Still winter

Yep, it's still winter.  However, we are having some above normal temperatures here in the south and it's been in the high 60's.  The basement is actually is the 60's also.  I'm heading down to the torch tomorrow, I just hope I haven't forgotten anything, hopefully it's just like riding a bike, but you know I think that's a misnomer also.  We shall see.   I've been selling my beads on eBay lately and doing fairly well.  I think eBay just has a much larger volume of people that frequent it as compared to Etsy.  Etsy is a great place to find anything handmade, it just isn't as well known and the search capabilities are limited to the short list of tags we are allowed to use as compared to eBay.  I'm still learning all there is to learn about eBay, as a matter of fact one of my new customers had to walk me through creating an invoice for multiple purchases.    I've been considering buying a DVD on all there is to know about eBay.  You know the one, the guy that sells all kinds of computer how-to DVDs and offers the first one for only the price of the shipping, I think his tag line is "Buy my product".  I'm just afraid that if I call to order it they will talk me into something else.  I wonder if he has a website.  I guess next time I see the commercial I'll actually pay attention...LOL    Speaking of commercials have you noticed lately that the commercials are about 100 decibels louder than the show you were watching?  Tonight I headed to the kitchen to get something while a commercial was on and it was so loud that when I came back into the room poor hubby had his hand over his ears.  It never occurred to him to just reach over, grab the remote, and turn the stupid thing down.  Some channels are worse than others, Spike has a really bad habit of absolutely screaming at you when it thinks you have walked into the other room during a commercial.  Thank goodness for DVR's, fast forward through those puppies, I'll show them.    Well, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and are able to spend it with friends and family. Talk to you all soon....................... tootles, glass lover

Winter journey

I hate the winter, and the holidays for that matter.  And now, if the cold weather isn’t bad enough I have a new reason to hate the winter months…..I can’t torch.  My setup is in the basement and I have to open the windows to torch.  Way too cold down there to do that.  My friend has a big heater blower, you know, the kind they use in car repair shops, anyway he is going to loan it to me to see if that will help.  My only problem now is finding enough power.  We haven’t finished our basement and I am using almost all of the available plugs now so I’m not sure I can even run the thing.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  It’s either this or I find some electric socks and a hot water bottle to sit on.  One would think that the torch would keep you warm but the radiant heat just isn’t that warm as most of it goes up. 

As for the other reasons I hate the winter, the obvious the cold but the holidays always make me blue.  Family is all spread out, they all want you to be where they are and you can’t, memories of wonderful childhood Christmas’ don’t help.  You can’t go back can you.  Usually when January 1^st gets here it’s spring for me.  There is still plenty of cold weather to deal with, even down here in the south, but for me it’s all sunny and bright and I’m ready to get on with it. 

Here’s hoping you all have a great Thanksgiving and a super holiday.  I’ll post beads if I’m able to torch.  If you don’t see the beads you will know that it was a no go……….

Blogger Sucks!

This thing rarely works like it should. I can't add any more things to my blog, haven't been able to for a long time. Guess I'll just add my Facebook link in here and see if it works.

Journey through the tornado

For all the different lampwork beads I do I have found one that I love and am driven by. It's a simple technique that I found a tutorial for some time ago online. It's called the tornado bead. I have put my little twist on them and each time that I torch I have to do at least two of them. No matter what else I do I have to do a few of them. At some point I have to get good at something and it might as well be these. Here are some examples of my take on the tornado bead......yes, these are all in the same color way. I do tend to like the blues\greens\purples. I have made six that were in the warm tones and only one of them hasn't cracked on me. Not sure if it's a compatability issue or I'm mashing them too flat. I'll keep trying. Just thought I would share. I'm starting to make beads to match them, making necklaces out of them and selling them on Etsy, if your interested, you can click on the Etsy Mini link at the left.

