the Garden of Leah

Collaboration

2011-12-07T19:20:00.001-08:00

This amazing collaborative piece was made with Dennis McConnell. He made the labyrinth and I made the little green people.

2011-12-05T00:17:00.001-08:00

Urban Craft Uprising: promo from Behrens Films on Vimeo.

This past weekend I traveled up to Seattle, Washington for the Urban Craft Uprising holiday show. Wow, what a show!

It was quite the marathon of a weekend. My good friend Aimee came along and helped out. First we stopped by the Laika Studio for a quick holiday show on Friday afternoon. Literally it lasted 1 hour, it was the quickest craft show ever! Then we drove up to Seattle and started setting up my booth display again (twice in one day - whew!). A late night sushi dinner was all we could muster after this long day. Saturday we woke up early and finished setting up for Urban Craft Uprising and then the doors opened at 11. Over the weekend 10,000 people came into this show. It was awesome as usual. So many appreciative customers. So many mobiles will be shared throughout the Seattle surrounding area this holiday season. I felt the love. I am grateful.

Here's what my crafty display looked like

New Website!

2011-10-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

I finally have my new website up online to share with the world! This is very exciting new for me. Let me tell ya!! Click on the image above and it'll send you over to check it out.

I have always made my own websites for years, and they aren't so spectacular. But I am a DIY kinda girl and lacking a budget to pay a website designer to do it right. I just let it slide for way too long.

One day while looking at some statistics for my Etsy, an advertisement caught my eye. I clicked on it, basically it was a listing on Etsy for 1 page of website design. This got me thinking... I started a bit of an Etsy search and found a local Portland woman and contacted her, asked her for a quote on making me a new site.

I like the idea of working with another creative entrepreneur, not necessarily an established website design business, but another person like myself that lives in Portland and is following her passion. The concept is so much more about mutually beneficial business than just services rendered.

And wow - it worked! I have a site that I love and it promotes my work in focus.

Martha J Baker is the name of the woman, and she is a great website architect. Thank you Martha!

My Experience at the HelloEtsy Conference

2011-09-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a global event held by Etsy bringing together small business owners to discuss human scale economies.

Human scale Economies:
a place where prosperity is measured not in dollars but in happiness and durability.

There were conferences with livestream broadcasting in Berlin, Germany, Booklyn, NY, Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, Washington, D.C., and here in Portland, OR.

Want to hear about my experience? Here we go.

I spent all of Saturday at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, attending seminars and watching streamed broadcasts of talks in other parts of the world. It was a great opportunity to connect with my peers, learn skills to find new success.

The first message of the day still ringing in my ears came from speaker Jack Joyce, the CEO of Rogue Ales:

I am not selling a product. I am selling a part of a journey, a ticket to the game.

He kept telling us it was all about repeatable stories. And all day long I was struck by the importance of repeatable stories. Every speaker seemed to add punch and glory to their presentations by having some good repeatable stories. Every successful business mentioned was brought up via a notable story. Stories play such a valuable role in our lives as small business owners: they put a face on our brand, they make us memorable and they serve as a catalyst for conversation.

I love a good story, and it made so much sense to me the role that repeatable stories play in incredible branding and professional success. And Jack tells a great story! He is very funny and I love listening to him talk about his business. Rogue Ales is an amazing local business, the list of things they are involved in is a mile long and never ceases to amaze me. One thing he mentioned that struck me:

Rogue Ales has never made any attempt to grow bigger, they have just worked to get better.

This message was repeated throughout the day, both in Portland and Berlin. A message about making your business better.

The keynote speaker at the Berlin conference, Chad Dickerson, the CEO of Etsy, was streamed online and after lunch we all watched it together in the commons of PNCA. He spoke about Courage.

When he was asked by an audience member what to do when courage fails you, his response was to get up out of bed each day and think how can I make it better today. He emphasized it was all about the small steps to make it better.

