At last! More Short Fuses pendants to show. I made these awhile ago, but am now just getting to show them. I'm so in love with the butterflies. I keep telling myself I should move on to different things, but I seem to always come back to them. I do like the new flowers I'm doing. Those are a lot of fun.
While dog sitting last weekend, I spent a lot of time working on glass. I co-own a kiln that resides at my friend's house. It's a great situation because my husband is afraid of fire. In the course of 3 days, I ran the kiln 3 times. Definitely a new record for me. The first kiln load was filled with an experiment I'm trying to perfect. Since I'm still getting the kinks worked out, I'm not going to show any pictures quite yet. These pictures are the best of the second kiln load. The third batch was still cooling when I finished dog sitting. I'm hoping to get those soon.
These flowers are a new style for me. I absolutely love them! I made a bunch more in the third kiln batch since these turned out so lovely. I like always having one flower shorter than the others.
The pendant on the right has a more modern flower look. I like this, but I think it might look better with different colors.
I'm also super in love with the sideways butterfly. I think it's so pretty. The two top pieces have the butterfly in lilac whereas the two bottom pieces have the butterfly in pink. The bottom right is very subtle and looks great in person, but it was hard to photograph.
Iridescent glass gives these white butterflies an interesting crinkle look. I think I like the look of the iridescent glass with a darker butterfly on it.
I love the idea of the butterfly 'floating' on top of the glass. You can actually see that the butterfly is casting a shadow on the glass beneath it. Lovely! I wish my picture did the darker pendants better justice.
Here is a good example of different sizes. The pendant on the left is 1.25" square. The middle piece is 1" square. The pendant on the left is 1" x .75". Sometimes you want a bold statement and other days you want something a bit daintier.
A few Bullseye pendants to help round out this lot. I can't wait to see and post pictures of the third kiln load. It's like waiting for Christmas to arrive.
*Looking at my stats (I'm addicted to this!), this is my 500th blog entry! Yay, me!
Finally our Etsy store has been updated! If you look over to the right hand side of my blog, you will see some new pendants. I put up 24 pendants for sale. The hardest thing about updating our site was getting pictures taken.
For Christmas, my husband bought me this portable studio setup. Sunday was the first time that I used it. It was super easy to set up. I will definitely need practice to get better shots, but on a whole I really loved the set up. My camera is also acting a bit crazy, but that will be fixed shortly...
Getting good light was my biggest obstacle. Luckily, we had a very sunny day which is rare this time a year in Portland. Before Sunday I don't think I had seen the sun in weeks. Here you can see my shadow. I had to lean way to the side to keep my shadow out of my shot.
Even with a bit of my finger in the shot and a lot of cropping, they didn't turn out all that bad. Next time will be even better!
Yesterday was the Rebel Rabbit Craft Fair. I, in my quest not to forget anything, forgot my camera. So I don't have pictures of our table which I'm bummed about. But the sale was wonderful. We had a great day and sold more pendants than at past sales. I also did more Christmas shopping. There was a great variety of vendors and everyone was super nice. We look forward to participating in Rebel Rabbit in the future.
My day job is working at medical school. The bookstore manager at my school was nice enough to let me set up a display to sell my wares. I go visit my jewelry often making sure that everything looks just right. I always count the number of pendants and do a mental happy dance when the number is smaller than before. I'm so thrilled to be actually selling my jewelry. The dream is becoming a reality.
*I bought the display at Value Village for three dollars. I've had really good luck finding displays at thrift stores. It really helps keep expenses down.
Here are two Short Fuses pendants that are off to new homes.
At long last there are some new Short Fuses pendants in the world. I have a few more that I will probably post pictures of later, but I just wanted to get these up and out into the world. You might be able to tell that I'm in a flower phase. I really like this design with the curl in the stem.
This batch got shipped off to The Funky Door Cafe, the best place for great coffee and beautiful pendants. If you are in the neighborhood, stop in for a cup of Joe and check these babies out.
While house sitting last week, I got to hang out a lot in our newly revamped glass studio. Yes, it's still in my friend's basement, but it got quite the make over. Unbeknown to me, my friends painted the walls and floor, got a new beautiful table to cut glass on, got better lighting and re-organized the space to make it much easier to find stuff. I was blown away by the changes. This new space is just wonderful. It was great to leisurely fill the kiln over the week I was there. You can see our baby kiln just off to the right. Yep, when we get bored we can always play ping pong.
Here is the kiln three fourths full. I managed to pack the sucker full before firing it. Everything turned out really great. I should have pictures of finished work soon.
I'm so excited to showcase this week's WAW Artist. Doug Randall's glass work is just amazing. He makes vessels that just boggle the mind. These aren't small items. They are big heavy complicated creations. On top of that, he's a heck of a nice guy. He generously gave my kiln partner and I lots and lots of scrap glass that is just perfect for our jewelry endeavors. At least once during each jewelry session we give thanks to Doug for his altruistic gift.
Doug was featured last week on Oregon Art Beat. You can see the video of that show here. In the piece you get a glimpse of his studio. We got to tour his incredible space. It was hard not to drool over all of his equipment.
He is definitely a huge inspiration to us. We are deeply grateful for his kindness.
I've been so busy working on Short Fuses, which has been great! After the craft fair on Saturday, Diana and I packed up 20 items to give to my mom. My mom will be in a Polk County craft fair soon and graciously offered to include some of our jewelry. I've also put up a display with pendants in bookstore at the school where I work. I'm super excited about that. Diana will put some jewelry in her cafe soon too. We are starting to diversify and get ourselves and our jewelry out into the world. It's a bit scary, but it's all good. Next on my to do list is to update and add more jewelry to our Etsy store. Hopefully that will get done tonight. There are just not enough hours in the day...
Above is the display of earrings I had for our craft show on Saturday. I got the basket at Goodwill. The earrings hang on there perfectly without touching the bar underneath. I love Goodwill.
F**K - A Documentary (****)
Control (****)
Under the Greenwood Tree (***)
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (*****)
