again, getting some old stuff off our website, etsy and artfire. We will probably start listing every day like we did before :)

Treadmill time!

I got to play around with the frit today making some implosion pendants :) They all came out good but there were two that I am very excited to see tomorrow morning. I'm going to work on some monsters and a few more pendants tomorrow :) Also I will post pictures tomorrow of what I made today.

Here's the video of Zoey on the treadmill, enjoy! :)

Crushing glass is fun!

Andrea's dad recently got a much bigger frit crusher made for us :) I got to put it to some use after we found some high powered magnets to make sure there is no metals in the glass after being crushed. I got about half of the boro colors done that I wanted and tomorrow I will probably try out making a few different blends! I haven't gotten to use frit much before so I am excited to see results with some nice silver glass :) Probably a post with pictures in a few days with that.

We decided to have one torch on the bench instead of two since we both have trouble with hitting baffles. Sometimes when using glass punty's I can crack the seal by hitting the baffle lightly and then the work comes crashing down, and if it is a marble will probably want to roll on my lap.

Our dog Zoey ran on the treadmill while trying to get a treat, very funny and cute! We made a video of it and will post that tomorrow :)

Oh! Also sold we sold my first monster today! It was the one in the previous post with the flower!

More aliens

Here's a few aliens from Friday. Going to fix oxygen leak and get to torching today if I feel better. My brother gave me an idea to make a beholder so I designed up a sketch for next time I torch. We ordered a blast shield last weekend and got it during the week and it is amazing!!! I'll take a picture of it on the torch soon. It makes such a difference for my face, not nearly as much heat which means no more "sunburns" and breathing in all the radiant heat :)