Vending Makes Me Tired...

This picture was taken around 4:30pm. It was already pitch dark here in Portland. I have some green Christmas lights that I usually string on my booth to keep it festive in the dark afternoon, but I've broken too many of the bulbs and now the strand has finally stopped working.

I really busted my butt to make the booth look good for this weekend. In spite of my car troubles (car is still in the shop, still has a broken transmission), I really tried hard to remain upbeat and happy while vending my artwork. I have been stocking up, and while this weekend was exhausting physically, my inventory held strong and there is still plenty to go around.

I know you want to give mobiles to all your friends and family this year! Right?! It would be my honor to help bring smiles to as many people as possible!! :)

This last picture is my little Christmas tree setup at the market... I thought it looked pretty cute this weekend

Stay Home for Black Friday Shopping !

Oleo the cat liked Thanksgiving this year a lot, until I swatted her away from the bird and told her that turkey was not for kitties!

If you are tempted to stay home and do a little "Black Friday" shopping - go to Etsy! My shop offers FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING on all small purchases. How sweet is that. Why bother with the crowds and lines in stores, with free shipping, I am saving you gas money!! Give everyone you know the gift of smiles for years to come with a little dancing mobile! How 'bout those geeky computer people in your family - give them a computer mobile! They will love the touch of handmade goodness.

For realz. Ditch the car, forget the crazy shopping out in the rain and cold. Go to Etsy. I'll see you there.

If you would like to see more pictures of my Thanksgiving dinner, click here

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Happy Thanksgiving

"the Founder of the Feast"

by Mary Pellegrini (my Mom)

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Holiday Season Breathing Exercises

The holiday season is on top of us. I am a bit in disbelief that Thanksgiving is this week...

this time of year means 3 things to a small businessperson like myself:
1. assembly (I have been prepping like mad for weeks, so now I can bury myself in the finer details of package assembly)
2. shipping (the website orders are picking up, the boxes are going out, and of course my favorite stuffer is out of stock, but not to worry - there are plenty of orange LeahGlass.com pencils to go around to all my happy customers!)
3. vending (holiday shows - madness people, madness)

This year you can find me at:
Portland Saturday Market
every weekend until Christmas Eve
Super Crafty Wonderland Holiday Show
Sunday, December 14th from 11am-7pm
Handmade NW at the World Trade Center
Tuesday, December 2nd from 10-6pm


my online shop has been picking up the pace - many wonderful new customers and many of my glass mobiles and other little glass creations going out in the mail. Now that I have no car all of a sudden, I am utilizing my nice post man a little more these days. Its nice that they pick up at the door, and thankfully

Already bought a turkey, pre-brined organic birds at Trader Joes - gotta love TJs. Now I have to get a bunch of root veggies and butter. I am out of butter at the house, whats Thanksgiving dinner without butter! madness I say, madness.

Hope everyone else is having fun this week prepping for the holidays. Usually this weekend is pretty crazy at the Portland Saturday Market. I'm crossing my fingers. This girl has got to buy a car. I am not holding my breath though, I just gotta keep breathing.

Walking Adventures

Today I had an adventure with Portland Public Transportation. Tried out an easy route from my house to my shop using the 33 bus and the yellow line of the Max Train. In a total Leah moment I got off the bus too early (instead of at the train stop like I was supposed to). Moment of confusion, no biggy, I knew where I was, so I just started walking. About a mile down the road I passed a bakery, the amazing Grand Central, and stopped by there for a sandwich... then I ended up at Mississippi and walked all the way down the hill to Interstate (at least another mile) where I picked up the train. How did my route run so amook? I dunno. It took 2 hours to get to my shop. Which usually I could drive to in 15 minutes. But I had a good time! The walk was brilliant and the weather was sun-shiney. I successfully did make it to my shop and back. And I got a bunch of work done. So I can't complain.

