Failed Experiments Are Learning Experiences, Right?

Scott holds the glass up to show me the colors and flow pattern.

Scott had high hopes for a project that would showcase flowing glass.

First he tack fused strips of deep purple and clear glass so they became 2+-inch blocks of glass. He then created a border with stripes of clear, lavender, transparent green and aventurine glass into a 12-inch square. In the center, he set the previously tack-fused blocks standing up with plenty of open space around them, and programmed the kiln for a full fuse.

When he checked the kiln the next morning mid-cycle, he saw that there were still some empty spots so he added some extra time to the program hoping the glass would finish flowing.

But when the fuse was done, the glass still had a few open spaces where the flowing glass hadn't completely filled in.

You can see two of the places the glass is pierced near the center block.

While we admired the glass, holding it up to the light to see things better, we heard a ping. And then another one. And another one.

At first, we couldn't figure out what was making the sound. I thought maybe it was Scott's wedding ring hitting the glass. Since one happened as he set it down on the work table, Scott thought maybe there was a piece of glass underneath it and it was the sound of glass hitting glass.

And then it happened again, and Scott spotted where a crack had suddenly appeared. We went to bed knowing there were several cracks, and I planned to take more photos today and this weekend we would take the piece into Bullseye Glass to find out what the experts thought had gone wrong.

Sadly, overnight, the cracks continued to progress. This morning, it had completely broken in two.

So pretty, but so flawed.

Scott will undoubtedly be back to the drawing board for another attempt after we get some feedback from the good folks at Bullseye.

Hip To Be Square! Class At Bullseye

I just realized that I used Aventurine Blue frit on all four coasters. :) I love the aventurine glass (only available in blue and green) because it has a glitter-like sparkle to it that's a little magical. I was over the moon when I saw that printing with the powder frit still gave a bit of sparkle to the look!

I am loving playing with glass!

I took a class last week at Bullseye Glass to learn how to use silkscreens to print on glass using frit (ground glass) powder. I'd seen a Groupon for it, so I paid $50 for a $100 class to make four coasters.

The teacher, Stacy Smith, was awesome -- engaging, knowledgeable, approachable and patient. Somehow she got 16 of us through some history of silkscreening and glass as well as through our projects, all in just over 2 hours.

Artist & teacher Stacy Smith shows some examples of powder printing as well as other types of glass work that Bullseye offers classes in.

Stacy had created screens for the students to use that somewhat randomly had six different patterns on them. (I got lucky and found a seat with a screen that had patterns I really liked. Not everyone was happy with what they had.) You just positioned the screen and the tile so you got the one you wanted where you wanted it.

The process was pretty easy since the screens were premade. I was excited enough about it that I think I'd like to take Stacy's four-day class, where you learn how to design and create your own screens as well as make projects using them.

When I left at the end of class, my tiles were sharing space with three other students' work on a kiln shelf:

Notice the differences in powder color compared with how they looked when they were fired. Some interesting color changes! I'm glad Stacy warned us about them. :-) I took photos of all the other students' work as well, and I wish I could have seen them after they were fired!

I'd meant to pick the coasters up over the weekend, but we were so busy that I completely forgot until Monday morning. So exciting to pick them up and see how great they came out!

I mixed patterns on all but one of the coasters, which I'd chosen an ornate, Victorian looking design that seemed plenty busy on its own:



See the sparkle from the blue frit? Gorgeous! I can see in this photo that it's blue, but in person, the pattern is dark enough that it looks black.

This one is my favorite:

Hm. I'm going to have to look at it again and figure out if that's just the way the light hit it, or if it's fingerprints, or if it has some de-vitrification on it that's causing it to look filmy in places ...

This was my first one. Took me three tries to get it so I was happy with it, and I am happy with how it turned out. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd do both patterns over the entire coaster. Might have been too much, but I wish I'd tried it while I was using their supplies. :-)

This is the only one I'm less than happy with. I wish I'd done the mint green arrows over the entire coaster and topped it with the orange alone. I added the blue dots because I was trying to cover up the gap between the green pattern and the orange pattern without redoing them. I should have started over. So funny that I managed to get the dots lined up so they were exactly perpendicular to the white streak with no pattern. Couldn't have done it if I'd tried, but when I was trying the opposite ... :-)

Is It Getting Hot In Here?

The kiln has power! Woohoo!

Exciting developments Chez Foster's Beauties!

This week, we had an electrician out to do some re-wiring of what was once a three-car garage and is now officially a combined woodworking and glassworking studio. :)

It's been many, many years since the garage was used to park cars, and it's the second time we've had this electrician do some additional wiring for us. This time, we were warned, we've maxed out the residential power  allotment and if we expand farther, it will require a new power meter and other expensive goodies.

Of course, once you add a new media to a studio, suddenly you realize you need new storage and work surfaces!

The kiln is in the garage's third bay. The woodworking tools are (mostly) in the two-car bay on the other side of the shelves behind the kiln .

