Happy Halloween!

I didn't make many Halloween-themed beads this year--a few spiders and candy corn, but that was it. However, many other beadmakers did, including some of the amazingly talented Southern Flames beadmakers.

You can see their work here, at Flame Tree Glass's Halloween Contest page. There's information on the main pane, and on the left there are two .pdf files with pictures of the entries. All I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW! at the imagination, creativity, and quality. These people went ALL OUT. Puts my candy corn in the shade, for sure --- but I'm in awe!

Some of my favorites: The Trick or Treaters, by Marcy Lamberson:

Raven's Last Temptation, by Koi Creek Beads


In sculpture, there's Stephanie White's Graveyard:



And a phenomenal boro life-size skeleton by Doug:



Go over to Flame Tree and look at ALL the entries -- they're beyond incredible.

I've been tagged!

I tend to catch up on blogs once a week, so I missed this (sorry, Marcy!). Marcy Lamberson of Studio Marcy tagged me for this one. Marcy makes amazingly whimsical glass beads and sculptures, and in her free flow of ideas, sense of fun, and craftswomanship combined is what I want to be when I grow up.

So, here's the rules!

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by including links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

1. I teach European history at a local university as my Real Job, in a program for returning adults. Melting glass keeps me from killing my students, but so does the knowledge that I am playing a part in helping people make their lives much better.

2. Two months ago I acquired a rescue shepherd / lab / spitz mix, Justin Renate McCavity Wigglebutt, Esq. (Who can guess how he got his middle two names)? He is delightful, pushes every boundary, can be a real pain in the ol' butt, just passed his Stage One obedience training, and is a snugglebug par excellence. In other words, he's Justin-Other Good Dog. Anyone want some beads with shepherd hair inclusions?

3. When my cats are all curled up together in a heap I feel ridiculously happy, and start singing "Asleeeeeeeeeeeeep in a heeeeeeeeeeeap" until I sound positively simple.

4. My neighborhood has a new dog park! Justin and I go nearly every day. It's only 2/10 of a mile down the road.

5. When the weather gets cold I don't turn up the heat, but I wear mismatched fuzzy or fleecy socks in wild colours.

6. My workbench is a desk / table from a local hotel that had been bought by another chain and was renovating. They gave me a deep discount because there were scratches on the table-top. W00T! I did not mention that I planned to tile the top ... bad me, no doughnut.

7. I need to upload recent images to my Bead Artists' Gallery site.


Okay: tagging!

1. One-eared Pig: http://one-earedpig.blogspot.com/
2. Dogmaw Glass: http://dogmawglass.blogspot.com/
3. Ashton Jewels: http://lydiamuell.blogspot.com/index.html
4. Art of the Firebird: http://artofthefirebird.com/wordpress/
5. Dorset Hill Beads: http://dorsethillbeads.blogspot.com/
6. Gwaciebeads: http://gwaciebeads.livejournal.com/
7. BeadNerd: http://beadnerd.com/

Ya'll have fun now!

Creative Slump II: Side Trip down New Glass Lane

Saturday was the first meeting of the Southern Flames lampworking group that I have been able to attend for a while. Meetings are most often on Wednesday nights, and very often I am teaching on Wednesday evenings.

It was a fun meeting. During the meeting, we had a new visitor--Brad Shute of Striking Color. He brought samples of his new silver glass, and offered his odds and short ends at a very reduced price. They looked lovely! I decided to try it, but, as I have had mixed success with the silver glasses, I thought I would invest in only a quarter pound.

After the meeting, Marcy Lamberson (StudioMarcy) and I were the only two who took him up on his offer. We walked out into the chilly night, over to the back of Brad's truck. He pulled out a scale, and three cardboard boxes full of short ends. We began making silly jokes about getting our glass "Crack," complete with parking-lot dealers and careful scales. I should say that

Brad was very generous in his reading of quarter pounds and pounds -- he gave me more like half a pound of glass. Marcy bought a pound, and her total was likewise a good bit over her specified amount. We all shook hands, made more jokes about midnight goods handovers, and headed out to our respective ways. I went to the last part of the Open Studio night at Duckbill Studios, and Marcy went home.

