We loved the New Art Festival!

What a busy and fabulous weekend - the tents went on and on! The map shows 52 artists and artisans but it felt so much bigger. Maybe because all the displays were so fascinating! I snagged a new office mug and two dessert bowls from Dale Mark with the lovely flowy red/blue/green glazes I adore so much. And I coveted about a million things.

This was the first show for which we needed to supply our own tent, and it turned out quite well! Huge thanks to my father and our friend Jill for helping with loading and unloading (yay for trucks!). We had the same Costco Caravan tent as 75% of the other vendors and we're satisfied that it does the job and is good value for the money. I'm very happy with the new banner, too. Now I want more and more...

The display layout was effective and people seemed to be able to see everything. We were very lucky to have a corner booth. In fact the vendor next to us was a no-show so we were able to partially open the other side as well.

Most of all I was pleased that some of our new designs were well-received. We've been inspired to try some asymmetrical necklaces - in fact we made about half a dozen bold showpiece designs! But half of the big new necklaces were purchased at this show, and I have a feeling that more will go at the next show! It's very encouraging, especially since Andrea and I are inspired to make even more elaborate neckpieces now.

This long, ornate piece went to a new home:


This iridescent piece will be available at the Art in the City Show, August 26-28 in Confederation Park!


I'll share more about the earrings and pendants in my next post...

New Bracelets for New Art Festival

In Creation Mode for the New Art Festival, June 4-5!

We've been very busy at Hearts of Glass studios over the past several weeks, getting our ducks in a row for the New Art Festival show next weekend. Time is flying by. We're very excited about some of the new pieces we've got on the go and I'd like to share a sneak peek.

Here's Andrea working on our handforged Captive Drop locking earrings. The natural light is much better in the living room so she's working at the dining set she refinished this winter.

Here's a snapshot of some of the delicious-looking (if I do say so myself) Captive Drop pieces made in this weekend's batch. We've got over two dozen new pairs for the show!

I've also been working on a set called Dream Eggs. I've made one in every colour of the rainbow, plus a few neutrals.


A lovely metallic disk using silver-infused glass.

And of course, a floral - this one is HUGE and is in a double-sided disk shape. It will be made into a necklace with silver chain.

We also designed a new banner! I created text out of the Hearts of Glass logo that Andrea hand-designed a few years ago. It's times like these that I wish I knew how to make proper vector art, but I managed to make this on a Gnu-based freeware called GIMP. Hopefully it will look nice in 12" by 48" format in our shiny new vendor tent.

In today's final news, we have been accepted into the Art in the City show the last weekend of August. It will be near City Hall and sounds like a great show. More details to come!

I hope to see you at the New Art Festival at Central Park near Bank and Clemow, Saturday June 4th and Sunday June 5th (next weekend)! Bank Street is undergoing some street work in that area but it's still open for business and it's possible to park on side streets, so don't be alarmed. :) There will be dozens of artists showing work in media from watercolour, photography, wood, ceramics, metal, and more. We'll be at booth #44 on the South Parkway. Here is a handy map to help you come and visit us:

Accepted! New Art Festival June 2011

Andrea and I just got some great news - we've been accepted into the New Art Festival!This is an outdoor festival held in a Central Park in the Glebe, a sophisticated and funky neighbourhood in central Ottawa. It features a blend of fine visual art and handcrafted artisanry in media such as jewellery, glass, ceramics, wood, metal, textiles and more! Check out the artist directory from 2010 to see what I mean. We're very excited to participate and have a million ideas. More updates coming soon!

The End of a Hard Month

March was a hard and sad month. Andrea's father passed away on March 6th. We both went to Edmonton for his final days and his very moving funeral. Andrea stayed for several more weeks to be with family and work on a project for a friend. It was hard to be apart as we were both going through so many emotions and thoughts about life and death and family.
Now we're finally reunited and trying to get our heads back into daily life and our plans for the future. Needless to say glass hasn't been forefront in our minds this month but we have submitted a few applications for later this year. And I'd like to share a little idea-sketch I made (at the hospital, actually, during part of the four-day bedside vigil) of a flat-backed orchid design. I hope to be able to post a finished version of it sometime next month. It's good to have projects!

Triton glass, camera death and show planning!

My camera died recently, which is sad. It was only around three years old, which seesm to be how long technology lasts these days. We've since gotten a new-to-us version (on our beloved kijiji) and we're still learning the ropes! But in the meantime, I made and sold a very cool piece that I'd like to share, even though it was only ever documented on my grainy cellphone camera.

This flattened-bicone piece features gravity-stretched coppered-opal-yellow and silvered-ivory stripes on silvered effetre black. (I've moved away from the CiM black I'd been trying as it tends to spread and eat detailed designs). As a crowning touch, I added trails of razor-cut Triton silver glass under clear. The result was very iridescent, mostly blue-green with hints of pinky-purple. I added simple polished disc beadcaps and wire-wrapped it horizontally on 26ga sterling wire to a nice thick sterling chain with an adjustable lobster clasp and two 4mm coordinating teal-veined jasper accent beads. After I took it out of the tumble polisher, I was really happy with the sleek result and plan to make more in this general design!

Andrea and I also made a nice batch of Captive Drop earrings for upcoming shows. What shows, you ask? Well, we're still figuring that out... Andrea's been researching some of the many spring and summer art shows in Ottawa. It's a whole new environment for us so we're trying to pick the best fit for our work. Any suggestions are appreciated! Stay tuned for the first batch of confirmed shows in the enar future!

I'd also like to apologise to anyone who got an error message from this site in the past week. It took me forever to figure out what the problem was and I finally had to remove the links to my blog list. I'll test them again in a while and will add them back to my site if the problem is gone.

Many ways to make Murrine cane!

I recently got to attend a free demo by Lucie Kornakova and it was so inspiring!
(photo from Lunacy on Etsy)

I've been making my gathers football-shaped, Japanese-style and trying to stretch my graduated stripes evenly on the narrowing ends. It works fine for basic twist and ribbon cames but the more stripes and details, the more distorted the ends become. I also used small 1/8" metal punties, which again work fine for small simple things but are too flimsy for larger pattern canes.



Lucy builds hers in a narrow cylinder, even diameter so you can just stripe on even lines. She then builds up waste clear glass in either end to make the "egg" for pulling down with 10mm boro punties. I'd heard of that before but always thought that it would be so wasteful. Now I see how much sense it makes. No worries about boro contamination because it's only embedded in the waste glass, which is then discarded. She also talked about making murrine components and combining them together, which I'd only done an uber-tiny bit before.


(photo from Lunacy blog)


Lucy also had the most heat-efficient approach I've ever seen on a torch - it took her no time to melt huge gathers. I think this was partly because of the sweet Nortel Max torch and the world-class set-up at The Glass Shoppe Studio, but partly because she was able to absorb heat into her working pieces efficiently while keeping the finished base layers hard.

There was a class afterwards but we don't have the budget for it right now, sadly. Still just from the demo I've got a lot more ideas now!

I also got a link from my jewellery-designer friend Susan in Winnipeg showing U.S. artist Jim Jones' completely different approach to murrine cane building using sheet glass and a kiln. Very unique!


(photo from Glass2wear.com)

So far my most complex canes are my floral stamens. That's probably where I'll focus my new ideas. Now I just need some more fuel... ;)