Scott immediately leapt into plans for glass storage, if only because we've got too many sheets of glass and slumping molds and other glassworking items blocking access to his woodworking tools. So glass storage is Priority #1. (Ok, and true confession time: He only leapt into plans for glass storage after we made another trip to Bullseye Glass to buy additional sheet glass and other supplies.)

The original sketch and calculations for needed supplies. Now that he's actually working on the storage unit, he has tweaked his design a bit.

This weekend, we hope to head to Ikea to buy something we can use for a glass workbench. Scott could make something, of course, (and it would be nicer than anything we could buy at Ikea) but that takes time and would mean it would be longer before we could start playing with the kiln and/or he could get back to his lathe and start his next segmented wood project.

And to think this all started last fall when I was looking for an interesting place to hold Ellie's 8th birthday party and spotted a Groupon for Live Laugh Love Glass in Tigard! Clearly, that Groupon was the gateway drug to an addicting and expensive (but fun!) new hobby. :)

Potential New Products?

I just love my kanzashi dragonflies.

I can't even explain why, but the magnets continue to make me happy to look at every time I see them. :)

Ellie likes to snitch her favorites from my production and puts them "temporarily" on our fridge so we can admire them every time we go to open the refrigerator door or even walk past.

Ellie and some actual customers have long suggested I make brooches or hair clips with the dragonflies on them. I was a bit hesitant for two reasons: The glitterboard I use as a base for the dragonflies to perch upon would not be waterproof; and because the dragonfly bodies are attached to their wings with less than a quarter-inch of contact they can be fragile to be handled.

Well, I think I've solved the first problem!

Instead of glitterboard, these dragonflies will be perched on felt. (I used some stabilizer sandwiched between two circles of felt that I hand-sewed together.

I started out with small circles of felt no bigger than the glitterboard circles I used, but after making a prototype, I discovered that it was smaller than the brooch pin I wanted to mount it on and too much metal showed.

But I didn't like the plain felt circle base when I enlarged it, either.

My solution?

I added some beading to 'prettify' the bases. And I think it looks much better that way!

What do you think?

Now, Ellie and I will test these prototypes to figure out if the dragonflies are too fragile to wear or not.

If they are, I can try some other kanzashi wing shapes that would offer more contact surface between the body and the wings. But I'm really hoping these will work!

And either way, I'll let you know as the experiments progress.

Working Wednesday: New Year, New Project

With a new year, there have to be new projects underway, right? I'm pretty sure that's Scott's attitude!

This one actually started a couple weeks ago and is only partly assembled, but I think its beauty is already showing. Scott put a small amount of finish on it just so we could see how the pinkish pear wood would contrast with the gorgeous Oregon black walnut in the final piece. I think he's got a winner in progress -- what do you think?

Ignore the wood at the bottom, which is simply helping hold the piece so it can be turned on the lathe and isn't part of the project.

Apologies for the photo quality -- it was one of those nights when Scott came in from the woodshop to show me something and I liked it so much I immediately reached for the camera.

The finish is definitely bringing out the color of the pear wood! And oh, that walnut grain is going to be just stunning! Scott did a great job of cutting it so you can see the grain move from one stave to its neighbors.

There is another section that will be added to the top of this one over the ring of pear wood with more of the alternating walnut and pear. Scott will turn the pieces separately to get their shapes the way he envisions, and then glue them together and probably do some final lathe work on the outsides.

Apparently doing stave projects is very tricky. This is the first time Scott has tackled stave construction, and I'm hoping to persuade him to write a blog post about what's involved in the near future.

I never get tired of Oregon black walnut. The colors and the grains vary so much from tree to tree. The wood Scott's using on this piece has some blue tinge in addition to the usual browns and reds

Happy new year!!

Working Wednesday: Organization

I knew there had to be a better way to keep my fabric organized and accessible. I just didn't know how.

Then my favorite crafty blog, Diane Gilleland's Craftypod.com, had a post and podcast about The Art of Stash Keeping. And I learned so much from the podcast with Jeni Baker and the links to Jeni's posts about stash keeping.

Jeni had an entire series she calls The Art of Choosing, which I found fascinating reading.

But the tip that's making a real difference for me involved storing my fabric on "mini bolts" using comic book storage boards to wrap the fabric around. Wow!

So now I'm deep into organizing my fabric, and I've already used up my first package of 100 comic book storage boards! It will make a huge difference in being able to see all my fabric easily and being able to get it out of a stack without messing all the other fabric up.

Here are my first two bins:

The bin on the bottom is storing fleece, the one on top has all my felt.

Meanwhile, I picked up one of those wide-drawer plastic thingies at a garage sale ($5, which is awesome since I never see them for less than $25 on sale):

The bottom drawer has my satins and chiffons, the next one up holds my organzas. Soooo much better than the large shopping bag I'd had them in before!

Next up, will be tackling my many, many cottons that I accumulated during my quilting days. :-)

Want to see what I hope to someday have?

