NEW For Spring

It's been a hectic week around here, kids and choas abound, but I managed to make it through this week AND list some brand new items in my shop, yay. I'm going for celebrating the small accomplishements in times like these.

Stop by the shop to see all the new things which I will be listing throughout the weekend. Use the COUPON CODE 022011 at checkout and receive 10% off everything. Here are just a few new pendants this week:)

Turning to Other Comforts - Soup Club

I have been having one of THOSE weeks in the studio.

My sketch book is full of great ideas - check! My studio is fully stocked with new glass and fun, shiny supplies - check! I have had soem time to myself, without children - check!

Just when everything is alined and should fall nicely into place, I can't seem to make anything work out the way I want it to. Every piece of glass I touch breaks. Every firing schedule I try seems off. Every design I draw looks like my 5 y/o did it (no ofense to him, he really is quite good for a 5 y/o).

In times like these, I am VERY grateful that I work from home and can find other comforts to distrat me. Today, I turn to making soup for my SOUP CLUB.

This week, in the dead of a winter I swear will never end, I wanted to choose a hearty soup that used up as many of the organic root veggies that I have with a Winter Veggie Soup. I also wanted to add a little spice to my usual comfort food because I need an extra kick this week.

I roasted these heritage gold and candy striped beets and potatoes with olive oil as the base with 2tsp of cayan pepper for that spicy kick I was after:




Then, I roasted a pan of red peppers, squash, carrots, parnsnips and onions. I added some veggie stock (I always make my stocks in large batches and then freeze them ahead to make everything easier during my busy weeks).

All I do to finnish the soup off is to puree it all together in the food processor. You can use a hand held blender, but I find that I need the food processor with larger amounts like this for soup club (which is a triple batch).

Now all I have to do is deliver this soup so my friends can share and HOPEFULLY things will get back to normal in my studio after my little break.

In The Studio - Finding Inspiration in Experimentation and Making Mistakes

I have an Inspiration Board in my studio that most often looks just like I imagine the inside of the artsy side of my brain - choatic, colourful and fun.



To tack up all my little snipets of inspiration, I have taken to using discarded pieces of glass which I turn into magnets. These pieces are often the ones which never made it into production becasue they didn't turn out how I expected, or have tiny flaws that just don't pass my quality standards.



It's funny, but for little misteps and mistakes, I find it interesting that they seem to be the pieces everyone gravitates toward when they visit. I've come to realize that they each have little stories of their own to tell. Like the time I learned that trying to get a little more kiln time and speeding up some firing cycles means that you can essentially throw away $50 in glass (patience, patience) or the time I realized that pink flowers on a cobalt background makes lovely peonies look like dread grey, lifelless ghost plants (not the cheerful spring look I was going for).

I have tried selling magents from time to time and it never seems to work out the way I planned, but for now I realize that these little pieces of failled experiments help me connect to people who take an interest in my work. I often send them away with friends and customers, and it's nice to know that they want to share part of my process and love that buying from me means buying from a real person who experiments and sometimes fails.

In The Studio Today

I'm back in my studio today making merry and getting back to what I love - making tiny pieces of glass with colourful-goodness.

I have been attempting to make my work life a little more focused in order to get more out of my very limited work-time buget. In order to make sure I get the most out of my studio time, I have been religious about planning my work, sourcing all my materials ahead of time and DOCUMENTING everything.

I thought I might share a little bit of my process lately, some inside the scenes pics of my notebooks.



I have been using penceil and paper sketches mostly to plan out my layout an get a basic colour story going before I cut glass. It doesn't always stay true to the story when I start working with the glass, but I find it best to have a solid starting point to avoid total disasters.



Here, I keep fighting with finding the "right" green (which always seems to be a difficult colour for me) I'm still tweaking it.



A successful colour test. Although the colours between the paper and glass don't always translate, sometimes the final result is fairly close to the original idea.

I promise I'll be back to this space soon to update you on my progress. For now, it's back to the studio for me:)