I could complain about the fact that my car died last Thursday (the transmission on my perfectly good '99 Rav4 just ate sh*t and now I am facing $$$$ to fix it or donate it for a tax refund and get a new car). The predicament is overwhelming and the reality of the matter is I have no wheels now. My brother let me use his car last weekend to vend at the Saturday Market, and today it was soo nice out and I simply don't have time to shop for a car with all the prep-work for Thanksgiving weekend at the market, I gotta get work done. So public transport was my wheels today - and it was an adventure in many ways. I have been meaning to use my bike and public transport more... so I am taking this opportunity to do so. (and trying to remain calm all the while - what else can I do!)

Handmade and Affordable Glass Christmas Ornaments

the Christmas Tree Ornament section is now open in my online shop!

These glass tree ornaments are the perfect gift this season!

Completely handmade by me, Leah, and affordable for you, my beloved customers!

They look like little presents (packages of glittering joy!) with little bow ties on the tops (I make the bows using a torch, then I fuse them onto the 2.5" squares). The "wrapping paper" patterns are made in a variety of different ways, the red ornament above is made by scattering my scrap pieces of red glass on a thin piece of iridized glass (there is a silver or gold iridescent film on the back of the ornaments so they will glitter on the tree with the lights and all) and I kiln fire all this scrap to turn it into a big flat sheet that I then cut up into small squares. Processes like this allow me to keep my cost low and consume some of the little pieces of scrap I have left at the end of the year!
The snowflake pattern is made using copper foil and a paper punch. I blogged about them a while back.

All of these ornaments are for sale now in my Etsy shop. Great for gift exchanges and family gatherings!

Happy Holidays!

Family Passions Passed Down

I have been thinking a lot about family lately.

Loved ones facing crisis, emails from family on different sides of the country, my heart is aching a bit right now and my brain has turned to stories from the past.

My maternal grandmother, Birdy Bergstrom, passed away before I was born. The story here is that she was an avid paperweight collector, her collection combined with her sister-in-law's to create the foundation of a paperweight museum. Her brother John had bequeathed his house to the city of Neenah Wisconsin, along with the glass paperweight collections, to become the Bergstrom Mahler Paperweight Museum.

My mother grew up in Neenah WI, just around the corner from her Aunt and Uncle Evangeline and John - she remembers them quite well. I grew up in Cleveland, OH, and there were paperweights throughout the house, dotting the mantel and holding books in place on various shelves. It wasn't until I was in my 20's that my mother took me to the Museum (we were in WI for a family reunion) and I got to learn all about the paperweights.

It felt as though a passion of my grandmother's had been passed down to me. I had begun blowing glass a few years before learning about the Museum and paperweights have always been a favorite of mine. I remember making paperweights in my first glass class and thinking that I could just make paperweights for the rest of the 8 week class! They were so amazing! Here's a picture of one of the first paperweights I made back in 1999. (its probably not the first one, I gave most of my paperweights away in the beginning and this is just the first one I found around the house when I went to take some pictures just now)
Its interesting to me that although I never met the woman, my mother's mother, I feel a bond with her that we both enjoy glass. Thats a good feeling.

The last picture here is of the front of the paperweight in the first picture. Its a special edition paperweight featuring Evangeline Bergstrom, I believe they were created when the Museum was founded. As you can see in the engraving on the back, I have the 3rd of 250 that were created! It was one of the paperweights I grew up with in my Ohio home and when I became a full time glass artist it was given to me.
Evidently a passion for glass runs thick in the blood.

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Glass Mobile in the Garden

This mobile adorns the side of the Weinstein house in their beautiful Portland Oregon garden. I love my customers, and I love getting to have pictures of my mobiles in their homes!

It dances in the view from the kitchen sink.

I would be happy to make your kitchen window have a mobile in the view. It's my pleasure!
visit http://www.LeahGlass.com for more info

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Christmas Ornaments

I've got to get my Christmas ornaments listed online... they are wonderful little glass treasures, great for gift exchanges and family ornament collections.
I am not happy with the pictures I've taken so far. The ornaments look great on the tree... the lights blew on my little display tree though, so no twinkle action... I have another idea to try this afternoon (a santa hat?)They are supposed to look like little packages, with a bowtie at the top that I make in the torch and fuse onto the little glass square. The square I make in all different patterns... so the photography is something that I have really only begun. So far I just don't think the background or the staging screams Christmas yet... I've got to try a little harder to really show how cute these guys are! And then I've got to figure out how to list them so its not too hard to buy more than one (and I am hesititant about overwhelming my shop with ornaments...)

