Hearts of Glass, Booth #40 at the Art in the City Festival

We're having a lovely sunny weekend at the Art in the City handmade show in beautiful downtown Confederation Park!

Saturday August 27 10am – 6pm 2011
Sunday August 28 10am – 4pm 2011

Happy Pride Weekend everyone! Huge respect and appreciation to our elders who were involved in human rights activism in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I just watched an amazing documentary on the story of the struggle from decriminalization in Canada in '69 to the addition of sexual orientation to the Human Rights Code in Ontario in 1987, thereby ending the era of needing to hide your love in order to keep your job. Thank you!!!

Also, huge thank you to our friend Jill who brought over her truck and helped us set up on Friday morning! :)

A Flight of Dragonflies!

Despite the warm humid weather, I took advantage of this rare, unbooked weekend to gear up and bust out the borosilicate glass that has been in storage since we packed up our Winnipeg studio last May! As you may remember from my last post, my mission was dragonflies. The goal this round was to make smaller, more wearable pendants while retaining all the detail and vitality of the older stickpin style.

I'm really happy with my first batch! This "flight" has a lot of diversity because I was experimenting with a variety of proportions and approaches, trying to find the best balance between durability and visual delicacy. The scale is around 1.5", so they are still "life sized", but more like the smaller species rather than the larger ones!

I just read about the smallest species of dragonfly. They are only 3/4" long! I think that's about as tiny as I can make one in glass. I made one nearly that tiny once but I didn't realize there were species that small. The "smallest dragonfly" title is a tie between the Elfin Skimmer (Nannothemis bella) of centre North America and the Scarlet Dwarf (Nannophya pygmaea) of Malaysia. I continue to be delighted by the ridiculously poetic common names of dragonflies!

Mission: Dragonflies

I have been avoiding the torch lately! It's been too beautiful out and I've been away from home. However the urge is growing. I've seen some gorgeous dragonflies this summer, including a gorgeous Blue Dasher with green eyes:




And when we attended Andrea's father's burial in Alberta, the old rural graveyard was awash in dragonflies, giving us a perfect, peaceful and mosquito-free day to say goodbye.

So now I have an urge to try glass dragonflies again. They're challenging and exhausting to make and I have to be in the right mood, but I'm feeling ready to initiate the new studio into pyrex glass - if I can find an evening that isn't too sweltering already!



I'd like to make some smaller, sturdier and more wearable pendants, as well as a few splashy, life-sized stickpins! It will soon be time for the Art in the City festival, the last weekend of August!



Stay tuned...

More Earring And Pendant Photos From The New Art Festival

Here's an image-heavy compilation of some of our work at the New Art Festival two weeks ago! Of course I had some new clear-encased flower pendants to reveal, including this blue one with a cool swirly background:


And a wind-blown white flower with an all-black stamen:


I've been trying spotted flowers lately, so here is a dramatic red speckled lily on a muted green base:


Here's another take on my new Dream Egg bead series, which is a more abstract version of my floral technique. This is a dark neutral worked into an asymettrical necklace.


And for something a little more whimsical, a new big red fish from our fish series!



We updated our earring collection with more simple dangle-hook styles, especially in our yummy-looking sugar-bead series.


And our most popular style, the locking, handforged Captive Drop earrings! These were a huge hit at the festival, which is great because I am addicted to coming up with new, tiny, intricate glass beads for them, and Andrea just keeps improving the process and outcome for handforging the sterling silver wire components!


We also made a lot of bracelet and earring pairs that can work as sets. The sets are always fluid - there are many of combinations that work beautifully, and everything is available individually. The blue bracelet is part of a more simple, classic series that we developed for the festival.


Watch this space for more new work (and new displays) for the Art In The City show
coming on in Confederation Park the last weekend of August!

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: