Ready for Valentine's Day

I haven't shown any new work for a while, so I thought I would share some pictures of heart pendants that I have been working on lately. I'll also leave you with an ear-worm at the end, so you Have Been Warned.

Heart pendants are fun to make. Sometimes they have long, graceful points with nice smooth ends, and other times one gets a short, fat, stubby heart. Like human beings, they're all beautiful in their own ways.

The sole exception are the hearts with poor loops--thin and breakable ones, poorly attached ones, really fugly ones. Those I take out of my kiln and give to friends as window ornaments, or hang them from my fruit trees in a futile effort to keep the birds from getting all my plums! As I take them out of the kiln, I find myself singing, "Please take away my heart ... my poopy loopy heart ... "

Admit it. You knew that one was coming. If you get an earworm from it, don't say I didn't warn you!

This Sunday

I will be at the Amalgam Arts Trunk Show, from 11-4. We're right around the corner from the Farmers' Market, so you can save gas--come shop with us and then go over to the Market! Art of the Firebird and Becky Sizemore will be there, too -- lots of beautiful beads!

Pass around the flyer, too!

Hiatus Explained

My apologies for not being "around" virtually for a while. The last two weeks held both registration and the first week of classes, a new adopted dog, and a trunk show in Ellijay, GA.

Art of the Firebird and I went up to Ellijay on Saturday to do a trunk show at Beaded Couture, run by Lisa Barraca. It was a blast! AoF had hurt her arm, so she described lampworking and pointed out beads, and I did demonstrations and taught a couple of people the basic fundamentals. There was a lot of interest. The demos caught the eye of the husbands who came through, too.

Baby Steps, Fine Tuning the Mind, and Creativity.

Over on The Glass Haven and other lampworking boards there's been some desultory discussion about custom orders. The basic positions seem to be:

* Custom orders pay the bills but are not exciting, and can inhibit creativity because they have made what was fun just more work.

* Custom orders are good ways to keep your skills up during dry creative spells, or are not a problem because the process itself is so much fun.

I vacillate between camps. Right now, for example, I'm feeling unexcited. I think mostly that's because I am feeling overwhelmed. This week, but it is also registration week at my university. Later today I have a faculty meeting. It would only take an hour, but because my university is spread out over two--soon to be three--cities, and I don't live in the "home" city, the drive will be a total of 3.5 hours. Tomorrow I need to work registration most of the day, and again on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and early evenings. Friday we have our departmental beginning of term session, and Monday classes begin. In my lampworking world, I have a trunk show coming up weekend after next, and a show in September. In the middle of all of that is my custom order, and so I find myself putzing, resisting, and not getting ANY of the work done -- which makes me feel overwhelmed.

How can one break out of that? Ironically, I know that I enjoy both my workaday job and my lampworking, and that when I can buckle down to DOING those tasks that I will not only enjoy them, but will jumpstart my creativity for new and continuing projects in both worlds.

So I am taking a leaf from two principles. The first is breaking down tasks, into baby steps, seven to ten minute jobs. I can't get the whole house clean, but I can fold the laundry. I can't turn on my torch this morning, but I can put away the glass I bought, neaten my supply cabinet, and make my workspace a pleasant place to get to. I can't finish my syllabus, but I can find two article references. And the like. All are small, accomplishable steps that make me feel more in control. (FInishing the blog entry after a few days' hiatus is one of those baby steps!)

The second is fine-tuning my attitude. I don't want to empty the dishwasher. Bleargh. But I do want to have a pleasant kitchen. If I tell myself that I am making a pleasant kitchen, that's more appealing than emptying the washer. It's better to make things interesting and manageable for students rather than slogging through a syllabus. It's better to be making a calm peaceful state and an enjoyable weekend rather than planning the first night (because having a plan NOW means a calm, peaceful weekend in which I can torch.) Not being able to torch means that I can be resting after last week's sustained torch time. And working on a custom order means that I can be productive while my brain begins to think of new ideas.

How do you handle these issues?

More Bead Spam

Some of the other things I did this week. Well, besides slogging around in 100 degree weather and feeding an endlessly hungry fawn!

The Copying Issue ... Again

Is it ever okay to use another lampworker's design, when it is not a standard technique?

*It is NOT okay if you take credit for it and sell or otherwise represent the resulting beads as your own.

*It is NOT okay, even if you give credit, if you do not have specific permission from the original creator.

What if you have permission from the original designer, and/or the technique isn't completely unique to that person? I think that's a grey area that each lampworker has to negotiate on his or her own. On the one hand, it is still NOT using an original design. On the other, sometimes a design works well for a very precise purpose.

Let me give you a personal example. Recently one of my cats, Mincot, disappeared for nearly five days. I was going spare, let me tell you, because while I had *thought* she was hiding under the bed while I hosted my neighbor's dogs, it turned out that she had gone walkabout --- and I had no clear idea exactly when she had disappeared. I visited the county pound and checked with all the local animal shelters, to no avail. The High-Church Whiskeypalian in me was lighting candles for her safe return and was invoking St. Anthony and St. Francis. More practically, I walked the neighborhood, putting fliers on every single mailbox. My friend Bill says that that while I was walking she might have seen me and found her bearings enough to get home, because she was sitting on the bed calmly and contemplatively washing her toes not forty minutes after I got home, sweaty and worried.

So what does that have to do with lampwork and the ongoing copying issue? A lot, actually. I'm planning to make some cat-themed jewelry for the two nearby no-kill shelters who were so helpful with resources and time, letting me in to check the cats even though they weren't officially open. I will donate the jewelry, they can sell it, and use the resulting profit for the shelter. However, my own cat design is looooong tube cats. Those aren't practical for shorter earrings. And I really find the shape of Teri Persing's Fat Cats to be extremely satisfying! So, on impulse, I tried a couple, in my own organic style. Mostly I wanted to see if I could do them (yes, as you can see in the picture, but definitely not as well as Teri!). They are good enough for the shelter ... but ethically I can't use them. They are recognizeably and clearly Teri's design, even though the people at the shelter will never know and probably wouldn't care if they did.

So I decided to ask Teri if I could make some Fat-Cat style beads for the shelter donation, and for the shelter donation only--NO sales, anywhere, any time. Along with each set would come text crediting Teri with the original design, saying that I was using it with her gracious permission and that any flaws in the execution are mine and mine alone, and pointing purchasers to Teri's ETSY site (see link above) for Authentic Teri Persing Fat Cats (as an example, here's one of her new listings, a silvered frit Fat Cat). That way people could make an informed decision. I told Teri that I was completely happy with an answer of "No, thank you," and in that case would consign the two Fat Cats I had made to the yogurt container of broken and wonky beads that I use as a conservation measure to displace water in my toilet tank (cheaper than a low-flow toilet, for sure).

Teri very graciously said that I could indeed use her design, with appropriate credit, as a shelter donation. She thanked me for being thoughtful, and I replied that I thought it was less thoughtfulness than an issue of basic honesty.
Copying is theft, after all -- you're stealing an idea, the time the originator put in perfecting it, and possibly stealing revenue that would have come to the originator of the idea. On the other hand, I am an academic, and we build on others' ideas all the time --- with permission and appropriate credit. Furthermore, while Teri has branded hers as FatCats, others use very similar designs, as you can see in this last picture, a set of cats by lampworker Diane Kovach.

So there's my personal copying line: specific clear permission, proper academic attribution, a link to the original to let any customer know where to get the originals by the original designer, for a specific, limited, and precise purpose only, giving Teri exposure to people who might otherwise not see her work, and in company with my own cat designs. As time goes by I am sure that I will develop my own smaller cat designs and stop using Teri's. But there's definitely room for disagreement there, and I still waffle my own self, unsure whether this is still Going Too Far and ANY copying is a failure of imagination or Just Plain Wrong, or if this is just beginning to put my take on a fairly standard design and being honest about my inspiration and starting point.

What are your reactions?

Tornado Beads Redux and Musings on Cleaning Beads.

"All beads are thoroughly cleaned." You see variants of that language on almost every lampwork bead sale and auction site. What does that mean? The beads sure look clean in the photos, right?