Etsy

Well this is a pick-me-up! I just logged onto Etsy and saw one of my favorite wee mini mobiles dancing around the center of the Front Page. Yeah! Thats good for a few hundred clicks and hopefully it will make me some sales. Its been a long time since I saw myself on the front page of Etsy. The front page switches out so often now, my mobile will probably be up there for maybe 20 minutes or so. I am so glad I happened to log onto Etsy and see it while I could! It bugs me that the artist gets no alert or notification of your front page status, so its really random to actually see yourself there. Most of the time the only way to tell is by noticing that suddenly you have short upsurge of visitors to your shop and perhaps a small rush of sales (then you can log onto flickr where some awesome Etsy users post pictures of the front pages and you can check to see if indeed something in your shop was featured... its kinda elaborate and round-about, but hey, curiosity killed the cat, and Etsy users are crafty like that!)

So today was such a pleasure! Thanks Kimiko611!

Win Free Stuff from the Portland Craft Mafia!

The hunt will last 11/15/2008-11/29/2008. The winner will be randomly drawn from all correct entries. The lucky winner will be announced no later than December 1. The entire box of goodies will be mailed out with plenty of time before the holidays.

to enter check out the PDX Craft Mafia Blog for all the details (of how to play and what you'll win!)
http://portlandoregoncraftmafia.blogspot.com/2008/11/win-free-stuff-from-portland-craft.html

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Reservations

Today I reserved my spot for next years Portland Saturday Market site! Check it out - this is a digital rendering of where I will be!!! Right in front on the waterfront! All these years of volunteering a lot of time and effort at the market have finally paid off. (I help clean the office every week and I am a member of the product review committee) I will have a really good spot, right in front. In this picture you would be facing the Burnside bridge , standing in the new park that PDC is building, looking at my booth. :)

The picture below is the digi rendering of what the new park will look like during the week. On the weekends the market will take over this park (it is even plumbed with electricity and gas and water for the food vendors) and my booth will be right in the center of the picture, on the edge of the market where people enter. Wowza. Makes me shakey thinking about it. Felt like a balzy move. I am hoping it will lead to photography that will get my business publicity. New site = site photography, and my red Leah Glass.com sign will be in those pictures! (I hope)

the Sampler - Portland City Shout Out

Today I received a little Google Alert to show me that CraftZine Blog gave me a little shout out as one of samples in the Portland City Sampler. The Sampler is a wonderful company that serves to promote and advertise small businesses to relevant publications and stores. Here is their words to describe themselves:

The Sampler is a super fun marketing & promotional tool for indie businesses. Each month, independent crafters, artists, shops, zines and record labels who run web-based businesses send samples and promotional materials to a contribution pool. All the samples are photographed, posted to the site and then are portioned out, put in little packages and sent off to Sampler Subscribers, other Sampler Contributors and members of the Media all over the world!

I've participated twice, I like the business model, as I'm all about gorilla marketing. The cost of advertising with this company is the cost of the samples you submit and the shipping to get them all to the Sampler in time. If you are curious about submitting, here is a link with FAQs.

This second time I have submitted some samples specifically for the Portland City Sampler, which was organized through the Portland Independant Artist Cooperative. I submitted small little glass bits on wire stapled to a card and put in a cello bag with a sticker and a flier for Aquila. The last time I submitted full on little mini mobiles, I think 30 of them. This second time I knew there were 100 Portland Sampler boxes that would be made total, so I wanted to be in every single one, thus the small easily made in super bulk sample :)

Images on Glass III

The experiments with printing on glass continue...

A lot of these samples I am slumping into molds to make them into "sandwich plates".

I will take better pictures of some then!

