New Captive Drop lockable earrings and Amanita bracelet set

Andrea made the latest batch of Captive Drop earrings. It was cool, I showed her how I made them a couple of times, and I hand-wrote a step-by-step process in our ideas and special orders book. She has a way higher aptitude for metalwork than I do so she was able to get it perfect right off the bat and after one practice pair she took on a big batch of around 15 pairs. Hmph! The first 6 or 8 prototypes I made while trying to design this style were terrible, and here she is being brilliant from the get-go? Cheeky, I call it.

Actually Andrea did all the benchwork for this show, and I did all the torchwork. It's turning into our typical division of labour! Andrea's designs with my glass were really gorgeous this week - I'm especially impressed with some of the cluster pendants she made with "extra" beads that weren't planned to match but just *did* - beautifully - when she put them together. Amazing eye.

Oh, I did design one piece - Amanita, inspired by the classic red-topped fairy mushroom but heavily abstracted. I made that one from a sketch and it turned out pretty true to my idea. Andrea did the pendant and the actual assembly, though, because I got distracted on the torch.

Ruby Granite Captive Drop EarringsElation Captive Drop EarringsAmanita Bracelet
Amanita pendant

Now we're all ready for tonight's show opening night! I look forward to seeing some familiar and new faces at our final Winnipeg show.

Elm Street Artisan Open Studio
395 Elm Street
Fri May 7 5-10pm
Sat May 8 10am-5pm
Sun May 9 10am-5pm

Hearts of Glass's last show, Sumak Designs gemstone and silver, Formations in Metal designs, Pauls' Exotic Pens (lathe-turned), and Donna's Handmade Soap.

Refreshments provided, new visitors & familiar faces welcome!

New Dragonflies for Elm Street Show!

Lumina Dragonfly stickpin brooch


Aeshna Dragonfly stickpin brooch

The New Floral Stamen

So I finally got to use my new floral stamen stringer in a new bead. Here is the result! I get a sprightly, vaguely Eastern European feeling from this one. :) It will be unveiled at our final Winnipeg show this weekend.
This look is so different from my past ones. Definitely the most successful petaled stamen I've ever made, but it's so vivid that I'm it sure whether it would work with less flame-coloured flowers! I think it might work best as a separate mini-flower cane on its own. What do you think?

Our tidy jewellery studio!

So our house is currently on the market in preparation for our move to Ottawa. Everything's gotten a bit condensed because I just got a great Ottawa-based job in my field! It's looking like we'll be able to get a little house in the fall once my job probation period ends. We won't be ready for the Winter 2010 season but we should be up and running for Spring/Summer 2011!
We've been completely spoiled this spring with *three* studios - paint, glass and jewellery. It wasn't always like this - we've had renovations most of the time taking up space and making messes. Everything always looks the most amazing right after you've decluttered and tidied everything up for selling. We're trying to think of this as "our *first* house" now, rather than "our house" because otherwise it would be too heartbreaking. It really helps to know that we'll be in a fairly solid position in Ottawa, and we'll be gardening with friends this summer so we should make it through! Hopefully we'll make some glassworking friends and can get some hits of glassmelting in until our own studio comes out of storage.
For now, this is our last week of glass and jewellery work before our final big show at 395 Elm Street, May 7-9! We're having fun and managing to make a surprising amount of new work considering how busy things have become. And I must admit, it's pretty awesome working in a tidy and decluttered studio!

Florals with New Stamen Cane

As promised in my last post, here are the latest photos of my recent batch of floral beads! They all feature the newer 27-element stamen that I made a few weeks ago.

Landini Lily
The fattest of the batch! Named after a deep red Asiatic lily, this one has some pleasant swirliness to it and a fabulous background with my handmade reactive blue cane.



Green Dragon Amaryllis
This is the smallest of the batch - cute yet intense. I really like the colour combination using reactive cane, rubino and silver. Stay tuned for a bigger version in this same colour scheme because I love it so.



Asterid
This one is the tallest and most tapered of the batch. The background was made with red and orange enamel that turned yellow. It was unexpected but the result reminds me of veins of quartz granite and gold in a prospector's mine!



I actually made an even newer stamen cane on Monday with a super-miniaturized black inner layer, yellow, orange and dark green mid-layers and outer layer of pink petals. I haven't tested it in a bead and I'm super-curious to see how it'll look. Stay tuned for the results, PLUS some info on how I make my stamen canes!

Abstracts and Show Poster

A small selection of my recent abstract beads. I'm making them into pendants for the Spring Artisan Open House on Elm Street (except for Heat Wave, which is a special order).

I also have three exciting florals to share in my next post! I can't resist so I'm going to leave you with a small preview of "Green Dragon Amaryllis":

Post #75 Reviews: Phillips Visor & CIM Clear Stringers

Wow, post 75! I'm definitely still not an "expert blogger" but I've definitely learned a thing or two since post #1. In honour of this auspicious occasion I will post a very silly self-portrait that I took first thing this morning without brushing my hair, apparently. :)



Which is also a good segueway into some reviews of Hearts of Glass 2010 purchases. Once again I chose Artistry in Glass as our supplier this year, with equally satisfying results. We have a very annoying process of completely inventorying our supplies and then ordering based on gaps, with a few treats thrown in. This year our treat was a fancy visor. A mundane order that turned out to be a treat was CIM Clear Stringers.

Andrea (my lovely and talented wife) wears glasses and wanted more comfortable layerable eye protection than the oversized economy safety glasses. I wanted something that would do a better job of filtering UV and IR radiation from boro glass as I was noticing the eye strain with my basic shade-3 flip-ups. Also I wanted something that would make me look like a mad scientist. The Phillips Boro Visor is working well for us in all these key areas.

I wear it over my regular economy safety didys. It's very comfortable and easy to move up and down. There's enough airflow that fogging up isn't too much of a problem. And I find that my vision of the work is very crisp and clear even though it's a little darker than I'm used to. Still, I find I'm wearing it flipped down 75-80% of the time, even when I'm working soft glass. It's essentially the same visor body used for magnifying or whatever but with a didy and a shade 3 lens in the visor area. I wonder whether it would be possible to squeeze a magnifying lens in there too? My eyes are feeling much better lately which is great.

I only ordered the CIM clear stringers because the regular effetre stringers were out of stock. At first I was annoyed because they're a fair bit pricier. But what a pleasant surprise when I first melted it! It was significantly stiffer than effetre (I worried for a second that I'd grabbed a boro stringer!) and about a zillion times less scummy that effetre stringers. The size is perfect for the final steps of my stamen florals, which is a very scum-sensitive stage, so I'm very pleased to have a smooth & cooperative clear to work with on small-scale applications. Part of the clarity probably comes from the way it's handled in shipping: neatly paper-wrapped in little packets of a dozen or so to prevent scratching. Not sure if that's AiG or CiM but either way I'm a happy lampworker!

Now I'm off to the torch to make some new work for our final Winnipeg show coming up the weekend of May 7th, just four weeks away!