Handmade lampwork beads are made on a stainless steel rod, or mandrel. The problem is that molten glass fuses very well to stainless steel, and the only way to remove it is to break it off, piece by piece (or to give up and retire the mandrel). Just ask any lampworker about his collection of beaded houseplant stakes (the bottom mandrel in the picture) or her collection of jaggedly broken beads (the top mandrel in the picture). The solution is to use bead release, a thin sludge made of kaolin, aluminum hydrate, and other substances such as graphite or fireclay. Coating one end or the middle of the mandrel with bead release means that the lampworker can build a bead on the bead-release, and when cool break it free of the mandrel without chipping or breaking the bead (the middle mandrel in the picture).

The problem, of course, is that while the bead release breaks free of the mandrel (in theory; ask any lampworker about his or her collection of mandrels with fused glass....), it sticks to the inside hole of the bead and has to be cleaned out. Thoroughly. This is nasty stuff, after all. One mark of a good lampworker, therefore, is his or her clean bead holes. For comparison, check some of the mass-produced lampwork that you can find at generic art and craft stores. Often you will see a thin line of white inside the bead, a sure mark that it has not been cleaned.

The second picture is a new tornado bead that I just made, before I cleaned it. As far as my work with this technique goes, I am pleased with my improving skills. The bead's ridges are well-defined and even, and most importantly, it didn't crack along the center hole. It is still not perfect; the back side drooped a little, and I'd like to improve further the ridges' precision. But it is a saleable bead.

As far as cleanliness, the bead looks okay .... until you look closely. The hole is very visible in some spots and almost invisible in others, and is very cloudy. "But it looks fine," you say. "In fact, the hole is much more visible in the second picture, where the bead is clean!" And it is. But if you notice, the hole is "more visible" because it is clean. In the first picture, the hole disappears behind the design elements because of the opaque bead release. In the second picture, you can see all the design as well as the clear hole. Plus, there is no bead release to flake off as a thread, metal string, or other stringing material rubs against the bead hole. Just imagine how attractive a bead with "dandruff" is on a black turtleneck ...not to mention the dangers of actually breathing in this stuff.

How do you clean beads? There's many different methods. Beadmakers often swear by their rotary tools and accessories such as the BeadReamer or wire brushes. I use rod saws split in half for 3/32 and larger holes. Other people use pipe cleanersand a multitude of other items. Whatever works well for you is the best technique :) For clear beads, I like to use Jenny G's Spiffy Bead Cleaner, sold by The Venerable Bead, which keeps bead holes sparkling clean without the number of scratches a BeadReamer or a rod saw can create; I used it for my newest tornado bead.

Whether you're a lampworker or a lampwork purchaser, insist on clean bead holes!

Taxco Glass

Oh, my, I am in LOVE!

Generally, I stay away from the expensive (i.e. $80-$100 / lb) silver-colored glass. That's primarily for two reasons. One, it's expensive! Not only is it expensive, but it has not up until now been reliable. Just think about Terra--that miracle glass that was so prized, struck easily, and was beautiful. The next batch was awful and did nothing. A second reason is that if I want my glass pieces to look like boro, I'll either make faux-boro or I will ... work with boro. Boro colors are expensive, but nothing compared to the 104COE silver glasses.

But sometimes you want to combine the boro look or a metallic look with tried-and-true Effetre colors. That's when the silver glasses come in--expensive Bullseye lustre glasses, R4 or Double Helix glasses, or Trautman colors. And of those, my favorite so far is Trautman'sTaxco glass.

Taxco is pronounced "Tasshko," for the town in Mexico most closely associated with silver and turquoise. This glass reduces to a brilliant silvergreenblue metallic shimmer, as you can see in the zebra-striped bead I made here with Moretti ivory and Taxco. Some silver glasses are fussy. The moon has to be in the right place, you have to have your tongue in your cheek at just the right angle, and you have to have precise flame chemistry that will vary depending on humidity and your astrological sign. Taxco plays nice. Take all the oxygen out, and it turns a lustrous iridescent colour. Leave some in, and you get shimmery blues and pinks.

I think I am going to be playing with this glass a LOT. As I said, I am in love!

The Glass Haven Knowledge Base

One of my good friends and the owner of my online home, The Glass Haven, has created a new wiki, the Knowledge Base. She's hoping to turn it into a one-stop resource for lampworkers and glassophiles. Currently there's not much in it, but we hope more people will add to it!

