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Something old, something blue
Well, it’s not old, old… but when I first started fusing glass, I made what a lot of people start out with – pendants.
I’ll be honest, a lot of people started to do the same, and all of a sudden, Ebay and the like were flooded with ‘handmade’ fused glass pendants selling for less than the cost of the components I was using, as I like to use sterling silver, and hand-dyed silk ribbon and so on – I kind of withdrew from making that kind of thing.
Recently had to sort out at home when the house was re-wired, so bags and boxes came out of cupboards I hadn’t seen the back of since my degree… and I came across some of the pendants I’d made a while back and realised – that I actually really rather like them, so they’re coming out to play again, I will start listing some on line, although we’ve got open studios coming up soon, so I will have them all polished and ready for then (I hope!)
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Festive Etsy Treasury
One of my Christmas decorations has been featured in the fabulous treasury by the lovely Purple Orchid Crafts:
Festive Treats handmade in Britain by Purple Orchid on Etsy. -
I have got a new toy!
I’ve been itching to get a sand-blaster for a very long time, and it arrived last week. Travis very kindly helped me set it up, although the current set-up is a little Heath Robinson…. until we can sort out the compressor pipeline and a proper stand, it’s lives on a mini pallet, and gets wheeled up the studio on a the hand-pallet-truck, to Travis’ area, pumped up to working height and connected up to the compressor there. It’ll do for now!
Anyways, I’ve already had a play of course, and look what came out….
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Metal Ages…. and it has been ages!!
If there’s an award for bad blogger of the year, I think I would certainly be in the running!There’s been so much going off. In March, Gavin and myself did some workshops in schools – this produced some fantastic work, including glass, metal embossing and casting – hopefully I can show you some of the work at a later point. Who cares about chronological order?I managed to get a few more sessions in at university doing photograms, and I was very sad when this came to an end – I feel like I’ve still got so much more to explore, but I need access to the darkrooms to be able to develop (hahaha) this further. Do you think they’d notice if I just wandered in…. we’ve got the AA2A exhibition soon, I have to be ready by the end of next week.We held the spring Open Studios at Shed 2 as part of Derbyshire Open Arts. I managed to squeeze in a visit to Chelsea 100th Flower Show to help Rachel Carter – unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of chance to look round as it rained. And rained again. And rained some more. You get the idea.However, I was very excited last week that we were able to install the first Metal Ages sculpture at the King George Gallery. That’s the Royal “we” – as in Gavin and his builder dug holes, heaved the thing around, and poured in post-crete, whilst I stood on the side-lines saying left a bit, right a bit and taking photographs.I think it looks amazing. I love the combination of new glass and old metal. I love what Gavin has done with the found objects from the Stanton site, combined with donated tools from our walks and meets we did way back in February and March.Anyway, here it is – the second sculpture should be installed fairly soon, more on that later!An overview – slightly over exposed, but had to show you the beautiful settings:
The beautiful King George Gallery building 
My glass element 
Found metal objects from Stanton Ironworks 
Donated tools from former workers 
The glass set into the Stanton Arrow 
“OLD MEN & PIPES”
