Friday July 27 Demo and FINAL HoG sale at the Glass Shoppe Studio

Sorry for not blogging for a while! Things have been quiet on the glass front this winter - but no longer!

Speckled Poppy floral bead with Green Stamen

A few weeks ago I received a message from Grace Edwards of the wonderful Glass Shoppe Studio with a fantastic request. Glass students had asked if I would teach a class on my complex stamened floral beads. I was deeply honoured by the invitation to teach and of course I leaped at the opportunity! I love teaching and I am SO passionate about my stamen florals! This will be my final Big Glass Event in Ottawa and I'm taking full advantage.

July 27, 7pm at the Glass Shoppe Studio
FREE Lampworked Glass Demo and FINAL Hearts of Glass jewellery sale!
Making Complex Floral-Stamen Cane ...and Our Final Public Glass Sale!
Your very last chance to purchase our work before we move to Edmonton.

Note: My latest, as-yet-displayed floral beads will be on display and for sale, but will be for pick-up after the July 28th class as I will need them as exemplars. I also have a large set of NEW Captive Drop earrings to display and sell. This is my favorite batch of the series! I feel like I've hit a new pinnacle of having-things-turn-out-the-way-I-imagine. (Artists will know exactly what I mean here!).

July 28th - FULLY RESERVED
Heather Stewart's Complex Stamened Floral Glass Bead Class
All my hard-won secrets will be revealed! Students will learn all the steps in making my unique style of stamened floral beads and will make their own canes and florals in-class.

Components of new multi-step Black-Fringe-Edged Red Stamen

Brand-new yellow floral with new black-fringe-edged red stamen

The reason that these events will be our last in Ottawa is that we are preparing to move out-of-province... again! An irresistible opportunity knocked and so we're packing up and heading to Edmonton for a few years. I'll be taking full-time graduate studies and Andrea will be the Head of the Scenic Art Department at the Citadel Theatre.

After we made this decision in December 2011, I had hoped to have a few farewell events over the winter and spring. Unfortunately since the Art Glass Bead Show in November 2011 and our home studio show in December, all our artisan show applications have been declined. This is probably a combination of our lack of reputation in the local scene (outside of the tight-knit glass community), and the highly competitive artisan market community in Ottawa, especially in the Jewellery arena. It was a discouraging season and I was saddened to be leaving Ottawa's artisan scene with a whisper rather than a bang. But the BANG has appeared and I'm thrilled!

As you may imagine I've been practicing my stamen-making and have made two brand-new canes, and three brand new florals. As soon as I finish this blog I'm getting back on the torch to make at least two more. I've made some new innovations and breakthroughs that I'm excited to share.

Next post I'll be showing the creation of my latest stamen cane! Here's a sneak peek of the component canes I made. That's right people, it's a PINK stamen! With a star centre! I would say it's whimsical but I'm willing to bet there's a real flower out there with a stamen like that. Flowers are crazy that way.

Components of new Pink Stamen - cane-pulling pics to follow!

I have a floral made with this stamen in the kiln right now, and if it turns out the way I think it did, it will be my BEST FLORAL EVER!  I'm posting pics tomorrow.

Stay tuned...

New Floral Stamen!

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?

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!

First bead of 2010

I got the new compressor filter installed in my 2nd oxygen concentrator, so I'm back up to full power! On Thursday I made this floral. I'm happy with the striping (it's better in real life than in the photo - I seem to have captured the one area where it faded out!). And the pink floral is actually the pinkest and least mooshy I've made, though still rather scummy. Rubino Oro, you are a harsh mistress. (Yes, I used an oxidizing flame and worked slowly and far out... any other suggestions?) Luckily, in real life it is only about the size of a big marble, so you only see the micro-scum if you look very closely.



I also made a batch of forged earrings that I'm very happy with. I don't have any shows coming up so I think I'll actually post them on Etsy! My poor shop has been so neglected and I look forward to sprucing it up.

What a Rush!

Phew - the show season is over, and we did a good job, I think! Part of me would have liked to have done more and more (more dragonflies! more forged earrings! more metalsmithed work!) but the more reasonable part of me is glad that we limited it to four shows this year. They were really *good* shows for us, and left us some time to deal with our non-glass world as well! And it left both myself and (hopefully) our customers "wanting more" for the future...

Now it's time for us to focus on our Christmas. We still don't have very clear plans yet but our tree is up and sparkly, and that feels like a very good start!

I'll leave you with a photo of my latest floral (still available, by the way) to tide you over until I post again. :) Merry Christmas! Happy Solstice! It is coming soon and I can't wait for the days to get longer!

New Purple Floral Bead

As promised, here`s a shot of my latest encased floral! I`m using a new technoque to apply the stamen now: pre-nipping-off a point-pulled stamen section, and attaching it to a clear rod. Then I can just plunge it in as deep as I want, and melt off the clear rod leaving an automatic "expansion dot" of clear on top.
Before this, I was plunging a point attached to the full stamen rod, then cooling that and nipping it off the bead itself. This worked fine when the stamen rod was skinny, but now that I'm working in a thicker section it was giving me more trouble. I was either breaking the stamen off too stubby in the plunge-dent, or breaking the whole darn bead off the bead release. The new approach is much less disaster-prone!



















Front shot, showing the stamen cane. I like how the stamen went a bit spirally this time! Finally, distortion working in my favour! >:)



















Side shot of the floral showing the reactive base. I love how the reactive cane recipe turned out! It`s a bit less yellow and more blue in real life.

My Mom should be landing in Winnipeg for a visit right about... now! She's here for work and knows we're working too getting ready for the Velocity show on Niagara this weekend. She`s agreed to help us come up with names for our work (such as this bead - suggestions, anyone?), and maybe do a little tagging duty too! What a trooper! :)

New Florals!

I spent some time photographing my new work yesterday and wanted to share some glam shots of my latest florals!

This was my first floral test of the new "Effetre Ultra Clear", Peace White and Bordello Red. The flower is *okay* but I wasn't thrilled with any of the new colours. Ultra clear is not really ultra anything, just regular. Lots of visible bubbles in the rods itself, and you do have to work it quite cold. Manageable, but not amazing. Still, the next step up is way too expensive for me, so I'll just work far back in the flame and I'll be fine. :)
Peace White actually looked a lot less opaque than my old white in rod form and didn't seem to resist translucency any better. Bordello looks okay in this photo but in real life it's actually a lot darker and duller. Layering it over yellow was a mistake, since it's more of a purple red! A little goes a long way. The "starry" silver background was also unexpected. I thought I was using silver leaf but it was actually silver foil that I'd managed to slip into a leaf envelope. Insanity!
This was my second go with Bordello, matched with Effetre Ink Blue. Again, it's darker and browner in read life. Still, it was a pretty bead with my reactive cane background!
...So much so that I made an almost identical bead my second time at the torch. Without really planning to! This one has regular red, Effetre Amethyst centre petals and Leaky Pen accent flowers. I *am* thrilled with Leaky Pen!
Here you can see how close they look. Even the same size! Weird.
This one is very cute and tiny and pretty close to perfect! Ink blue on Leaky Pen with a lapis and cane background. It's one of the smaller florals I've made! Not sure why I went so small. I guess it'll make it more wearable, at least.

And here's a family portrait to show the different sizes and shapes. I haven't measured them yet but the biggest one is around 30mm, the middle one around 25, and the smallest just 20ish. Yay, I'm making florals again!

Now I just need to think of names! Any suggestions?!