Again the message was not about how to grow our businesses, but rather, how to work harder to make them better. And I must say, it was his repeatable stories that made him personable and fun to watch. Here it is if you would like to check it out:

Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

It was clear throughout the day that the most successful businesses are owned by extremely passionate people. I know for sure that my enthusiasm for my work is what keeps me going. And seriously, persistence is key.

The keynote speakers here in Portland were the owners of Stumptown Coffee and QueenBee Creations. Both companies have grown recently and I've head about it thru media outlets like Facebook. Both companies needed more money and the paths they each chose were very different. Stumptown took on investors and was shredded in the press for doing so. QueenBee also faced needing more money and considered investors, but in the end decided to shrink her business in order to maintain growth.

Want more details than that? Are you a fan of Stumptown and QueenBee and interested in hearing more? Hear it from their mouths directly, here's a video of the talk:

Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

Back to my experience at the conference... the last session I attended was led by Jackie Peterson, author of "Better Smarter Richer", a great book that serves to help creative small business owners make more money.

Jackie informed us her middle name is "Raise Your Prices" and she likes to tell her clients to do so. Her philosophy on what makes a successful artist wealthy centered around developing a deep and narrow niche. I love this venn diagram she uses to illustrate how we could work to make our businesses better:

She spoke about the pressures and stress of the "Time/Money Squeeze". I swear she pounded the nail right on the head. So many artists like myself have a lot of passion and talent but with the growth of our businesses we experience a serious time/money squeeze. Her answer: develop a very specific deep and narrow niche and set measurable monthly goals, structure your time to meet these goals, and finally Charge More! Remember this is Jackie Raise-Your-Prices Peterson talking here. Words of the wise. She kept re-iterating and illustrating the value of working your business into this very deep and narrow niche.

Can I share a repeatable story that Jackie used in her presentation?

A client of hers, Amy McAuley of Occulus Fine Carpentry, came to Jackie one day for a meeting and told her she had decided to get rid of all her power tools. This seemed shocking, for a struggling professional woodworker to ditch all of her power tools, but she explained to Jackie that she had decided to focus her business on historic window restoration and learning the traditional techniques to do so. In focusing her work on windows created before the introduction of power tools, Amy McAuley had found a incredibly deep and specific niche for her business. This niche was so deep and specific, that within the next few years she became a renowned and sought after historic preservationist and now her business is thriving.

A deep and specific niche. This is what Jackie Raise-Your-Prices Peterson was all about. This niche is the intersection of a great amount of talent, passion and money. Evidently if we want to raise our prices, we need to declare to the world our professional deep and specific niche.

I found this very interesting. I took more notes in Jackie's session than anything else all day. And she has a free online book - check it out (its basically the presentation I attended)

http://www.bettersmarterricher.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/BetterSmarterRicher-free-ebook.pdf

Okay... so this is a very long blog entry, but hey, if you didn't get to attend the conference, or you felt like hearing what I had to say about my experience there... this is it!

Throughout the day I got to revel in my creative community of small business owners. Exchange stories and ideas and create a list of things that I want to do to better my business and nurture my relationships within this community.

videos of some of the talks are available here:

http://www.etsy.com/community/online-labs

and a final quote from one the speakers in Brooklyn, Bill McKibben:

"Community is the key to physical survival in our environmental predicament, and also to human satisfaction."

Easels

2011-09-06T18:34:00.001-07:00

Pictured here is my beloved easel. Its pretty old and needs a little tender loving care, but its a great easel and has sentimental value for me. Even though I haven't used it in a few years, I can't bring myself to give it away. So I think I will weather-coat it and keep it outside. Damn thing is big and awkward. Hard to get through doorways and takes up a lot of space in a room. I have moved with it many times over the years and curse its awkwardness, but hey, my Dad made it, and I am an artist, so what can I do but consider myself lucky.

Years ago when I was in highschool and my brother had gone away to college, our Dad, woodworker extraordinaire, took up the challenge of making a good easel. You see, my brother had decided to minor in fine arts in college and so I think my dad was making this gift, you know, to support his son's choices an' all!