The journey back

I'm back, not such a journey. The second drive as bad, when they took it out the laptop booted right up. No data loss, they just had to replace the second drive and transfer all the photos, my business photos. I felt like my life was on hold for that week. I lost my momentum waiting for it to be fixed and now I'm finding it hard to get back to the pace I was keeping.
I really do want to back all the important stuff up and them reinstall the whole thing. It does need it. But, I think I'll wait for a cold winter weekend when I can't go down to the basement to torch. I don't want to waste a nice warm fall day sitting in here fighting with all of that. I know it will eat up a whole weekend messing with it. So, for now I pray that it behaves itself and I can just go on like nothing happened.
I did torch yesterday, those beads are in soaking now. When I get the holes cleaned out I'll take a few photos and share. For now, I'm just happy to have my laptop back.

Journey to now where

Well, it finally happened to me! My laptop quit on me and I lost everything and I mean everything. All of my business files. All the photos I use to post things to Etsy and Boundless Gallery. The file that keeps track of all of my beads, jewelry and sales. All my links, family photos and on and on and on. I was in denial about it for about a week and finally took it in to see if they could at least retrieve the files on it yesterday. In the end it will depend on how much they want to do that and if they even an. I have the original disks so if all else fails I will just reinstall it and it will be just like the day I bought it. If it weren't for the loss of the files I wouldn't feel so bad about just starting over. Computers get so full of junk and start getting slower and slower so it would be a good time to just start over, however, I really do need some of those files.

Just in case your interest, or if it ever happens to you, here is what happened.....My laptop has two drives the second of which I never really used. The main drive where all the programs are was getting full so I moved the whole "my pictures" folder over to the other drive. Within a week I started getting messages that there were problems with that drive and that I needed to do a "chkdsk" So, I scheduled it to do the chkdsk, you can do it on the fly as it needs to lock down some of the files, so you tell it to do it the next time the computer is rebooted. I got done with what I was doing and rebooted the laptop. That was it, when it got to the place where it was to do the chkdsk it errored out, turned itself off and started over, and over and over and over. Needless to say I tried everything but it didn't work. That was a week ago. I was so sick about it that I didn't do anything for a week. So, here we are, waiting to hear whether the data is salvageable or not. I have my fingers crossed that they can get the files off of there and it won't be too expensive to do that.

I'm using hubby's laptop for now, I have recreated our bill paying file and discovered that only a week before I had emailed my main business file to work to touch up so I had a slightly old copy of it that I could use. Soooooooo all is not a total loss. I do have email and Facebook (which is keeping me amused for now).

Until I'm back up and running. I offer you this bit of advice....it's not really "if" it will happen to you too but "when". Back up those files. NOW!

Journey in search of gas

It's the craziest thing here in the Atlanta metro area, we can't get gas.
There is no real reason for it except that we are such a large metro area
and once there was a threat of running out everyone panicked and now they
can't keep up with keeping the stations supplied with gas. I had to get
hubby up at 5am today to go find some gas so I could go to work next week.
I actually worked from home yesterday because we couldn't find any gas. I
just lucky that I could do that.

Luckily I'm one of those people that is more than happy to stay home on the
weekends and play instead of heading to the mall or just wandering around.

We have been living out of ice chests for two weeks because a small part in
our frig went bad. If I learned anything from this it's to put a
thermometer in our frig to keep a close eye on the temp. It doesn't take
much of a temp. change for things to start going bad. Both of the dogs and
I got food poisoning before we realized that the frig wasn't cooling enough.
And the vet bill was more than what it cost to fix the frig! It was
finally fixed yesterday so hubby is at the store now buying food to restock
the empty frig. Not the greatest way to get your frig cleaned for sure but
it's clean and empty now.

As for the beads, the first two were inspired by things I saw while surfing
the web. The rainbow bead is one that was inspired by a glass artist that
paints on layers of clear window glass and stacks theme and slightly slumps
them. Her name is Carol Cohen, you can see her wonderful stuff here
http://www.carolcohen.com/pages/coglass1.html
 
Ok, so the second one, I don't even remember what I wanted that to be, I
think ghosts flying around the outside.....hmmmmmm maybe not. The third one
was just another test bead trying out some new fire red shards I got. I
like them. They are interesting in that they are white shards that strike
to red in the flame. Cool stuff.