In the meantime, some interesting observations:

-when we mixed glass powder into the ink and then printed on the glass the print turned out splotchy, like the ink stuck to the glass and turn out splotchy

-when we dusted glass powder onto the ink print that had more glass powder mixed in the ink, it was as if the two did not mix! The glass powder on top didn't actually fuse into the glass



- lastly, and most importantly, we found an ink and a process that we like.
unfortunately my note taking skills the other day were somewhat lacking, left a little sumthin to be desired - so I it was hard to decipher the differences between all the samples...

However - hopefully by the end of November we will have some sample plates available for sale so we can see what prints people are attracted to purchase on glass.

Cup of Tea

It has rained here in Portland every day this month. Perpetual gray weather, not much hard dramatic rain, just constant drizzly stuff.

I am drinking tea, black tea from the Tao of Tea, its called Emperors Gold. A delicious golden leaf tips loose leaf tea. I was too lazy to brew a pot of tea today. Instead I just made one cup. Does anyone else have any of these Pom cups, I love them. I make fruit/yogurt parfaits in them, and I drink tea out of them. They have these little lids that fit perfectly on top and they are made of pyrex so they can get really hot or cold without any problems (like canning jars). Its disappointing that Pom sells there juicey tea in plastic containers now. Too bad. I'm not even that fond of the Pom tea stuff, I just liked the cups - I've got a small collection of them now!

Okay, I am babbling. I should be working. I liked how the tea looks with the dark color around the leaves at the bottom of the cup.

It looks like Friday we may get some sun here in the Pacific NW. I won't hold my breath, but I will be quite pleased if that actually happens.

Felted Birds and Gray Days

I had a fun time today learning to felt birdies! This is my attempt #1 - I particularly like his hairdoo.

My felty good times were had at the first inaugural meeting of the IHLA. Hangin' out with my bitchez in the Idle Hands Ladies Auxiliary was awesome. Talk about making the best of a gray Portland day - this colorful felty fun was just what I needed! I made couple of birds, a cozy for felting needles (thanx for letting me keep a couple Maggie!!) and an orange chick rattle. I can't help myself but produce - my crafty hands just kept making one cool felted thing after another.

Check it out - the rattle is awesome, I used one of my Chinese medicine pill containers as the center of the chick, and I left just a couple of pills inside the ball (so it would rattle) and then felted the orange around the plastic container. Here is what the pill container looks like: (the larger ball is a wax covered plastic ball that you have to crack open to get at the inner plastic ball that contains the pills, the inner ball has a plastic cap that is not in the picture)And then this is what the rattle looked like in the end:

So morning-time was super fun, felty goodness with my beautiful friends.

This afternoon was Mac n' Cheese night at the glass studio, I brought broccoli n' cheese - it was delicious (although sorta soupy). Not only did I manage to eat many many cookies (I am growing a gut?! too much indulgence!) but I did manage to get some work done. I cut 140 glass circles and got them ready for the kiln, and Aimee came in today (I LOVE good help - and Aimee is the bestest!) and helped me continue to get ready for the holidays, converting my scrap piles into miniature mobiles, its a multi-step process!

I also got to meet Anne Marie of Glass Heart Studio. She makes amazingly beautiful boro glass plug earrings, swirls and curlies and swoops, in different plug diameters and different colors. They are really exquisite(check out her Etsy shop). She is moving into the train barn a few doors down from the Aquila Studio - it was really awesome to get to meet her tonight. Its an honor to have such good neighbors up there in N. Portland.

It may be raining, cold and gray here in Portland - but hey - I love this city and the people in it make the gray days pretty darned cool.

Fun Soggy Weekend

This weekend the weather here in Portland was rainy and gray, temperature in the 50s and sorta windy. And I was outside selling my artwork! Sheesh I am crazy :)

I actually had a fun weekend in spite of the forecast calling for constant rain and wind. After being depressed all week about the onslaught of this persistent crappy weather, I don't really know why I decided to vend this weekend. Saturday morning I showed up skeptical of my strange choice, dressed in my navy blue rain jacket, my rain boots , two layers of fleece sweaters and two pairs of long johns.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I ended up switching booths with my neighbor Bob. That small change made my whole weekend so much more fun and exciting! I set up my booth in his spot (2 spots down the road from my reserved space) and he set up in mine. Bob makes incredible metal birds, lifesize and gorgeous, his business is Metal Art by Swan.

