I Blew It!

My First Attempts..., originally uploaded by CalyxAnn.

My very first solo attempts at making a blown glass pumpkin. A super mini-sized pumpkin, whose introduction to the world was doomed from the beginning...
It cracked as I added the too-hot stem, which was also too much glass for the tiny little pumpkin. So, after my feeble attempt at pumpkin-making (a good exercise in heat management and the dynamics of the whole process), we moved on to flower pulling. Again, a feeble attempt. My "flowers" were another great exercise in heat management. I need to be a bit quicker in pulling and turning the petals to give the flower some depth. Basically, I've got the idea and I just need to perfect the technique.


On a very positive note, we found the crucial point in the process where my pumpkin stems were falling apart. Saint Helena glass artist, Ed Breed is blowing the pumpkins while I prep the stem (gather glass, add color, heat and go into the mold) to finish them off. Unfortunately, the last few days have been Ed working overtime, both blowing the pumpkin and then finishing the stem, because I couldn't get my heat just right. So, yesterday we walked through the process and pinpointed the glitch. Hopefully, from this point forward, the stems will now be finished by me, perfectly!

Fingerpainting...

In researching finger painting and techniques in a prelude to my K-2 afterschool art class, I came upon some rather interesting sites that shed a whole new light upon the finger painting process.

At "Another Look at Finger Painting," finger painter Mary Ann Brandt gives a fresh perspective on the ancient art of finger painting (prehistoric cave paintings and Chinese calligraphic finger paintings on rice paper) and let's you know how you can do it On Your Own.



Artist Allen Montague painting a Monet-style waterlily scene, with fingers.

In the background, a compelling series of videos at chrismartenson.com, makes me want to learn to make my own natural paints. This site is a start, by using what I've got in the kitchen, there are recipes for making a couple of different mediums: finger paints, play dough, silly putty and ice cream. But what I'd really like to use are natural, local pigments...perhaps grape skins? clay?

Further reading about finger painting with Ruth Faison Shaw, who developed institutional therapeutic finger painting, after teaching the art of painting to children using finger paints.

Below, BackPorchArt William Boyer has created a series of finger paintings viewable at WebShots.


From my reading, it seems that most finger painted art starts with a blank canvas (obviously), and paint is poured directly onto the canvas. The paint is then moved around with fingers. There is another method, demonstrated by wonderboy, below:



I had not even conceived of the pointillist technique in regards to finger painting, but it seems rather obvious in retrospect.

More links...
Cave Painting - making your own paint from dirt and shortening
Tons of Homemade Paint Recipes - shaving cream, soap flakes, food coloring, oh my!
More and More and More Paint Recipes - yowsah! Paint, dye, and Ink Recipes.
Elementary Lesson Plan Combining Finger Painted Paper and Collage
Screen Printing with Finger Paints
Glues, Brews and Goos - Google Book Search is amazing! This book looks fabulous!
Liquid Starch Recipe - from Field Trips in Fiber, a quilter's blog:)
From Painting: It's the Process, Not the Product! by By MaryAnn F. Kohl, Katheryn Davis : 1/4 cup (60mL) liquid starch and 1 T (15mL) tempera paint and stir.
A bit unrelated, Keith Haring Art Curriculum projects
Of course, I can't forget a favorite of mine, Ivan Chan:)

Mini Mosaic Presentation...

It's the end of my four week session with the Ms. Brown's first grade class. We've finished our mosaic tiles and our "Making Learning Visible" books that accompany the project. Here's my presentation using Google docs (which I do like a lot!) that helps to fill in even more visual content standards for the project.

What happened?!? Stressed Out!

Voila!! I had recently set my Tree of Life fused glass plate aside, adding it to the pile that I had yet to photograph. I really love the aventurine green with the iridescent amber and swirly opal green/white glass. The colors are beautiful, reminiscent of summer, and make me want to do an entire series of winter, spring, summer and fall tree plates.

However....

when my wonderful fiance was tidying the house (and organizing my piles, he really is incredibly sweet), he noticed this crack in the plate. Now, I don't know if it's the weather, or if it's just that time in my life when I get to learn about stress and glass, but instead of throwing the blame on him (He must've dropped something on it, right?), I somehow knew that I had another stress case!
But, how exactly would I know? It surely doesn't look like a case of incompatible glass. Look at that S-curve that doesn't follow any seams. It runs right through the middle of at least three pieces of glass (which are all different colors). Reference this link for a wonderfully, hideous picture of incompatible glass.
Aha! My first chance to use the polarizing lenses that have been sitting in the studio, just waiting to confirm my suspicions... Whoa, Nelly!! Just look at that stress!!! I've been told that after a stress break, you can no longer see the stress halo when the piece is placed between the polarized lenses. Well, if that's true, then just imagine the halo that was apparent before this fracture.
So, what to do now? I'm going to put my poor little tree back in the kiln. Yup, throwing her back in. I'm gonna slowly go up to 1250 F and bring down the edges, then go up to 1480 F again to fuse the crack back together. But, this time, I'm slowing down the annealing schedule and holding for a bit longer, because that, I think was the culprit. I used the smaller kiln (Paragon Fusion7), and did not hold my poor plate at 1050 F for long enough.
Hopefully, that will solve my problem, 'cuz I'm getting tired of seeing breaks:(

Welcome Nipper!