Ok, off to torch today. I need to make more sets for e-bay.

tootles,
Jan

Inspiration along the Journey

Good morning, I haven’t been by in awhile.  I do forget.  I was introduced to Facebook last Monday and have had my head stuck in there ever since.  It is nothing like MySpace in that it has all of these little interactive games that you check up on through out the day and click on, and you depend on strangers to help to get along in these games thus the need to network.  Anyway, no excuse for not checking in, just why and where I’ve been and why there are no new photos to share.

I was doing my daily surfing and ran across some amazing things on the internet.  Its funny how looking at other media can give you ideas and inspiration when you think that you don’t have a creative bone in your body, sometimes I amaze myself.  I had ideas for two different beads that I can’t wait to get home and try.  Where and how I got the ideas are so obscure that I won’t tell you what I was looking at for fear that you will think my mind has gone…J  Check back here in a few days for a glimpse of my feeble attempts at creating something from scratch based on pure creativity.  Even the thought scares me but here’s hoping it works.  Most of the time my ideas are just too complex for molten glass but I try them anyway.  Hmmmmm, maybe I’ll try them in Polymer Clay if the glass doesn’t work, just a tad bit list volatile substances to say the least.  Let’s see…..nope it won’t work, my ideas deal with clear glass and reflections therein and I just can’t get those looks in PC, hence the reason I went over to the dark side to being with.  I have a whole room full of polymer clay and tools that are just sitting there and have been since December.  That is just truly shameful.  Boy, when I die someone is going to have a mess on their hands.  The sad thing is that no one in my family will appreciate the stuff and it will probably end up in a yard sale or second hand store.  All I can say is that someone will find a gold mine in with what’s in my studio. 

Have you ever thought about that?  Where is all that stuff going to go if you were to be gone tomorrow?  Have you made arrangements for the stuff? A list of who gets what?  I have hundreds of craft books, lets see, there is beading, ribbon embroidery, needle work, quilting, fiber arts, altered books, polymer clay, lampwork, fusing…I’m sure I’ve left some out and that’s just the books.  Then there are hundreds of yards of fabric, much of it hand dyed, the beads, thread, oh my gosh do I have thread.  Ok, I need to stop.  It’s making me sick to my stomach.  I need to seriously gather the stuff up and start selling it on eBay now!.  Wow, how did this become about all my stuff.  It was suppose to be about inspiration.  Oh well, we do get sidetracked by the stuff in life don’t we. 

Have a great day.  Enjoy the journey. 

My first complete set

I forced myself to do a full set of beads on Saturday.  Boy did I hate that.  Took me almost the whole torching session.  I have decided that I'm just not a set kind of bead maker.  I'm more of an organic bead maker.  A little of this and a little of that, if it doesn't work out I make a tornado bead out of it.  Here is the set.   AND a tornado bead that I ended the session with.  I have to make at least one of these every session.  I love making the necklaces out of them.  I have them up on my "Janzart" glass site and Etsy.     

Revisiting Boro

I had to try the boro glass just one more time.  This little tree was the result.  The blue ball in the tree was originally something else that went south so I tried to make a marble.  Didn't turn out too bad actually.  But back to the tree, I love the luster of the boro glass, it has so much more of a shimmer.  The blue ball is actually there to even out the balance and allow the tree to stand, is that sad or what.  I could pretend like it was there for a reason but that would be fibbing.  I'll come up with a really deep name for the tree and ball, something that makes it sound like they were meant to go together.  Help me name it would you?

A new place to sell

I found a wonderful new gallery website to sell my glass beads and jewelry.
Its called Boundless Gallery, see the link in the banner at the bottom right
of my blog. They even provide a fully functioning website, all you have to
do is choose the style you like. My website is
www.janzart.boundlessgallery.com check it out.

The jewelry in my previous blog post is for sale at boundless gallery. I'm
real excited about this place, they have a really easy to use gallery style
format and three programs to choose from. Let me know what you think of it.

thanks
      
Jan

Journey down the Jewelry trail......AGAIN!