Adding to the wiki is simple, but there are some things to keep in mind.

1. You must be BOTH a Glass Haven member and a Knowledge Base member. You must have at least 25 posts on the forum in permanent areas (not in, say, the Padded Cell, which is scrubbed out weekly.) Exceptions can be made to the 25-post rule for members of established businesses, or well-known lampworkers who wish to publish tutorials.

2. Anyone who meets the above criteria can post. You may edit your own text, but you cannot edit other people's. You may, however, add your own information, dissenting opinions, added material, and the like.

3. There are some serious feuds in the lampworking community. Anyone seeking to alter a political enemy's post maliciously will find him or herself banned before Robin can finish saying "Holy editing pen, Batman!"

4. You will get to link to your shop or website--hey, free advertising!

We hope that eventually the Knowledge Base will be a good resource for the community, and could help avoid the issue of copying. Let's say Generous Q. Lampworker publishes a tutorial out of the goodness of her heart. It is popular, but a year later she sees Wannabee Butnotte Creative has posted her tutorial on her, Wannabee's, site --and has claimed ownership. As we monitor who uploads what when, the Knowledge Base could provide evidence of authorship, publication date, and definitive textual version.

Copying: The Fallout Continues

In an earlier post, I referred to Ulljasbeads, who has been proven to have purchased beads on EBAY and resold them on ETSY as her own creations. There's more blog commentary about this incident, below.

Su Beeds
Designs By Kurato
Copyright Laws

Her DaWanda Shop has been closed, as well as her ETSY shop, and her blog entries have been removed.

The issue of copying is always a hot one in any creative community, but particularly so since the Internet has made it easier to see other people's work and to repost it as one's own. Where would you draw the line? For example, there are only so many styles of floral bead, and so many solid colors, and inevitably there will be lots of people doing three, four, and five petal raised flowers. I have a set on ETSY that is remarkably similar to one by Gwacie. Now, I do do some Gwacie-style beads, with her full knowledge and permission, but when I saw these side by side in a treasury, I contacted her and asked if I should pull mine because of the unintentional similarity. Her answer was no--they are a basic design, in primary summer colors, and you see variants of them all over the Web. (I say that hers, by the way, are better. She says mine are underpriced.) Unintentionally duplicating a basic bead now and then just happens, I think.

However, copying directly also happens, and that isn't excusable. Recently another lampworker noticed that her tutorial had appeared on several other sites, and had been attributed to other beadmakers. That is plagiarism, pure and simple, and is wrong whether you do it on the Web or in the classroom. Sometimes we all copy beads to try out a technique, or because we're learning a style in a class. That's fine--it's like doing five finger exercises on the piano. But to publish or to sell those beads as your own? No. Period. I might show them on the Web, as I did my tornado bead in an earlier post, with a clear note that this was my first bead made without deviation from the tutorial of beadmaker X. Then the beads go into my "gift" stash, with a note reminding me to point out that they are copies of Beadmaker X's work. Or they go into my Sekrit Private Stash that I don't share with anyone. Passing them off as YOUR design, or -- worse -- presenting a bead that you've made in a class, to someone else's specs, with someone else's copious help ... is as much plagiarism as stealing someone else's generous tutorial. When you take a class, unless you've been taught something generic, wait until you've put your own stamp on that technique to sell the results.

Are people just that lazy or afraid that they can only try what they have been shown, and no more? I remember one customer who was afraid to start beading because she had to "get it right," and was afraid to experiment, and be wrong, and start over. Do people truly care more for the presumed fame of having a tutorial in their name, or do they not care about the reputation they will get for copying and being a technique or tutorial thief? Do they really think that if it is on the Internet and they don't pay to see it that they can copy at will? Are they just that lacking in imagination, or do they truly not understand that what they are doing os theft--of words, of ideas, of time. If it hasn't got a price tag on it, do these people think it is free?

Whatever their beliefs, there will be an effect on the community-minded, generous souls who post tutorials and from whom I have learned so much. They may stop sharing their knowledge and skills freely. I hope not ....