My Dad is an engineer, so he had to make up some plans and try out some ideas with a prototype. As I was the little sister still living at home, I got to test out the prototype! I was taking a lot of art classes at the time at the CIA, so this was a great opportunity! In the end, for some reason my Dad never made the finished easel, this one was the beginning and the end of his efforts in easel making. So I was pretty pleased to keep it for myself!

So that is the story. Love you Dad :) still have the easel and its still wonderful. Thanx.

Variables in the Experiments

2011-08-07T21:34:00.000-07:00

I finally had an empty kiln available to do experiments over the weekend! I wanted to control all the variables and see the effects of changing the temperature the glass melts thru the screen...

3 major things seem to effect the melts: time, temp and quantity.

So I kept the quantity of glass the same and the time it was held at the melting temp was also kept constant. What I changed was the temperature. This caused all sorts of variations: the roundness of the shape, the amount of bubbles in the melt, the patterns of color in the clear glass and the thickness of the finished piece.

The experiments continue... I just thought I'd share what came out of the kiln this weekend...

from left to right:
1700 degrees F
1600 degrees F
1500 degress F

Momma said don't play with fire

2011-08-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Auction at the Museum of Glass

2011-08-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend I attended the gala fund-raising event of the year at the Tacoma Museum of Glass. It is called the Red Hot Summer Party & Auction. A collaborative piece that I worked on with Dennis McConnell was in the silent auction. The museum invites the artists to this event, and Dennis could not go, so I drove up to Tacoma on Saturday to represent for the two of us. This year the work was juried and we had the chance to win some amazing prizes, as in a week in the Museum hot shop with their team and their equipment and they foot the bill (amazing!!) and I think there was a $10,000 prize as well. We didn't win, but it was an honor to have my efforts displayed in such good company! And some lucky bidder got to take our piece home with him.
The event was a wild and luxurious. The glass artwork on display was awe-inspiring. So many of my favorite artists had work in the auction and so many of the patrons of the museum came dressed in tuxes and gowns. I hope it was a successful night for the museum, as I know they raise a good deal of their annual budget at this particular event. But regardless it was pretty amazing. I felt under-dressed. I had somehow missed the memo that I should show up in my most fancy attire. Luckily I did dress up, and I clean up pretty well, but I felt embarrassed non-the-less. Although honestly many of the artists were not dressed in their finest. In fact it made it sorta easy to assume who was an artist and who was there to shop. :) My first thought when I saw all the formal evening wear was that I had missed my chance to really dress up.

If you'd like to sorta see what it was like, there is a video online from a live stream done by Team Photogenic, its long, go to 33min to see the best couple minutes of the whole thing.

Watch live streaming video from seenliveattheredhotsummerparty at livestream.com

While I wanted to take pictures of the people and their formal outfits, instead I was snapping shots of the amazing glass.

The flowers above, made by Kari Russell-Pool were inspired by dalias in a Tacoma garden. When I look at this piece I can't help by gasp at the thought of what it must feel like to assemble this vase! Wow! I love the detail of this vase.

This cocktail set made me swoon. I want it. I can't afford it. I love it. Someone lucky now owns this amazingly perfect set.

All in all it was a fantastic night. A lot of driving, very humbling, excellent food at the dinner and the best part was a presentation about the Museum's "Kids and Glass" program. I hope to blog more about this program soon...

I took more pictures as well... they are on flickr... lots of shots of the glass installations outside the museum as well, I put them up on Flickr

Slumped Melted Glass

2011-07-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite experiment so far... the results are all mine! I will keep it and eat out of it and cherish this. Some things are meant to be kept and this is why I love successful experiments! Its kind of heavy, dunno if I can fix that in future melts. I have some theories to try. They simply turn out very thick. Lets just say they are super sturdy :)
This bowl was made from scrap, melted thru a screen, cooked into a good looking circle and then slumped into a mold. Voila. My new bowl.

Draped Melted Glass

2011-07-25T23:13:00.000-07:00

First I melted a pile of glass scraps thru a screen to form a round flat puddle.

Then I re-fused the glass (to level out any bubbles that had come to the surface and popped which leaves sharp edges).

