Surreal Colors and Light

Beautiful treasury created by Cherrie Flick of En La Lumie're on Etsy. Love the color and luminosity of this collection.And love Cherrie's jewelry as well mixing color and texture. Look at the patina on the copper ring in this pendant. Stunning.

Necessary evil

I'd love to be melting glass tonight but ran out of mandrels last night. Damn. So tonight it's a chopped marathon, bottle of bead release, and beer on ice. Did I mention the temperature spiked today? Sitting with a cold beer dipping mandrels probably makes more sense than working at the flame by a hot kiln. Beads? Tomorrow night! Psst... Hi Frankie! (the pic is a seek and find)

Repurposing fused glass scrap

I was called in to teach a teen beadmaking class over the weekend. We used mostly moretti effetre and the two students picked up the skill amazingly fast! But the color selection at the New Street Studio can be a bit limited. I have quite a bit of glass scrap and dichroic for my fused glass work so brought some in to play. I demo'd how to cut strips and "fuse" them together into longer "rods" for beadmaking which worked ok... but the glass would break near the connections as fusing them at the torch made the glass unstable.

So, I sat at my own torch last night and experimented a bit more. I think the solution, that I'll be testing this week, is to fuse at torch and anneal in the kiln so the rods will be stable for beadmaking. I may take some progress pics of the process. In the meantime, here is my first experimental bead-set made from bullseye and dichroic scrap – opaque base, dichro wrap (hard to see in pic) encased with clear/black collage glass. I ended up with 3 icy little cubes. Love to try recycling some bottle glass next!

Beautiful art show!

The Princeton Arts Society Springing Into Art exhibit is open all weekend! Today, 10am-4pm. Tomorrow, noon-4pm. 18 Boylston Ave Princeton. It's a beautiful show, not to be missed!

Hollow Bouquet

In a hollow bead zone last night, staying WAY up past my bedtime! Can you tell what kind of necklaces I'll be making this weekend?

Running some errands with the kiddos after work then to the Arts Society Show (such a beautiful and fun event!)

I'll be at the studio tomorrow AM to strip and clean these beads. Quick and easy with my wall-mounted flex-shaft dremel and water pik. Best two purchases for speed and efficiency! The water pik gets the interior of the hollows squeaky clean. Hard to believe I used to blow these things out like Easter eggs... crazy.

Here's the plan for the beads, maybe a "berry mix" in the Etsy shop too!

New Designs for Spring

I've been playing in the studio with new designs featuring disk style flowers and silver wire. I've placed a triptych of the blue designs in the Princeton Arts Society Show this weekend as well as a warm color variation and classic beeboo vessel with linen and flower. The Princeton Arts Society is located in the Princeton Center Building, 18 Boylston Ave, Princeton, MA on the first floor.

It's a beautiful show if you're around central MA this weekend. Friday night (5/17, 6:30-9pm) there are munchies and music. The show is also open Sat (5/18, 10am-4pm) and Sunday (5/19, noon-4pm) with a poetry reading by Dan Lewis at 2:30 on Sunday. I'll be at the opening on Friday night (excellent time to visit with the artists) and will be working the show on Saturday from 2-4pm. Hope to see you there!

Studio chaos and bead release tips

Chaos in the studio prepping for a month long display at the UMass Medical School Bookstore in June. Yikes... may need to clean up before I can be fully productive or "out of chaos comes beauty"?

Also a mini update on removing stuck beads from mandrels. A friend on facebook had asked how to get the stuck beads off mandrels. My solution is to soak the beads in cold water, try to pull, add ice cubes to water and soak, try to pull, put in freezer overnight, soak in morning, try to pull, use bench vice for extra tension rather than pliers, try to pull. If they still don't come off they make beautiful plant stakes!

My new theory is to double dip your mandrels if making beads with a large footprint. I don't have issues with small beads or hollow beads as the footprint of glass touching bead release isn't too large. If making large solid beads or super long beads dip the mandrel once, let dry, and dip again. It'll increase your bead hole size significantly so if looking for a small or specific sized bead hole go down one mandrel size before double (or triple) dipping!