New Technique: Tornado Beads

Over the weekend I tried a new technique--the tornado bead. There's an excellent tutorial on them by Margaret Zinser, and I have wanted to try them! A fellow team member, Elysium Beads, has a beautiful tornado bead example on ETSY, reproduced here as the first picture, and her bead gave me the necessary boost.

Meanwhile, as I wrote earlier, I was frit-testing one of my sister's unique frit blends. So I decided to use it as the base of my first tornado bead. It turned out very well indeed --- except that I was so caught up in the process of making the bead and keeping the base cool that I forgot the cardinal rule of lampworking larger pieces: insurance heat. Yep, the bead cracked right along the mandrel line. In the picture you see I've glued it.

But I really like that frit! I don't know if it has a problem with encasing, because the two beads I have made with it and encased have both cracked. Every other tornado bead I made in that session cracked, though, so I don't think there's enough evidence that the frit is at fault. I made a tornado bead yesterday that I heated more thoroughly, and that was fine. So I will try again, making some round encased beads and a new tornado bead; if THOSE crack, then it's the frit, alas. Encasing brings out such lovely colors in it, though.

Is Etsy Worth It?

My friend, business partner, and Glass Haven owner Julia Benson-Slaughter asked this question at her blog, Art of the Firebird. It's a valid question. For a site as large and as old as Etsy is, it has some troubling aspects. These fall into several areas: a certain lack of respect for sellers and buyers, an ongoing lack of business tools for sellers, and a complete inability to manage its image. Of course, all of these are related to a certain degree, and they all add up to a lack of professionalism.

The lack of respect is for me the most problematic part of the Etsy experience. Sellers' concerns are generally ignored; instead of fixing long-standing issues, the site spends time on how-to articles of dubious quality. (The idea of a hammock and doing "Urban intervention" is great, but for the love of Mike, please show people how to make a hammock correctly, using appropriate materials. Your grandmother's sewing machine (WHAT an ageist comment, by the way!) is not sturdy enough to sew the fabric you will need to make a lasting hammock, nor is clothesline a remotely possible option for the supports.)

The worst, though, is its cavalier disregard for dishonesty. As the site relies on the community for policing, numerous blatant resellers and copyright violators flourish on Etsy. The issue that brought the whole mess to my attention was the case of Ulljasbeads, who was blatantly purchasing other lampworkers' beads on EBAY and then selling them as her own creations on ETSY. I know personally several of the lampworkers involved in this issue, and they are not usually ones to cry fraud or to be habitually unpleasant --- these are good, honest, pleasant people. Etsy, however, when faced with unequivocal proof of Ullja's behavior, including screenshots of the EBAY auctions and the Etsy listings, did not close her shop or pull her listings--instead, they edited her posts to remove the word "handmade," (compare to the screenshot in the previous link), violating their own policies about resellers and being knowing parties to fraud. Although they have now closed her shop, it took widespread news and complaints for them to do it. Right there they lost my respect, as they showed that they are more willing to gain listing fees and FV fees rather than stand by their rules or protect other sellers, buyers, or the image of Etsy. They have lost others' too ... witness Loco's Etsy Admin Alien Bead.

A lack of respect for sellers and buyers also informs Etsy's lack of business tools for sellers. Site stats, the ability to pre-schedule listings, the unwillingness to talk about the harder side of business on the fora, and most of all the reliance on sellers' time to market their shops --- all show a lack of respect for the sellers AND the buyers, as well as being a pain for the general business person. I would like to be able to budget my time better--to spend my workweek on, well, WORK, rather than breaking concentration or spending time to list every day. While doing listings in a lump, saving their urls, and only finishing them on the day that I list them is a useful workaround, we should not have to do that. Site stats would be useful, and having constant views (now fixed, but after how many months of complaints?). Etsy's willingness to allow NPBs to leave negative feedback for sellers is a problem, and the persistent issue of non-payment is also troubling. Why can't Etsy have a dedicated integrated shopping cart? It is not that difficult. Why doesn't ETSY at least publish a timeline for specific site improvements (aka basic tools) and then stick to it as best programming snafus will allow? And for the listing fees we pay, I expect better marketing.