Finally I draped the glass over a metal milk shake container to obtain this sort of ripply vase effect...

I thought it would make a nice lamp shade (although its small, maybe 8" around and only 6" tall) because it looks incredible when its lit up like this... allows all the swirls and ripples in the color to pop...

So I went to Ikea and perused the lights, I thought I'd find something to take the shade off and use this instead (maybe drill a hole in the center of the glass to put a light fixture thru) but no luck. Very disappointing. But I didn't walk out totally sad, instead I purchased some striped fabric covered hat boxes and a few over-sized glass canning jars for other irrelevant craft purposes... Next I will check out the Re-Building Center, as they might have something older and unique that would fit the bill.

The scrap melting adventure continues!

Smile

2011-07-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

All the Apparatus

They call themselves "Avante-garde dirty gypsy klezmer jazz indie anti-folk rock!"

This band plays almost every weekend lately down by Ankeny Fountain. Street music at its best! I can hear them from where I am selling my artwork at the Portland Saturday Market, they make my mobiles dance (and maybe me too!). This Saturday I flagrantly abandoned my booth to take this video. Luckily I have good neighbors to make sales for me while I was gone :) Thanks!

They make me smile.

Pictures from the Glass School

2011-07-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

its a slideshow - press play

Aquila Glass School

1628 N Columbia Blvd, Unit A - Portland, OR 97217

This is where I teach torchworking classes - look how much fun people are having! I love this place.

Melting Scrap Glass into Art

2011-07-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

Meet my new kiln tool - its called a screen melt system. Basically you melt glass thru the screen and it puddles in the form below. My new friend Steve made this for me, its awesome and I have been having fun experimenting with it.
The idea is simple: melt glass thru the screen and the right balance of clear and color will create chaotic patterns in the finished puddle of glass. I have hundreds of pounds of scrap glass accumulating and this screen melt system could be a way of transforming it into beautiful art.

Here's what I've been doing in my kiln experiments...

- first I weigh out the glass so that the scrap used will equal the volume I want in the finished puddle (I have been using about 800grams to make a 9"plate)

- then I transfer this scrap onto the screen in the kiln (I have prepped the screen by laying fiber blanket against the steel of the form that the glass melts into and along the kiln shelf (so that final puddle will not stick to anything)

- then I melt the glass, using a program that cooks the glass at 1600degrees Fahrenheit

- once its cold and cleaned off the scrap has transformed into a puddle!

Here are my first three melts, I think they are beautiful.

I have been learning a lot along the way. These experiments will probably turn into bowls in my kitchen.

the View from the Shop

2011-07-05T11:58:00.001-07:00

The shop where I teach is in North Portland in an old train barn on Columbia Blvd.

There are three key things that I associate with my commute to work:

the train (I love the colors and shapes of the graffiti and train cars)
the smell of cookies (there is a Kraft (used to be Nabisco) plant a few blocks from the shop)
the view of Mt Hood

The train always honks as it goes by the shop (there are 3 bridges it passes underneath, so they all honk 3 times). There is a lot of industry around the shop that uses these trains, as they head to and from the big ports on the river. They only thing I do not like about the trains is when they honk just as I am opening the front door - this makes me jump and I think they do so just to see my reaction! Its loud!

The cookie factory is always pumping out cookies and crackers, they make Oreos and Wheat Thins. When the insanely wonderful smell of chocolate wafts in the breeze my brain always says "brownies!" - I used to think they must be making brownie mix in that factory, but I have since learned it is the chocolate cookies for Oreos! And what I thought was the intoxicating smell of Vanilla Wafers in the making, is the vanilla cream stuffing for the Oreos. Yum. One day I hope to get a tour of this factory. Oh yes I do!

Best of all though (does it get better than the smell of cookies?!) is the sight of Mt. Hood. The view is amazing from Columbia Blvd. She glows majestically, perfectly framed by trees around the road. I always want to snap pictures, a few days ago I couldn't resist as the sun was setting and the mountain looked so amazing. That is the photo above.