Well, I got to try the glass on Sunday, which distracted me from Gwacie's assignments. I have had hit-or-miss results with many silver glasses, and in general find that *for me* they aren't worth the price. I do well with Taxco and Rocio Silver Mist, but the new Terra and other glasses just never work as well for me as they do for many others--it's purely my technique. So I approached Brad's glass with a combination of determination and trepidation! I didn't have much torch time, but I made a wanna-be barrel and some sprees.

The barrel, alas, broke through the bead release before I finished shaping it, and appears to be permanently fused to the mandrel. This is the one bad thing about middle-dipped mandrels, IMHO; one's occasional plant stakes are much shorter. But the silver glass produced absolutely beautiful colors with almost no fuss.
The glass does not like to be encased, I found, at least not with Diamond Clear. It's technically COE 104, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is compatible with all 104 glasses. You can see the cracks in the spree beads, feh and double feh. So: no or only very light encasing, where the ratio of clear to base is smaller. The barrel is encased, too, but there were no cracks because the clear was less of a percentage of the whole bead.

So that took up my torching time on Sunday, and is bringing back some of my enthusiasm. Brad's glass gets a solid thumbs-up sign from me, as well. I am teaching Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday I want to go vote (IF YOU CAN, GO VOTE EARLY. THIS IS AN HISTORIC ELECTION NO MATTER WHO YOU BACK--PLEASE PARTICIPATE!). Friday, though ... time to work on assignments and custom orders, and maybe some more of Brad's silver glass.

Creative Slump Assignments I

So the last few weeks I have been in a creative slump. I don't know whether it was doing a series of shows plus my regular work, or whether it's simply that something in my brain is saying that it's time to pay attention to necessary repairs around the house. The kitchen needs repainting, the living room flooring needs to be changed from filthy carpet to laminate, and the garden is in desperate need of attention and winterizing. As my job comes first and there are so many leisure hours in the day, the torch is of necessity taking a background spot right now.

Maybe that's a good thing, because it lets me regenerate. But when I don't torch regularly, I also feel as if, when I do come to the torch, as if all I do is to waste glass.

What to do, what to do? I still have one custom order to finish, and while sometimes one is sick of making the same beads over and over and OVER, at the same time, structure is a good way to jump start the ideas for new beads.

I also asked friends to give me assignments, and Gwacie of Gwaciebeads came up with an assignment: a blue focal with dots spiraling on it. Another friend, Tinroof, suggested beads made with two variants of copper ruby frit and silver on a black base.

The CR bead didn't work for me, but in fairness I tried it last, and was tired. As for the blue focal, first I took Gwacie literally and tried my hand at THE blue bead (first picture, made by Sarakay). This bead style became a real sensation for a while, and generated many copies after Sarakay posted her fantastic tutorial. I didn't get the right reaction, but you can see a little bit of it on my bead. It isn't THE Blue Bead, but it is still pretty.

Then I actually did Gwacie's assignment. First off was a bead
of turquoise and that lovely peachy coral, the one that can go orange and peach and all shades in between. I layered the dots (they really intersect, not swirl) and copper mesh.

Then I tried a new Vetrofond color that has a really nice streaky clear blue background, and made swirled dots for it. I just grabbed stringers at random, and found that they were some I had mixed for a floral bead. That meant that the dots were not crisp and clean, but instead were somewhat muddy. Oh, well. It fit the bill. Then I got sidetracked trying to make good chunky discs.

Next up when I get to the torch will be the Copper Ruby / fine silver reaction, as per Tinroof, and Gwacie's next assignment: the longest tube bead I have ever made, the teeniest decorated bead I have ever made, and the bead with the most colors I have ever used. Of course, I wound up taking a side-trip this last weekend ... tell you about that tomorrow.

Introducing the ESST Street Team: Doodles Mosaic Tiles

This is the next in my series about the wonderful peeps of Team ESST. Today's topic is:

Doodles Mosaic Tiles has a broad array of mosaic tiles for mosaic artists. Many of her tiles are clear, in a variety of patterns and sizes. However, she has lovely broken china tiles, glass globs, and holiday items. Fhe also carries neodymium magnets, and a wonderful clearance section (titled, amusingly, "Oops!") that almost seduced me into trying my hand at mosaics.

By far the most interesting part of her shop, though, are her custom made hand painted tiles. Whimsical, bright, and cheerful, these tiles would turn any mosaic art from humdrum to spectacular.

With 597 sales, Doodles is going great guns! Check her shop out. If you'd like to find older posts in this series, search for the tag ESST members.