Marketing brings up the issue of Etsy's image. Etsy began as a venue for the small crafter, but it has grown like Topsy. Despite this, Etsy's administration has not kept pace. Etsy's trade show booths scream a lack of professionalism. Etsy has a name for being a flea market, a garage sale, rather than a serious crafting venue. If that's what ETSY wants ... fine; it's Rob and Maria's site, after all. But that image undermines its pledge of the "handmade life." While I have defended Etsy's choice to market itself that way, I do feel the pain of those who want or need a higher-end image, and increasingly I find myself joining their position. Etsy doesn't have to kick out the rainbows-and-kittens crowd, but it needs to promote its higher end and fine art shops as well as its cute kitchen crafts ... and booths like those linked to above do NOT help.

So: I find myself wondering--is ETSY worth it? Despite its problems, it has built up a helpful community. WE answer questions, police the site, help newcomers, and continue to remain, paying our fees while we do quite a lot of the work. Yet the community alone cannot compensate for ETSY's other problems. For me to get to the point of being fed up with a site is rare. I would make a very bad Etsy Bitch, because I tend to view things pretty charitably and not complain overly much. But although they began roughly, and several on the fora cross over the line between genuine complaint and mockery, the Bitches make some very fair and valid points. Maybe it's time to find other venues and see whether there is anything better --- or if they are all roughly the same. If so, perhaps it's time to spend money on my own website and do my own marketing. It can't take any more time than I am spending now.

Happy Fourth of July!!

Whatever your plans are for today -- just taking the day off and watching fireworks on the tube, going out to your neighborhood picnic, spending time with family and friends -- I hope you have a wonderful day with it! I am going to my friend Esther's house for our annual pool party. Swimming, mmmm!! Esther is in her eighties and still folk dancing, gardening, swimming, and just being an all-around wonderful person. After that, I am going to hit the Decatur fireworks festival, as usual.

For your daily dose of fantastic eye-candy, check out this treasury of LEST members' red, white, and blue items!

Frit Beads

A much better day at the torch, although I didn't update yesterday as promised. Yesterday I straightened up the house, and then collected my neighbor's dogs for a week-long stay, much to the disgust of my Quality Control Inspectors. They see a dreary week of living under my bed during the days; I know that they'll be used to the dogs within three days. Plus Milo, the puppy, and Diamond, the two year old, are both crate-trained and sleep at night in their boxes (much to THEIR disgust, as they are used to sleeping in their owner's room). Then I had a lovely dinner with a friend whom I haven't seen for a long while. We had chickpea tomato soup, and talked, and garlic bread (we both share the idea that if there aren't at least four cloves of garlic per meal that there's something wrong!), and salad, and blueberries and cream for dessert.

Anyway, I did some plain frit beads, and had a more productive day. First I started testing a frit blend developed by my sister, who sells frit and beads on ETSY as Iron Mountain Jewelry and That Frit Girl. It's a lovely bluegreen. Maybe Mountainside as a name? I don't know. Anyway, in the picture from left to right there's the frit on Moretti white, on Moretti light ivory, on clear, on white with silver, on white and swirled, and on white, encased. The encased bead cracked, but I don't know if it was the frit or if it was the wrong COE clear. I want to do one of my Kalera Long and Lean series ... which I need a name for. Some shards of cobalt would look great with this frit as a base.

Then I did some plain sprees in a frit called "Aphrodisiac," on sky blue for a base, with tiny flat-leaved flowers.
Those went fast and were fun to do. I swirled the frit because I was afraid the frit blotches would compete with the plain flowers. On balance I think I'd leave them be next time. It made a nice, straightforward set that went pretty quickly. I actually made eight beads, but one chipped when I was cleaning it, and one I hadn't firepolished well enough.

Finally I tried Copper Green and Purple frit, which came out beautifully. I thought something was missing, though -- a texture or interest point -- so I added a layer of fine silver foil, and that got the look I was hoping for.

This morning I have to grade papers in earnest--in an eight-week semester the chore never ends, not if you want to be responsible and give regular feedback so students can grow. Maybe I can torch this evening.

Meanwhile, the canines are barking at my neighbors, and it is time to bring them in!

When I'm Feeling Uninspired ...