The view of Mt. Hood has always been a present factor in my work as a glass artist. The first shop space I rented was in a barn up on Mt Hood. I rented there for a couple of years. Learning to snow board in the winter and enjoying the cold rivers in the summer were integral parts of working on Mt. Hood. It was an awesome way of working as a glass artist. And now I will always have this positive association with the view of Mt. Hood.

In my garage studio at home I made a painting of Mt. Hood and hung it behind an old window (there's a wall that I thought should have a window and so I put a fake one there!).

Inspiration: Plant Starts

2011-06-25T00:24:00.000-07:00

A great use for my Handmade Glass Lolipop Vase - a little sprig of your favorite plant!

Put in water or sand, give love, water and sunshine... watch it grow!

Kiln Glass Resource Centers

2011-06-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

Let the glass flow...

Last night I had the awesome opportunity to join a group of artists at the Bullseye Glass Company to discuss KGRC. That would stand for Kiln Glass Resource Centers. Everyone is in town for BeCon and Bullseye generously hosted a meet n' greet round table event for the owners of Kiln Glass Resource Centers. We had a great discussion - I have so many new ideas now! And it was great to meet so many incredible people. Nathan Sandberg gave us a great presentation about achieving movement in fused glass. It was called "Going with the flow" and featured the work Bullseye did with artist Jun Kaneko. Really inspiring. I am drawn to movement in artwork and this presentation was all about causing motion in the glass with your kiln forming process. Very interesting.

Bullseye has a class that Nathan teaches for this technique

Pendleton Woolen Mill Party

2011-06-13T10:17:00.001-07:00

Friday was the big international Craft Party - Erin and I went to the Pendleton Woolen Mill to check out their festivities - what fun! Awesome party favors, lots of woolen needle felting - I made a bookmark, there were also stations to make felted soap, felted wrist cuffs, and felted banners.

Also it was a great opportunity to shop! For one thing, in the picture above, the gallery space we were crafting in is use to showcase Pendleton blankets and tapestries. There are a number of tapestries that were designed by famous artists and a portion of the proceeds from sales from these tapestries goes to the Pendleton Native American Scholarship Fund. AND these tapestries are on sale now! It seems they are converting the space into a gallery for their blanket inventory. The sale is huge. Some are only $99! I may not have the details entirely correct, but seriously, there are some amazing deals going on!

I meanwhile shopped for wool. Visions of a set of woolen blankets sewn into a sleeping bag of sorts guided me through the aisles at the mill. The night before I went camping with Tim and we froze our butts off with three blankets on an air-mattress. All night I had wakeful dreams of wool blankets to keep us warm. Even better - a woolen sleeping bag the size of a queen airmattress! Oh yeah baby. So there I was at Pendleton, shopping for wool for this project. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg, and I don't mind getting crafty. There are remnants that they sell at $5/lbs, which I thought I'd felt (so they are thick and soft) and then sew together like a patchwork quilt. Then I saw there were entire bolts of a few old patterns that were 80%OFF. That made some of them only $12/yard. Holy crap! So I bought 4 yards of 60" wide Pendleton Wool for only $12/yard. Shocking.

This Friday is THE Craft Party!

2011-06-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

Hey Portland friends - you are invited to the Craft Party!!

There are events at the Museum of Contemporary Craft as well as the Pendleton Woolen Mill

Heres a schedule to get you pumped!

Friday, June 10

Open Craft Activities: 11 am–6 pm
Regular Museum admission ($3 adults)
Craft Party at the Pendleton Woolen Mill: 2 pm–5:30 pm
Etsy sellers bring your business cards!
Craft Party: 7 pm–10 pm
Sliding Scale Donation ($5–$25; Age 21+ only)
Museum of Contemporary Craft
724 NW Davis Street
Portland, OR 97209
Benefitting Quilts for Quake Survivors and Mercy Corps' Japan Relief Fund

Etsy's at it again! I Heart Art: Portland and Museum of Contemporary Craft host an all-day celebration and an evening party in Portland as part of Etsy's Worldwide Craft Party. We've teamed up with the Quilts for Quake Survivors project and Mercy Corps' Japan Relief Fund to reach out beyond our community and raise money to help those in dire need through our own crafty ways.