On Wednesday, I met with Cher Church of TalentedLady.etsy.com at Maya in Sonoma for the monumental transfer of Nipper Kilnwash, the CGGE (Creative Glass Guild of Etsy) Traveling Mascot. Nipper is part of the Travel Kitty Project, and as a team mascot, he is building relationships within the group. Honestly, I think this is the most exciting thing I've done with the CGGE!
It was really a pleasure meeting Cher, and we shared our life stories in just under two hours:)
And now, Nipper is just in time to catch the excitement of the Annual Summer Sale at Mitcavish Studios. I'll get to show him around to all my local glass pals and maybe we'll get out to do some winetasting, as well!

Kate Wolf Festival - Laytonville, CA

I had a fabulous mini-vacation this past week and a half, and it feels like I was gone for a month!
My dad's visiting my fiance and I in his RV, so we took a trip up north to Mendocino County to the Kate Wolf Folk Music Festival. My uncle was even able to make the trip out, and we picked him up in Santa Rosa on the way!
A few of my faves:






It was very smoky for the first few days, but thanks to some hard working volunteer firemen and cooperative coastal fog, Sunday was sunny and clear. I had tons of fun hanging out with family and friends, dancin' and hula-in' the days away!

My 20 minutes of Morning Yoga

Recently, I've motivated myself to routinely practicing yoga in the morning, rationalizing that if I have three hours to play Solitaire (yes, I got a bit hooked one day), then I certainly have 20 minutes to squeeze in some yoga. Imagine if I had filled the entire three hours with yoga! (I guess that will be my next goal!)
So, with that in mind, I present to you my morning workout with Jason Crandell...

"Maya Star" Fused Glass Quilt Plate

"Maya Star" Fused Glass Quilt Plate, originally uploaded by CalyxAnn.

My newest "quilted" fused glass plate was specially made for the upcoming 2008 Lincoln Quilters' Guild, "A Quilter's Compass -- Turning freely on a Pivot" show auction.
I was especially pleased at the secondary pattern that showed up as a star in the middle!

Fused Glass Bracelets...

Yea!!! I had been waiting for this class to come to me for nearly a year, and finally, in March, Jayne Persico came to Michele's studio to teach her fused glass cuff bracelet class!
Above is the red, orange and yellow bracelet I whipped out in the class.
Below are the bracelets I have made since. It's such an exciting and invigorating experience to actually open the kiln at 1300 degrees Fahrenheit to work with the glass.

Jayne's developed a perfect way to measure your wrist so that the bracelets are perfectly fit to your arm. The most technical part of the process is getting the measurements right, so that the bracelet fits snugly enough so it doesn't go flying off your wrist.
I've got a few more in the works, I just need to set aside a few hours to babysit the kiln:)

"Rocky Road" Dip Dishes

I am officially unveiling my newest series of dishes, the "Rocky Road" dishes.
Made up of several cut pieces of glass in browns, reds, and vanilla. This series is very time consuming to produce, but I absolutely LOVE the results!

"Meet the Baby" Shower

Yea! I finally got to meet my baby niece, Adi! We had a fabulous open house, "Meet the Baby" shower for her, where the most popular game was, "Pass the Baby!"

She's so cute, I can't stand it!!

And, of course, we had a great spread to munch on for the virgin voyage of dad's plates:)

CGGE & EtsyBead Creative Minds for Charity!

DSCI1877, originally uploaded by thumbelinacreations.

"The Creative Glass Guild of Etsy (CGGE) and the etsyBEAD Street Team have joined forces for a creative collaboration challenge. CGGE members will create gorgeous glass cabs, beads, and pendants for etsyBEAD members to turn into beautiful pieces of finished jewelry. These pieces will then be donated to the Helping Others Street Team (HOST) in order to raise money for those fellow Etsyians in need."

And here is the entry that Jonquil of Thumbelina Creations and I will be submitting. She did such a gorgeous job of tying the piece together! I am in love with the new Key to My Heart Necklace!

Details: The short chain is 16 in. while longer chain is 18 in. The pink marbleized tumbled glass pendant with lead-free pewter key charm is the focal point of the longer chain. The center of the shorter chain carries an antique silver button and light pink glass teardrop. Various other glass beads decorate the chains, as well.
This necklace is very light and comfortable to wear. It doesn't shift around on the neck. And all the glass beads sparkle when they catch the light.

All proceeds will go to HOST...

"What is HOST?" you ask.

From their blog:
"HOST stands for Helping Others Street Team. We are a group of Etsy sellers and buyers who want to help other Etsy buyers and sellers through difficulties weather [sic] those difficulties be financial, emotional or otherwise. We will try to keep an updated list so that you can see who currently needs help. If you see someone you would like to help, please feel free to do so. The help can take many forms; praying, snagging a treasury with some of the people here featured, helping promote threads to help the listed people, buying from their stores, sending needed items to them, helping with cash donations. Sometimes someone simply needs someone to talk to during difficult times. If you are able to help someone on this list, please let one of the members know. If you would like to remain anonymous, rest assured, we will keep you anonymous, but by letting one of us know, we can keep the list accurate as to who still needs help."

Michael Stutz - "Peplos Kore"

"Peplos Kore" by Michael Stutz, on display at San Francisco Airport

Made from strips of shredded cardboard woven over a plywood armature and sealed with light resistant UV polymers, the detail in this sculpture is incredible. I saw this while waiting to board my flight to Nebraska. Definitely click on the picture and explore Stutz's site to find the full image. It's truly amazing!

Matt Costa - "Mr. Pitiful"

I found this new(-to-me) artist while flying home from Vegas aboard Virgin Air. Posh! I explored all of the videos on my personal entertainment system, and played a few anagram games as well:)

Viva Las Vegas!!

So, I just got back from Las Vegas, where I went for the annual Glass Expo at the South Point Casino. Not only did I see a lot of innovative materials, but I gathered a bunch of new ideas to play around with.

Chihuly's Glass Flowers in the lobby of the Bellagio

Among the coolest things I saw: No Days Glaze adhesives for stained glass, mosaics and fusing; Artistic Lighting Solutions, an artistic lighting option that I'm anxious to explore; and Fusing Farm glazes for turning float glass into artistic fused glass plates.

Michele, Sharon and me on Fremont Street.

And then , there was the night life!
Honestly, we didn't party so much as we walked around to see the sights.
We checked out a couple of souvenir shops and played some slots.

I won $6.00!! High Roller!!

Michele and I went out on the town a couple of nights in a row. Here I am outside of Treasure Island. The show was canceled due to high winds, so we entertained ourselves:)


Oh yeah, baby! Michele was the true high roller in Vegas.
But, now it's back to normal life...almost.
I'm visiting my new niece in Nebraska, and then I'll get back to glass:)
Such the jet setter!

Sharing Your Photos...and my new niece!

My new niece, Adi, sketched out with Adobe Photoshop Express.
There's a super cool and cheap, er...thrifty, way to upload, edit and share your photos!! Adobe, the creator of Photoshop, has put into beta a new photo editing tool that uses Flash. Simply sign up for an account, upload photos, and edit away! The tools aren't as exact, or as complicated as Photoshop, but the results are amazingly pleasing, for such a simple idea. Plus, you can play around with your photos, creating some more bizarre images, as well...
It also lets you link and upload directly to selected outside sites, such as Facebook, Picasa, and Photobucket. You get 2 GB of free space to show off your photos in galleries you create. (I've embedded these two photos into my blog post without putting them in my public gallery, for those concerned about privacy issues.)

Oh, Go Felt A Snake!!

I've been trying to find some really cool felted hair thingies, but can't quite find what I'm looking for...What to do? Well, make them myself, I'm sure! So, I've been researching the topic of felting to learn more about it and have found the coolest site with lots of great tutorials.
I thought I'd share it: Woolcrafting... and the portion that I'm most intrigued with, Learning to Make Felted Snakes. It's this technique that I will have to master in order to make my envisioned hair-thingies:)
If I ever get around to actually making them, I will show them off!

Crochet Some Hearts...

Grandma taught me to crochet when I was young, and I caught on but didn't have the attention span to finish anything (just like when mom tried to teach me to quilt - I still have the almost finished piece mounted in a wooden frame). I have been thinking that I'd like to learn to knit and re-learn to crochet with wool, so I can experiment with felting.
I ran across these directions. Maybe I'll find that old needle lying around somewhere:)

Kaki King - Langerado, 2005

So, driving home from work tonight, listening to KFOG on the radio, I hear this beautiful song being played. The guitarist is Kaki King, whom I've never heard of before. I make a mental note tha tI must check this guitarist out!
Of course, I head to YouTube, because I want to share...and I don't find the song the I was listening to ("Sad Americans"), but I see some amazing footage of this girl playing guitar in a very unusual style! WOW!

John Mayer - Message in a Bottle

Enjoy!