I'm having a terrible time with the camera.  I do better with the beads just laying on a white background but had to photograph these things on the manaquin and that's where the problems started I guess.  Some of them came out yellow even thought I used the "tungsten" filter.  Anyway, the first one is already up on Etsy, hoping someone will absolutely love it.   Here is the really pretty one, the wavy tubes are silver.  There is a sprinkling of Dichroic glass floating suspended in the bead.  The turquoise things between the tubes are wire thingies.    See the color difference between these two.  I have no idea why that happened.  Anyway, the second one has silver spacer beads between the tube beads.  I like the tornado bead, its so easy to make and when I screw something up all I have to do is wrap it in a clear stringer and smash it and I get the tornado bead.   These next two are just some other ones I did.  The last one was suppose to have Psyce reactive glass on it but turned baby poop brown and didn't do anything so I swiped some other reactive blue stuff on it and it shined right up.  You get the idea.......LOL     tootles,   back to the torch for more fun.

Journey to the doctor

What a week, I've had a bit of a health issue lately.  My mouth was burning so bad and my tongue in particular that I could hardly eat.  My lips, inside and out felt swollen and the corners of my mouth were splitting out.  Weirdest thing.  I finally couldn't take it any more so I went to the doctor.  Her immediate response was that it was probably a vitamin deficiency.  I couldn't imagine that but then I don't eat very well.  They took blood test and low and behold my B12 was almost nonexistent.    So then I started doing some research to see just what B12 was and what it was needed for.  In the meantime I started taking vitamins.  However, what I learned was that the vitamins aren't going to do any good.  I take Prilosec for acid reflux and apparently that's what has caused me to get this way.  B12 needs hydrocloric acid to break down so it can be absorbed and Prilosec slows or reduces the production of the acid AND as we get older we produce less.  Who knew there was so much magic chemestry involved.  So, I stop the Prilosec and hope for the best.  In the meantime the doctor gave me this wonderful mouthwash that they call "magic mouthwash" (I kid you not)  Its peach colored, syrupy sweet and numbs the mouth completely from the burning and pain.  What a miracle.  Apparently it has steroids in it and really is helping with the swelling and all.    Its been so hot here I haven't dared go down to the torch in the hot basement.  I miss it but it really just isn't the place to be in the heat.  I took the time to make labels for all of my glass rods.  Somewhere around the third trip upstairs hubby says "are those all different colors of glass"....ahhhha ammmm yes, they are.  Opps, guess he haddn't noticed them coming into the house a little at a time.  My bad.  Kind of like all of the fabric, and threads, and beads and polymer clay and on and on.  And I wonder why I'm still working a day job.  Sheesh!

Journey in the Heat

Man, it has been so hot here in the south lately.  I know that historically August is the hottest but dang.  Too hot to go down and even torch.  Yesterday I tried going down early in the morning but somewhere around 11 it was just too hot to go on.  I don't think I'll even go down today.  It's bad enough being in a house that has an air conditioner that is too small for it, we have a big room air conditioner in here and it can't even keep up.  Yesterday was horrible.  Anyway, time to organize the studio anyway.   I've been playing with a few new things lately.  A lampwork technique called the "tornado bead".  I love them.  There are so many different variations you can get.  If you get a chance pop on over to my Etsy shop and check them out.  Last night I sat in here and perused YouTube for some new videos.  I found one on how to make  wire rings, I think this will be perfect for all of my orphan beads.  I can make rings out of them.  Here are a few of the ones I made.  I tried using a button for one of them and actually like the look of it, not all buttons are meant for this technique but I have a ton of them so some of them will work.   Hope you are all keeping cool one way or another.  From the looks of it the whole country is going bake today.

Three Years of Blogging

I was just looking back my blog archive and was shocked to see that I have been blogging three years now.  When I first started I couldn’t imagine that I would have much to say.  As I have gotten into it I realize that it can be a place to go and just clear your mind of clutter or things that you are thinking about.  I look back over some of the entries and photos and am amazed and where my journey has taken me.  From fiber arts, to polymer clay, to fusing glass and finally lampwork.  I still love my fabric, I do, some days yearn to get out my log cabin stuff and just make some blocks.  I have a drawer full of 1 ½” strips, every fabric that comes through my studio gets at least one strip cut off of it for the drawer.  I have been making the log cabin blocks by the strip piece method for quite some time, I have over 100 9” blocks made, eventually it will make a great king size quilt for my bed and it will have all the wonderful fabrics of my life.  I will be able to look at some of them and have fond memories of where I got it or how I got it.  I did lots of internet fat quarter swaps in the early days so I have tons of stuff that I just cut up into strips to get rid of.  It may be time to just sit down and make eight blocks for the fun it. 