Daytime
Drop by the Museum during regular hours, 11 am to 6 pm, and craft in the Lab all day long (regular admission applies). Help sew quilts for the Quilts for Quake Survivors project or choose from three different crafting stations: embroidery, Japanese-style papercutting or a Mighty Ugly project.
See the I Heart Art: Portland blog post for details on the daytime schedule.
If you'd like to participate during the day, please RSVP on the Meetup.com page. The tickets available for purchase through this page are for the evening party only.

Visit the Pendleton Woolen Mill from 2-5:30pm and get a tour, play with the woolen craft products, view some pieces from the archives and network with other craft artists.

Evening
At 7:00 pm, the doors will open back up to the Museum and the real party will start! We're taking over the entire space with complete with food, beer and wine, a DJ, and even more crafting stations. Your door donation will get you an entry into the drawing for a whole slew of crafty prizes (books, gift certificates, handmade goods and more!), some food and beverage tickets, and a lot of crafty fun!
Throughout the evening you can rotate through hand-felting, origami, hand-weaving, and make your own crafty artist trading cards. The quilts made for the project will be on display, and Modern Domestic will have them available for sale and sell raffle tickets.
Is your head spinning yet?! This is going to be the biggest, craftiest and most awesome craft party Etsy has ever seen! Plus all proceeds will go to Mercy Corps' Japan Relief Fund, so you can get your craft on and feel good about giving back to those in dire need of help.
Learn more about the QfQ Project and Mercy Corps' Japan Relief Fund.

Im gonna Craft Party for sure. Friday is looking to be a super fun filled day! Who wants to join me!

Farmers Market Trip

2011-05-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

This year for my birthday I want to encourage myself to cook at home more.

A trip to the farmers market = challenge to use everything we bought!

I've already washed and marinated the asparagus, put away all the greens, parsley in water, basil turned into pesto, radishes left to soak in cold water, steaks de-frosting for bbq action and cookies and baguette will be consumed before the end of the day.

Speed Dating for Artists Round II: Visual Artists and Galleries

2011-05-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

Last night was the second IHeartArt:Portland Mixer event. I would say I was there as a volunteer, but I didn't really do much work. :) I was there as an IHeartArt representative, to enjoy the atmosphere and network with everyone.
This event is really incredible: a free opportunity for established gallery curators to interview artists - a free opportunity for these artists to introduce themselves to the curators.
Its a "speed dating" event - replace single people looking for a hot date with artists looking for exposure.
I felt this nurturing energy around the crowd; everyone wanting to encourage each other and network with one-another. The picture above is a couple of the artists waiting to get interviewed and talking with each other about their portfolios.
There was a seminar recently (also organized by IHeartArt) on how artists should approach galleries and shops. Attending artists learned about what a curator might be looking for in a presentation, and then for this event there was a set of requirements for what the artists should bring with them. It was a well organized and smooth running event. Over 40 artists interviewed with 16 curators.
The artists seemed exhausted but exhilarated by the end of the event, and had many possible avenues to follow up with. And all the curators I spoke with afterwards were very enthusiastic about wanting to work with the artists they had met.
All the curators seemed to have a common sentiment that it was outstanding to meet so many artists they had never heard of. And they each had a handful of names that stuck out of artists that really made a great first impression.
Speed dating for artists - Portland Oregon style!
I really adore this concept and I appreciate all the hard work and care that goes into these events. IHeartArt is all about advocating for artists, educating the local community and providing the networking opportunities that make our passions grow into lucrative adventures.

Thanks IHeartArt for another great event!

If you want to read about my experience at last years IHeartArt Mixer:

http://leahglass.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-heart-art-mixer-recap.html

Watch a video about the IHeartArt Mixer:

http://leahglass.blogspot.com/2010/10/sweet-video-about-iheartart-event.html

Find out more about IHeartArt:

http://iheartartpdx.com/

Snaily Snail

2011-05-14T19:13:00.001-07:00

The mini glass globe fun continues! I went to the pet store and stocked up on some knowledge, and some aquatic life to put in my tiny glass globes. Snails and plants that can live together, a nice relationship really: the plant causes algae to grow and the snail eats the algae and keeps the glass clean. The snail also eats this particular plant, so it won't starve, rest assured! So hopefully I've created a micro-ecosystem.

