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Finally Some New Workshops
It’s taken me a while to plan these in – but I thought I better get some dates in the diary before I get fully booked up!
A few dates listed below, which may get added to, or moved, depending on booking or requirements.
The Introduction to Glass Fusing is a full day session (we usually start around 10/10.30am and finish around 4.30pm); on this, you’ll begin by learning to score and break glass safely, you will have an opportunity to practice with some plain window glass and put together a clear glass design. We will then move on to using speciality art glass, designed for glass fusing in a vast array of colours – I will show you a few techniques and different ways to layer and assemble your glass designs. All items will be fired after the session and we arrange a mutually convenient date for collection. All tools, equipment and basic glass requirements are covered in your costs (if you wish to make something exceptionally large or using expensive glass, this can be arranged)
The Glass Taster Session is shorter, approximately 2-3 hours – during this relaxed class, you don’t learn about cutting glass – you work with a clear glass blank and learn how to create a colourful sun-catcher or wall hanging by assembling your design from variety of mosaic sized pre-cut pieces or glass frit (granules). You should be able to make a couple of smaller pieces during this session, or one larger panel. Again, the pieces are fired, ready for collection at a later date.
Group classes require a minimum of three people to book on them to go ahead, but won’t run with more than six. If you have been given a voucher to use for a group workshop from either Craft Courses or one from Dawn Turner Designs, please contact me HERE to reserve a place on your chosen date.
You don’t need to have a Paypal account to pay via the button below, you can also use a bank card, just check out as a guest. The blank text box is if you can do one of the other dates listed, let me know, as it will make coordinating dates a little easier for me.
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Art at the Heart….
As well as making glass art work, and teaching and helping others to learn about and create fabulous glass goodies, I also do a fair amount of workshops in schools, community events, day centres and recently, nursing homes.
Some days I’ve been visiting a local care home; a few times I was working one-to-one with a resident living with dementia, others I’ve been working with a group with varying physical abilities, eyesight, hearing, communication difficulties and so on.
I’ve also been working with a local friendship group that runs with the aim to reach out to isolated over 50s.
It’s can be quite a challenge, as the sessions are quite short, so we’re quite limited with what we can do.
But with a bit (a lot!) of careful preparation and forethought, all of the participants have been making some fun and lovely art. So it’s dreary, wet Friday evening right now, so I am going to just post a few images of the lovely work they’ve been creating.
Mosaic birds for the nursing home garden, still to be grouted.
It wouldn’t be one of my workshops without the odd glass lantern!
Playing with the laser cutter to create this funky felt flowers!
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The Glass Forth Bridge!
Well, that’s what it’s felt like I was doing!
This weekend, I am running one of my glass decorating workshops over at Burton-upon-Trent, so I have spent the last few days, collecting, scraping, washing and drying what seemed like a never ending supply of jam/coffee/sauce jars
There’s potentially a LOT of visitors to this event, and it’s a drop-in workshop so I have no idea how many people might want to have a go, so I have to be prepared in case everybody does! I am loathe to risk running out like I did one year within the first hour….
Next week, I will be doing it all over again with Sun-catchers, so between washing and drying glass jars galore, I have been bending wire hangers and cutting endless rectangles of glass for fusing in the kiln this week.
I do love offering these workshops though – it’s lovely to see the children who always enjoy having ago, some get so absorbed and are wonderfully creative in their designs. Best of all, it’s popular with all ages – a few weeks ago, I stood in at Haywood House, a respite care centre in Nottingham for their craft sessions, and almost everybody had a go, including the patients who don’t usually get involved. Then again, who can beat a bit of stickering and colouring in?
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Hot Metal
As ever, my life has been hectic with things related to my business, the studio and of course home life – I knew I hadn’t written a blog post for a while; well Christmas was the last one I remembered. What I hadn’t realised was that I never posted anything about the second Metal Ages sculpture, and that was well, AGES ago!
Back at the end of September, we finally got the opportunity to install the final sculpture at Erewash Museum in Ilkeston. I say ‘we’ – that would be me with the camera and occasionally passing a drill or screwdriver, and Gavin & Mark doing the lifting, carrying, digging, drilling….
This one is a rather large sculpture. It’s over two metres high, and about two and a half metres wide. It is made up of 7,000 nuts, which represents the size of the workforce when Stanton Ironworks was in it’s heyday. It has four ‘vines’ growing from the ground, which represent the four main foundries that could be found in the Ilkeston area back in the 1900’s. Across the middle is a shank, used for pouring molten metal in a foundry. The centre of this holds a glass disk, which like the ‘Old Men & Pipes‘ sculpture at King George Gallery is inspired by the ‘fire in the sky’ that was ever present when Stanton was a busy place, and also representing new beginnings.
