Handblown Shells

I was recently inspired by the spring marine & aquatic issue of The Flow Magazine. There was an amazing photo of some shells made by Vittorio Costantini and I decided to make a few shells of my own. I was only planning to make a few but then I got hooked on making them :)

Jason

Our Pendants Reviewed

Check out this review on our pendants and also a chance to win a FREE pendant!!!!


http://singlemama-reviewcorner.blogspot.com/2010/04/powers-art-glass-review-and-giveaway.html

More marbles

AHHH I'm in love with soft glass marbles! So much easier to work silver glass with limited oxygen. Also can get decent sizes with only one concentrator. With boro I'd have two concentrators but seemed to take forever to get a decent size marble made. I just fixed this marble yesterday, I was surprised that this size marble could be fixed since it was soft glass but I had no problem reheating it in the flame. Anywho here is the marble.

Marble Pendant

We are having a 40% off sale in our Etsy shop for Monsters only :)

Here's one of the marble pendants. Probably going to try some small marbles to do the same thing but for earrings.

Soft Glass Marbles

Wednesday I ended up making one soft glass marble that turned out great but had a flat spot where the final punty was. Yesterday I didn't have much time on the torch but I was determined to make a perfect soft glass marble. I made four total, one had a mark that almost looked like a chip came off the marble so I wirewrapped it for myself :) It was a nice organic one with silver leaf on it. I was surprised I did so well with soft glass marbles since I like to use a lot of heat and thought boro would be easier because of that. It turns out the soft glass ones took quite a bit less time to shape.

I am starting to wirewrap some of my old boro marbles that have been sitting waiting to be listed online. Those will start to be listed on the upcycled copper Etsy now.

Here's my soft glass marbles from yesterday (only two out of the four)

Rings!

I am really having so much fun making all sorts of copper jewelry! Made some rings Monday and yesterday, so here's a few of them that are listed on Etsy. It seems like everytime I am driving lately I come up with new pendant ideas so going to work on those in the next few days. Just a little over a month to our first show!

Wire Jig

Our packages came in Tuesday and I am loving using the wire jig! Here are a few of the beads/buttons pendants I've made (middle one just sold and is our first sale!!). More on our new etsy upcycledcopper.etsy.com :)

Spring is coming! + Sale

Today I was outside with Zoey, Andrea's mom and her new dog, Jack and she showed me some plants starting to make their way out of the ground! It's nice to see and makes me even more excited for spring! It even is starting to warm up a little in the studio which will make it much more bearable to torch longer :)

Been working on making sets now using the Val Cox marver which is going great. I have one finished set (pictured below) and a bunch that are almost complete and will finish those up this weekend. The Jim Moore lentil press will be here this coming Friday :)

We are starting to plan our shows/markets for this year and first one planned is Mother's Day Gift Show at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, NH. This will be our first show so hope it goes well. We are hoping to do plenty of farmer's markets this year, so far we have heard from the Amherst, Peterborough and Newmarket markets.

Tomorrow is Zoey's first doggie play group! It is an hour long and hoping that goes well since she is scared of large dogs :( She has been getting better around people though! I brought her to the vet on Tuesday and she did not bark once! A much better visit than previous times, she barked about the whole time on those visits. So proud of my little hound haha :)

We are having a Valentine's day weekend sale with our Etsy shop, 20% off till midnight of Sunday EST. Here's the picture of first set finished using Val Cox marver :)

Flower Hearts

Yesterday I ended up making some flower hearts. Probably should have made them a little earlier for Valentine's day but oh well. Here's a few of them

Flower Pairs

Yesterday I worked on more flowers and made 9 pairs. I tried a few different layouts for the flowers and was happy with the outcome of all of them. I still have more ideas for pairs but it is quite cold out so not torching today. We will start listing them tonight on Etsy most likely :)

Flowers

The other day I was thinking of what would be new/good for farmer's markets for this summer and thought of the flower pendant I did the other day. I decided to make focals instead of pendants and had quite a bit of fun making them! The one in the first picture was challenging since the flowers are in different directions so it was hard to lay down the flowers. I've made seven so far and definitely going to make a lot more :) Next ones I'll try adding flowers, grapes and other stuff to the focal.

Again, love Terranova

I was making a fritted stringer bead with Gaia and was unhappy with how it looked and pressed it and that's when the magic began! The bead completely changed from a bleh green to green and blues with webbing effect! I liked it a lot so I did the same with Terranova/Gaia (accidently dumped Gaia frit into Terranova container) fritted stringer and this is the outcome of the Terranova/Gaia one! Same bead opposite sides.

Sale

We are having a sale on our etsy shop, 25% off the 100th item sold in our Etsy shop. If you order additional items with the 100th item those will be 25% off as well. Money will be refunded after via paypal or can send a message and we will make out an invoice :)

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 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.