Well, before I explain, a good thing happened. My friend Melanie Gulley owns a new bead store in Avondale Estates, just east of Decatur, GA. It's really one of the only bead stores this far east now that the Stone Mountain store has closed, and so it is exciting to see! She's done a great job with it.

Thursday I dropped by with the cigar boxes in which I keep my beads, and she picked out a lot of beads to carry in her shop. I mean a LOT! My Etsy store went from 96 items to 68 in less than an hour, and she also took several items that weren't listed on Etsy. Now let's hope people buy them! Whether they do or not, it's such a rush having someone like my stuff enough to want to use up some of her shelf space on it. Of course, that AND having people buy them is even better, for both of us. She also wants me to teach some beginning lampwork classes if we can get the space and insurance regulations straightened out. Diane Kovach of DKDesigns, our local Southern Flames co-president, is really excited and is offering a lot of help. (I had asked her to make sure that I wouldn't be cutting into her livelihood, because I have a full time job and she doesn't. But she doesn't really teach in this quarter of the city, so that's good for me!)

What that means, though, is that I suddenly went from having enough inventory to keep the Etsy shop going and to prepare for the three day Down The Street Bead Show in September to having not nearly enough inventory. I know that I can always pull items for the show if they haven't sold, but ... so I was in the enviable position of both having a whole day to torch and the need to crank out a lot of sets.

And, wouldn't you know it, I went brain dead. Even the one custom set I am making to order this week turned out poorly; not one blessed thing from the kiln came out right. So, to quote Lisa Kudrow, I "let it go, let it go!" and started fresh today.
Am taking a break--the kiln's almost full, and we're having a monster thunderstorm, which we needed. I just hope the rain continues in a more gentle way, because this was a true gullywasher, and that will run off rather than filling lakes and aquifers.

But I digress. My online friend Kandice Seeber has a wonderful blog, "Coloraddiction." Every so often she writes about a basic color in one of the main soft glass palettes, and shows how it changes when combined with other colors. Some color combinations I knew about, but others I had had no clue.

So when I am uninspired, I turn to Kandice's latest entry and try that color combo to see what I like. Throughout this post I've pictured some of the beads I've made with her most recent "tried but true" color, light turquoise. To jump start me today I tried frit blends, and will post those tomorrow!

Wasp out!

Okay, I am very, very glad that my propane tanks last as long as they do. With the way prices for everything are increasing, I like having a reasonably fuel efficient torch. Of course, I haven't been working boro as much as I had hoped, either.

However.

It is summer, and the tanks get nice and warm. Apparently the hornets think the underside of a tank is a lovely place to build a paper nest. Of course, I found this out after I had begun pulling up the tank out of its protective resin box. Anyone want to know just how far one can hurl an empty 17.5 lb propane tank? Just ask me.

Didn't get stung ... for a woman as fat as I am, I can move awfully fast when I am appropriately motivated to do so. A small cloud of hornets (it was a VERY small nest) constitutes appropriate motivation.

Starting work

If I'm in the middle of a project, whether it is at my full-time job or at my lampworking, my desk is cluttered. Papers, books, references, student papers -- all are organized so I can get at them, but it may not appear to be organized to anyone who looks at them. Similarly, rods of glass, twisties, pieces of cane, tools, and glass pieces lie scattered all over my tile-topped worktable.

But when I start working on a new project, such as writing an essay or making up a custom order, or even just trying some experiments with glass, I have to clear my desk or workbench. I put away all the glass rods, line up the tools, organize my stringers, and sweep up the pieces from popped glass. It's all part of the process of getting ready.

What new project have I got today in glass? I just got a new-to-me disc press, and I am excited to try it! I also have a custom order for my Fiesta series. Academically, an article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly about teaching adult students that seems to me to be written from the position of a helpless victim, and I want to reply with a far more active and hopeful vision for both adult students and their professors.

It's already ten ... time to clear those desks and get to work!

Pulling Rainbow Cane

This weekend my friend J and I took a class at Flame Tree Glass on pulling rainbow cane. As we were the only students, Lance went ahead and gave us a good solid review of latticino in general, which was really good--I pull it all the time, but I really had no clue as to the theory of it. After this class I am a lot more able to get the precise results I want, rather than guessing what will happen if I put the glass in different spots.