Then there is the polymer clay, it took over my fiber studio and the huge cutting table so I don’t have room for anything else in there.  I had to move to the basement when I started working with glass.  I still use the studio for staging and creating jewelry but rarely just go in there and play.  As we get into the dog days of summer and the basement is too hot to torch I may just have to step back in history a bit and just sew. 

Enjoy your weekend, whatever you may be into.

Working for a living

I just hate working, but it pays for the art so I just do it.  I can sit here all day and day dream about what I want to do when I get home.  What I want to make when I sit down at the torch.  I have a notebook that I keep with me at work and keep notes about what I want to do, things that I’ve seen online that I want to try and just generally ideas that come to me.  Do I use the notebook when I get down there…..NO!  I never do.  I usually have one or two things that I want to try and never get to anything else.  The time just flies by when I’m sitting at the torch.  Before I know it, four hours has passed and I need to stop. 

I have all of these great ideas during the day at work and then when I get home, get the girls walked and fed I’m too tired to go down there.  I guess I should go down anyway, at least one or two days during the week.  I’m just afraid that I’ll get stupid when I’m tired and “Really” burn myself.  I do enough of that on the weekend when I’m not tired.  

Last Saturday I had the mandrel in my left hand with a bead on it and I turned to the right to get something out of a drawer and forgot where my left hand was.  I was trying to keep the bead warm at the same time and stuck my whole hand in the flame.  I was so made at myself for that one, I jammed my hand into a large glass of soda with ice near by to keep it from burning and kept torching.  When it started burning again I would stick it back in the ice.  Not the first stupid mistake and certainly not the last but one would think that I would learn from my mistakes.   I guess I do, I just keep making different ones. 

Well anyway, just random thought, back to work……ta ta

Journey down the bead road

I've been playing with a new technique that I read about out in Internet land someplace.  Its called the tornado bead.  Really cool effect if one can get it right.  The blue green one was made using a couple of the silver reactive glasses which was reduced and then encased.  I love the colors but I'm still having trouble with the affect.  The yellow one is getting closer.  On the other side of the yellow bead I tried to put a flower on the outside and it is really nasty.  I used another reactive glass that just didn't quite react.  Well, not yet anyway.  I think that when it comes out of the kiln it may lighten up a bit.  Until then, the flower remains hidden....LOL  Use your imagination

Nessie Ice-Effetre Cool Color

I've been trying out a new glass from Effetre lately.  I got it from Frantz Art Glass,   http://frantzartglass.Com/ as a gift.  Apparently they didn't get the full shipment of it so they couldn't sell it, decided to give it as a gift.  It is one of the new Effetre Cool Colors, I sure hope they get more, this is a great glass  It is a striking glass, which means that you have to cool it and then reintroduce it into the flame for the colors to develop.  Beautiful shades of blue in crystalline shapes.  The only problem is that I used the old Luanscha clear and it yellowed when I swiped it on.  I'm going to try a different clear today.  For now, here are yesterday's results.

A new way to blog

I'm testing a new way to blog, by email. According to blogger I can send an
email with photos by email to my blog. If this works I'm going to be
blogging a lot more.

And to test the photo, I add the girls. Aren't they cutties. Piper is a
wonderful Westie and Sadie is a tenacious Scottschund.

The lampwork journey continued

I haven't posted any new beads in quite awhile. I've been so busy with my Etsy site and promoting it that I completely forgot. I can't decide whether I want to sell my beads as supplies or go ahead and make pendants out of them and sell them as jewelry. I'm not so great with wire but I can do it. Guess I just need to practice. Like everything else practice, practice, practice.