Residing in Bob's spot for the weekend was great! I think I really needed a little change of pace to brighten my weekend, and this was perfect. I absolutely love all my neighbors in my reserved space, they are awesome, don't get me wrong. It was just fun to be in a different location for a weekend... even though it was just two booths down :)

I got to hang with my friend Maggie, Papaver Jewelry, she is in the picture above, don't our booths look great even though the weather is sh*t and already getting dark! Oh I forgot to put my big red Leah Glass sign... when I remembered I just didn't bother cuz I figured it'd just get wet and I didn't feel like toweling it off.

And I got to meet many customers that were so friendly and kind. It was not the busiest of weekends, but in my new perspective I was basically right at the entrance to the market, and there weren't a whole lot of vendors, so I was very visible and colorful. People were walking down the road saying to their friends/family "Oh I like those mobiles, I have seen them online!" and man, that just makes me so darned proud - I can't even tell ya! And the fact that many mobiles and other creations of mine went home with new owners, that makes my day even sweeter!

Today I made a lot of rings (I thought that would be a good way of utilizing the rainy day and possibly rousing up a little business from people enjoying watching the process - it worked too!), so I thought I'd share a little video diddy of me demoing making rings.



If you are also curious about my ring making process, here is a tutorial I made years ago - it shows exactly how these are made. Just excuse the old website format... makes me think I should re-do this tutorial... that website it is on is an old template of mine that takes forever to load all the seperate pictures...

sheesh. :)

Fun Times

Okay my blog is not wide enough to play this here... but if you go to
http://www.tripadvisor.com/TIQGame
you can play this. Its fun. I'll warn you though, its long and the map is too small!

This Traveler IQ challenge compares your geographical knowledge against the World's First Travel journal's other 3,281,011 travelers who have taken this challenge as of Friday, November 07, 2008 at 07:56PM GMT. (TravelPod is a member of the TripAdvisor Media Network) -

Nuts

In Portland Oregon they call these tasties Filberts. What ever happened to Hazelnuts? Years ago when I moved here it seemed they (locals) said everything weird. Seriously.

This one is odd to me. When there's such wonderful things as hazelnut coffee and hazelnut chocolate and hazelnuts in cookies and whatnot... why call them Filberts? And really, locals don't seem to have a lot of love for them either. They grew up with these things growing in the trees and no one seems to sing their praise. Upon looking it up in Wiki I learned the Corylus avellana (the Hazelnut) is a different plant from the closely related Filbert (Corylus maxima). So maybe these Filberts aren't actually Hazelnuts. Now I am really confused. Locals told me it was all the same. I think.

Discussion at the Museum of Contemporary Craft

Kaffeeklatsch: an informal social gathering for coffee and conversation

Tuesday I had major plans to sit around at home consumed in production isolation(ah the holidays approach) and drowning myself in Election news and media coverage in every form possible. As I was checkin' out my blog feed I saw that Cathy and Diane were both going to be downtown at the Museum of Contemporary Craft for this round-table discussion about DIY in Portland. I looked at the clock and saw that I had time to be there, so I thought, why not.

Heres the official description of the event:
From craft fairs, etsy.com sellers and zinesters to the independent music scene, bike activists and “foodies,” Portland has a reputation as an epicenter for Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture. Join guests Susan Beal and Cathy Pitters (PDX Super Crafty) and Justin Hocking (executive director, Independent Publishing Resource Center) for a discussion on DIY, its connection to craft and the contemporary resurgence of all things independent.

Afterwards I left feeling very positive about Portland (which is great considering it is cold and rainy and gray and I am feeling seasonally effected by the sh*t weather).

This event made me remember that I love living in PDX. I love that we have a Museum of Contemporary Craft, and the Independant Publishing Resource Center, and all the glass resources in town, and the Crafty Wonderland, and the Portland Saturday Market and Mercy Corps NW, and Portland Store Fixtures and the ReBuilding Center and so forth and so on... its such a cool city to live in as a craft person, and in a way that sums up the whole discussion!

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Images on Glass II

The experiments continue - my friend Jan and I made 22 more samples of printing onto glass. Do you see how amazing these blocks are (in the picture above)?! We used Rubber Duckies, a Hammer, Birds on a Line, a Benson Bubbler (water fountains in PDX), and a set of Hearts.

We were very methodical, trying 5 new types of ink (one image for each type of ink so its easy to remember!), an oil based ink (last time we used a rubber based ink), a lithograph ink, an etching ink and an oil based ink that had metal in it (it was called "Copper Gold"), and lastely a transparent Rubber based ink that we mixed colored glass powder into it. We also tried different colors of glass powders/frit (last time we used only black powder and frit).

Interesting observations: glass powder mixed with ink is possible, but it behaves weirdly. The ink sorta seems to cling to the glass particles and create fractal patterns. See: (pictured below is ink under a magnifying lens)
Okay, its come to my attention that the last video I posted from my on-going project of printing on glass, it was not a complete video. :) This was entirely my fault.... the video ended because I hadn't set up the glass for Jan to transfer the ink onto, so I had to stop the video to put down the camera and be helpful and arrange the glass. Jan has been doing the inking and I do the glass. So this next video is much more complete - although I am once more leaving out the end - sheesh! Because inevitably I have to put down the camera in order to pick up the glass frit/powder...



my apologies for having a volume control issues - enjoy the music :)

so if you watched this whole thing (its 3 minutes) and wonder what comes next... basically its simple, I take some glass powder or frit and dump it onto the glass, covering the ink, then I turn the glass over and tap it to knock off all the excess powder/frit. Sometimes I have to take a paint brush to dust off a little clingy stuff, but mostly thats it. Then I fire the glass at a full fuse and the ink is burnt away, completely, leaving behind the print made by the glass powder/frit.

See here for our first results after kiln firing.

And the last experiment of the day was transporting all this glass - we worked at Jan's printing studio this time (the glass studio gets a little busy on the weekends and we need lots of space) and made two trips with the car to carry the inked glass to Aquila. It worked out very smoothly, although I really didn't push things, I just folded up my back seats and laid it all out on trays.

Enjoy!

Mobile Collaboration

This mobile was made in collaboration with Matt Richards of Ekko Mobiles. He designed and created the mobile, I supplied him with the glass for this custom order. This was a first for both of us.

I really enjoy how this turned out - Matt and his family and really great people, his Ekko Mobiles are incredible and I cannot express what its like to have another mobile artist to talk to and work with - its a rare experience in my little world.

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Super Simple Borosilicate Glass Ornament

Clearly I could/should have decorated this glass ball... the point is, its easy to simply blow out a borosilicate point and create a simple Christmas tree ornament. The little metal caps (with the wire) are available from glass supply distributors... if you are an artist that uses the Aquila studio, they have the metal caps available for sale there as well. If you take my Ornament class, you make at least a dozen of these little imperfect creations, and I put the little metal tops on them for you, after they have been annealed.

Come take a class - learn to do this - or try at your studio at home!

Basically... pull a point of tubing, decorate the bubble, blow it out and anneal it. This pic-tutorial shows how to crack off the blowpipe afterwards and create your simple ornament:

Beginning with your annealed point with the blown out ball, blowpipe still attached

Done.

Glass Give-Away: Cutey Drop

I found this little blue droplet and I thought I'd share. He makes me smile and he deserves a good home!

He has a cutsey little "O" expression and a jump-ring thru the little hole on the top of his head.

I made these years ago... in all different colors and different facial expressions. I have a jacket somewhere that I attached a yellow one to the zipper... and a few change purses that these got attached to as well. I even made a few mobiles that every droplet had a different facial expression, like little characters - I loved these mobiles!!! Occasionally their owners will visit me at the Portland Saturday Market and tell me that they own a mobile made by me that have little faces on the drops - and I squeal and smile with the memories and inform them that they own a collectors item :)

Well I found this little blue one and I thought I'd share. He has a cutsey little "O" expression and a jump-ring thru the little hole on the top of his head.

He could be yours! Simply leave a comment (and spread the word to friends and family of the FREE opportunity on my blog here - ANYONE can win!) and make sure that I can contact you if you win (leave your email in the comment if you don't have a blog or if your blog profile is private)

These give-aways are the real deal - HERE you can see who all has won and received previous FREE give-aways. The point of these promotions is to drive more traffic to my blog and give away clutter from my studio.

This giveaway will run from 11/1/08 thru 11/15/08 - Good Luck!

Images on Glass Experiment

I finally took pictures of some of the samples that Jan and I created in our printmaking meets glass experiments.

Today I played hooky from the Portland Saturday Market (the weather was howling and rainy, not weather to sell artwork outdoors in my opinion) but I had to wrap up these glass pieces and take them down there to show Jan. She was bubbling with excitement and apprehension. It was quite cute really, I do believe she did a little jumping up and down when I arrived in her booth. And many other artist neighbors and friends stopped in to say hello. Everyone wanted to know why I wasn't selling (wasn't it obvious!) and what the glass looked like. It got pawed over and looked at by many artists, this was quite fun. Tomorrow we are doing experiment #2. I'll take more pictures and videos. It makes me smile to hear from friends who read my blog - so I'll keep the pictures coming.

So here are the pictures from the first batch... everything was printed on clear, so I put white paper behind the glass to take pictures:

the ginkos:The print above was transfered using wax paper and then dusted with glass powder, not a whole lotta detail, and the black powder is kinda boring... but interesting none the less...

The print below was transfered using vinyl (which was much easier and produced no wasted wax paper to throw out, the vinyl could simply be washed!) and then dusted with glass powder.
The 3rd ginko (below) was dusted with glass frit, this was much easier (the glass powder clung to the glass due to static and had to be brush off gently with a fan brush, but the frit was heavy enough to just fall right off the glass with a little tapping)

You can see in the pictures above and below the differences between using glass frit and glass powder. The frit was much easier to use and much more apparent, but the powder caught the detail. In the picture above you can really see its stars and circles with the powder, but not with the frit. In the picture below you can see the carved lines in the leaf with the powder, but not with the frit.

In the picture below you can see the same leaf printed and then dusted with black glass powder, and then a ghost (aka the ink left after the first transfer was picked up and used for a second print) of that same inking was taken and dusted with glass powder as well. The leaf on the left in the ghost.All the glass so far was fired with the ink printing right on the surface of the clear.

In the picture below all three samples were fired with a second piece of clear glass on top of the ink/glass powder print:

from left to right, the ink print was dusted with frit, the middle was dusted with powder and the right had no glass powder/frit at all, just ink. What is strangely cool is that even though the glass appears perfectly clear, the hop print is very visible, sorta, under certain light. Its very subtle and beautiful.

Below is the same piece of glass as the "clear empty" piece of glass on the right in the picture above. The ink leaves a permanent mark on the glass just like a fingerprint.In the picture below the flower print is first on the left dusted with black powder, the middle piece of glass is no glass powder, just ink, the glass on the right is the same piece of glass as the one in the center, just held at a certain angle you can see the beautiful detail.

The last pictures are of the paper-clip print. Both the pieces of glass below are two layers, you can see the bubbles that got trapped from the frit catching air in between the sheets of clear. The clear piece of glass on the left is simply inked, no glass powder/frit. Below is a picture of the paper-clip when its visible, I just think this is neat... but its super duper subtle.
The ink we used was a purple rubber based ink. Tomorrow we've got some oil based and some that has metal flakes in the ink (copper and gold) which I think will get interesting.... I'll try and take a better video tomorrow that doesn't cut off right when things get juicy :)

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