What is latticino? It's a thin rod of glass that has a white (italian latte, milk) or clear base, and colored threads spiraling down the rod. Each color lasts for the full length of the latticino cane. Rainbow cane, however, is different. The color starts at one end and slowly goes through a short section of each color, each one blending slowly into the next. Here are some examples from class. We pulled a monster cane that was truly a rainbow, with colors from purple to red, and these images are the two parts of various canes:





To make any cane, first you melt the end of a long rod of white or clear. You can press it into a paddle shape or roll it into a cylinder that is somewhat fatter than the original rod diameter. Using a paddle or a barrel will change how your cane looks! Then stripe colored glass onto the paddle or cylinder, parallel to the rod.

If you want rainbow cane, make a paddle, and put the color widthwise on each side of the paddle, as if you were crossing the T relative to the upright rod. On the short edges of the paddle, lay glass parallel to the rod -- that's what makes the colors stripe one after another on the pulled cane, but keeps the black constant down the rod.

One of the lovely things about latticino is the brilliant color you can achieve. Layering a transparent color on white gives you a clarity that is unmatched. The problem is how to get the color to last throughout the cane and not get too pale and attenuated -- a couple of the ones below have inconsistent color. Generally, the thinner you plan to pull the cane, the more layers of transparent color there should be to make sure you get the depth of color you want.

Here are some of the other ones that we pulled, or that I pulled this weekend:



Now I just need to learn to USE twisties so they stay recognizeable. Mind you, they are perfectly lovely when you jumble them up, but I'd like to practice using them very precisely.

Here are some beads made with a green and blue "rainbow" latticino cane, laid on in stripes but still allowed to jumble together a bit. These are just from the blue part, but you can see the green shading in.



I think they have a bit of a Monet Iris look, but I called the set "Mexican Blanket," because the combination of the cobalt and green with the white and thin black stripe reminds me of the Mexican blankets we used to use as picnic and park blankets when I was a kid. I need to make a twistie with orange, pink, and hot green shades to complement this set.

YART Sale on ETSY!!

And what, you ask, is a YART sale? Well, it's a yard sale, only for art and supplies! Check it out ... mouse over to Etsy and do a search for "YART". The sale begins to-day and will last for ten days.

From me, look for sales on existing beads and on bead seconds ... but also I have fabric destash, linen embroidery thread and floss destash, cigar boxes, and other goodies. So keep watching.


In beading news, there's some interesting developments in Avondale Estates. Melanie Gulley is opening The Bead Shoppe!

It will be located at 2849 E. College Avenue in Avondale Estates, in the Twin Oaks shopping center. You can find more information at 404.914.4602, or email Melanierg@hotmail.com. It will be nice to have a quality shop closer, and NOT in Alpharetta or Buckhead.

Back from the show!

Dogmaw and I had a good time in Charleston at the Down the Street Bead Show. We enjoyed talking to everyone, and her husband Chris's bead "critters" were best sellers. Kudos to all who came out despite the weather! And we ate ... oh, my. Friends told us to go to the Boulevard Diner, and they weren't wrong. Spinach-potato pancakes with crab remoulade sauce, grouper sandwich, and shrimp etouffee ... oh, man.

Meanwhile, my sister sent me some pictures. The other day my BiL saw a deer lying on the side of the road, and he stopped to make sure it was dead and not lying there suffering. The doe was dead, but there was a bitty fawn shivering near momma. M brought him home; they are feeding him goat's milk with the right additive for deer growth. At first they thought it was a doe, too, and they were hoping to release him to the deer family on their property, but the baby's a buck. Looks as if one of the doctors, who is caring for "Jet" while M and L are away, will take him over; the guy as a large amount of acreage, runs cattle, and doesn't allow hunters. If Jet can't readapt to the wild, he can live on Doc X's fenced property. Deer fencing can work the other way ... we hope.


Once Jet discovered what a bottle was for ....



Oops! walking on the slick Pergo isn't for babies.



Umm ... no, Draco, this isn't a snack.



He's so BITTY when he curls up! Look at Jet's size relative to Nosemonster and Sasquatch:



And here: the picture perfect publicity shot: