It's June, So No Time To Blog!

Scott's first fused glass plate for this weekend's regional skating competition was such a hit that he made a second. The first was donated to the Northwest Skating Foundation for raffle. This one is being donated to our skate club for a silent auction that will help raise money to send our skaters to Nationals this summer in Albuquerque.

Every year I'm just amazed at how many events, activities and other commitments pile up toward the end of the school year. Even things that have nothing to do with school or education seem to all come to a head from May through mid June.

Hardly leaves time to make stuff, much less blog about making stuff!!

Actually, the making stuff also piles up because somehow, I don't get a good teacher gift idea until May or so. Actually I collect ideas throughout the year, but somehow never get around to getting started on them and then, sometime in May, I think of something new and urgent to try to crank out.

This year, of course, we're excited about glass, and the kiln has been firing at least one batch per day for the past couple weeks.

Ellie's main teacher, Ms. Davis, has been wonderful this year. We had some school drama in the fall and ended up leaving a private school for our neighborhood public school, and it has turned out to be a wonderful experience for both Ellie and her parents. (And hey, it must have all been kismet because without freeing up that money we were spending on tuition, I don't think we'd have been able to invest in a kiln and creating our home glass studio!)

We plan to give Ms. Davis one of the "warm squares" projects that Scott initiated and Ellie helped create.



Each of the trio is unique. Two have randomly placed tiles and one has patterns. The top two were slumped in the same mold, but due to different firing schedules, came out with different curves. The bottom one was fired in a different mold and didn't come out quite the way we intended. But it's all good and fun!

And Ellie chose the glass and colors for this channel plate that I made, which she wants to give to her art teacher:

Aventurine Blue glass with red stringer in an abstract pattern. I love the way the aventurine glasses sparkle like they have glitter in them, and Ellie loves them too. :)

Assorted other teachers will get one of these ring dishes, 3.5-inch squares that I slumped in one of three different molds we have.

Pretty, aren't they?