I've been playing around with the highly silvered glass from Double Helix, I just can't get enough of it. However, I've been having trouble with with black wisps of soot in my clear glass. I think I'm trying to get too much out of my torch or the oxy concentrator to be exact. I can keep turning up the propane but at some point there just isn't enough oxygen to burn off all the propane and it causes soot in the beads. So, at some point I either have to get another oxygen concentrator or live with the lower heat ranges that I get. Guess I'm just thinking out loud here. I need a bead annealer first. I use a fiber blanket to cool my beads and then batch anneal them right now, not the optimum way but it works and I rarely loose a bead from cracking.

Anyway, here are some my latest beads, I've put the silver glass away so that I can focus on getting good shapes. Occasionally I use a bit of it but for the most part I need to really learn the basics first.

The glass journey continues

I haven't posted in awhile. The glass has me in a trance. I just got some new silvered glass and it is so beautiful when done right. I finally had an ahhaa moment yesterday with something someone else said about how they reduce their silver glass. Couldn't wait to get down there today and try it. It worked!!! I made my first reduced encased silver bead. The new Double Helix glass Triton with a little Psyche thrown in just for fun on the surface. Truly amazing. (it's the blue one) The second one is a Vetrofond Odd glass called Lichen that I added some Triton dots to. Interesting how different Triton can look depending on what glass it is placed on top of. The third photo is a drippy heart with Triton in the center. I have included two photos of it because the sides of the heart are completely metallic. The sheen is amazing, I tried to capture it, not sure that I did a very good job. You will just have to try it yourself.

Lavendar Skies - where the journey takes me

Lavendar Skies
Originally uploaded by cserpentDesigns

I was pared up with cserpentdesigns a jewelry artist on Etsy who made this wonderful bracelet with the my beads. We won the challenge and the bracelet is on sale at www.host.etsy.com (the Helping others Street Team). Go check it out along with all the other submissions from the challenge.

Etsy Bead Challenge

pink desert1
Originally uploaded by fiber-glass-polyclay-thejourney

As a member of the Creative Glass Guild of Etsy we were challenged with creating a set of beads for one of the jewelry artist on Etsy to make into a piece of jewelry. Here was my submission for the challenge.

Journey to pigdome

Almost forgot about the pigs.....I have a friend that has a thing for pigs (such a long crazy story that I won't bore you). I promised him that I would try to make a pig bead for him. The first try was abysmal. The second not so bad. I am going to do one more eventually so he will have the three little pigs. Here are the first two.

The lampwork journey

Boy, I've been so busy sitting at the torch that I haven't had time to update my blog. I could post photos forever. What to show you. I spend my freetime over on YouTube watching lampwork videos. Here are some new beads that I've made lately, they are all up at my Etsy shop for sale.

Torch trip

Lampworking has to be one of the harder things I have tried. So much to learn but the rewards or many. I love the way the different colors of glass melt into one another. I'm still using mapp gas with my HotHead and I get such short amounts of time with all of the canisters that I still have. I'm lucky to get one bead out of each canister. Today I sat them all on the floor and worked my way through them one at a time. As one canister flame would go out I would change to another one. What a pain! Here are some of the results....

New Year, New Journey

As I start the new year have only six months until I can retire. And, I had to start working five days a week. They needed me in another area to train some folks, have to impart knowledge so I can go. How do people work five days a week? I don't have time to do any playing at all except for the weekend and that makes Jan a very unhappy girl. Not to mention the fact that the two days off go by light lightening. Not enough time for all the things I want to do. This weekend was my first and I felt like I was running all day to get all the things done that I wanted to do.

I got four new beads made. Not photos yet, they are still cooling. For now, I will share a slumped plated that I made for my mom. This will be her Mother's day present. I used a really pretty celery green swirly glass with four strips of lime green dichroic glass on top. After they were all fused together with a clear cap, they went back into the kiln to slump into a mold. I love the colors. I sure hope she does.

For those of you who work five days a week, I really feel for you, up to now I have worked a 4-10 shift with Wednesdays off so that I never worked more than two days in a row. I don't know how you do it really. One foot in front of the other I suppose.