Check out the glass-doored bookcases in this post. I definitely have studio envy! :-)

Working Wednesday: Experimenting In New Media

Artwork & photo by Susan Sorrell, reprinted here with permission.

I've decided to embrace the idea that creative people periodically need to shake themselves up a bit by going outside their comfort zones or niches and experimenting with new skills, new media, new techniques and/or new materials.


So I'm taking an online class from the amazing Susan Sorrell to learn a mixed media fiber art technique she calls fiber collage. And oh, it's really charging my batteries that I hadn't even realized were getting low on power!

I just started on lesson two (out of six), so I have created my quilt sandwich (right).

And then it was time to start figuring out exactly what I wanted to put on it. The idea is a quote or phrase or snippet of song lyric, etc., to give a theme that then gets illustrated with applique that's embellished with pretty much whatever the artist can think of. :)

Take a look at some of Susan's other works:

"Art Snob" by Susan Sorrell

"Bad Day at Disney-2" by Susan Sorrell

"Eye Love Me" by Susan Sorrell

Susan's art is so amazing that I've worried a bit that I might only be able to mimic her work and not create my own. And time will tell whether I can manage it or not. But I'm having fun in the mean time!

The first thing that came to mind was a little "poem" that my mother liked to recite to me when I was growing up: "There once was a girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid." (I had curly hair, including curly bangs, and I'm pretty sure my mother thought that little rhyme had been written with me in mind.) I could even picture in my mind the girl I would create for it.

But that was way too much text for me to try to fit on a 7"x7" square of fabric. (If you browse Susan's work, you'll see she has worked in longer pieces of text, but I don't even have as much talent (or experience) as she has in her pinky finger so I figured I better start with something smaller.

Those of you who know us know that our 7.5-year-old daughter is obsessed with fairies. So, after considering and dismissing numerous quotes, I fell back upon one from Peter Pan when Tinkerbell was at risk of dying and the audience was required to help her survive: "Clap if you believe in fairies!"

So that's what I'm going with. :) I've been playing with some doodles in my sketchbook. I'm not very good at drawing (and I can hardly believe I'm going to post my sketch here, but hopefully I won't hear you as you laugh at how poorly I draw!):

After doodling in my sketchbook, I took a piece of paper the same size as my quilt sandwich to see how it would all fit. I think it works. I plan to embellish the words "Clap" and "Fairies" while leaving the other words plain.

My second-grader had to help me with getting the shape of fairy rings right. Truthfully, I'm very tempted to use her drawing instead of mine:

Ellie says this fairy has "advanced artist" wings, but "you're not ready to draw these yet." Which is OK because those wings look too much like udders to me. But her fairy is adorable, imho. :)

One of the best parts about trying something new is that it inspires me to look at everything around me differently than I previously did. Which is good! I'm looking all over for interesting items or textures that I can incorporate in any art I make, including the pieces I sell on Etsy.

I'll share my progress as I go through this class. But if you really want to be inspired, go browse Susan's Flickr site (because she has so much amazing work that it was torture to limit myself to just a few of her pieces to show you!), and then visit her website and consider signing up for one of her other classes. And if her work isn't your thing, look around elsewhere for a class that interests you, whether it's online or at a local business.

Note: Susan Sorrell generously gave her permission for me to post some photos of her work here. The opinions here are my own, and I'm not being compensated in any way for promoting her work or her classes. I paid full price for the class I'm taking (as well as a previous one of her classes I took last spring). This kind of stuff should go without saying, but I've learned that it's important to say it so no one gets the wrong idea.

Trying New Things

I love beads almost as much as I love fabric, but I've never worked much with beads.

Somewhere, I recently came across a link to Robin Atkins' blog, Beadlust. And oh, did it make me want to have even 1 percent of her talent! Well, that's probably never going to happen, but I did download a book she offers for free on her website, and I borrowed a book she co-wrote from the library: Beaded Embellishment: Techniques & Designs for Embroidering on Cloth

I'm so buying this book when my budget allows! It has great photos, great step-by-step directions, and an amazing gallery of beadwork by incredibly talented artists that make fabulous inspiration about what is possible to do with beads.

I was particularly inspired by the beaded button project, partly because I really liked the small nature of the projects.

Here's a photo of the page of examples:

Aren't they gorgeous?

I played around with some of the stitch lessons in the book and was delighted to learn how to make beaded fringe, something I've never managed before despite a teacher explaining it in an online class I took.

Then I launched into my first beaded button! I'd picked up the Dritz half-ball cover button kits at a great sale at Jo-Ann's, which was the only necessary supply I didn't have on hand already.

So here's my first try:

 I definitely have plenty of practice ahead of me if I want to reach that 1 percent of Robin Atkins' talent, but despite its flaws, I'm kind of happy with it. It reminds me, a little, of the eye on a peacock feather.

I wouldn't have had the courage to start a major beading project, but a 1.5-inch diameter pin was definitely less intimidating than a bigger canvas would have been.

What kinds of new things have you tried doing lately?