Actually I've created 2 micro-ecosystems so far, the one pictured above sits on table like a tiny fish bowl, the other one (in the video below) hangs and is more tear drop shaped. My little experiments. We'll see if the snails survive and make babies! Who knows, someone asked me if they will crawl out of the globes. I have no idea? So I keep checking to make sure they are still in there :)

For sure they are super cute! I find watching them move to be really fun. Go figure. Here is a video for your viewing pleasure - proof these snails are alive (as opposed to glass snails, which I could make, that would be cute as well...)

Sheer Potential

2011-05-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

I have been making mobiles of glass jars. The jars are things I have made, blowing the forms using a torch. Each one is just a little bit different. They are simple round shapes with round openings, no flat bottoms. They do not sit on a table - they float! I wrap a bit of steel wire around the lip of the jar and attach a swivel. When you touch one (which how can you help but touch that enticing glass globe and wonder what you can put inside!) it dances in response to your fingers!
You can put anything inside the jars in this mobile - that is why I called this piece "Sheer Potential" - the content is all yours. You could put little words written on paper, love notes and inspiration. Or small feathers or flowers you picked up on a walk. The glass washes out easily, its made of Pyrex glass, so it is not a problem to wash it out (although it is attached to a mobile). Here are some more ideas: plants, snails, moss, feathers, small toys, fake flowers, shells, plastic animals, sparkly things, jewelry, small candles (you could pour wax in there and put little wicks and make them candles!), LED lights, used computer chips, sewing notions, bobbins, buttons... oh my. I'm getting carried away. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of different objects in the jars, today I am going to the pet store in search of a snail to put in a jar :)

I love these shapes and how they hang in the air waiting for interaction. This is a very impressionable mobile! Not only does it move if you blow at the pieces or touch them, it holds whatever you think of putting in the three little jars. Reflection and interaction - a lovely little bit of art to share with the world. Thanks for checking it out :)

"Sheer Potential" mobile on Etsy

New: Hanging Lolipop Vase

2011-05-13T11:34:00.001-07:00

Check out these new hanging creations I have been making - now you can buy them in my Etsy shop! (they come with a 3M sticky bit that will hold up this vase just about anywhere indoors)

I make the little glass jars, using a torch I blow the glass. Each one is unique, small subtle eccentricities... but really they are all the same, small simple vases. I think they are just scrumptious! I wrap a bit of steel wire around the lip and attach a swivel so it will dance.

Round little spheres, with round openings... you can put plants in them (they are just the right size for a little starter plant or a small cactus or a lump of moss) or other living things (like a tiny snail in water!), or little trinkets, keepsakes and mementos... a button, a key, a coin, a feather...

Your imagination is the limit! I have them in my Etsy shop now, and I'll bring em' with me to the Portland Saturday Market as well...

Making Mobiles

2011-05-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

Love...

2011-05-12T00:23:00.000-07:00

I love this picture. Love. Something about the round bump of moss in the round hanging jar. While doing a photo shoot this afternoon I took this shot... I have been making more vessels, for terrariums and such things... simple forms, some don't even have a flat bottom, so they can only hang.
I've been thinking about making mobiles using these hanging vessels... I ordered some nano Marino balls to put in the vessels - I will tell you more about that when they come. Until then, check this mobile out! I put some preserved moss that is bright red in a little jar and made some glass panels and voila - a sweet little mobile! The most enchanting part about this mobile is that it is very interactive... if you touch the jar it spins so easily, and if you blow at the glass discs the whole mobile moves.
This last picture is just a bit more eye candy from taking photos today. I love these jars. Sitting or hanging, they are just the sweetest little things. So simple, so happy, so much potential.

Moss Ball Planters

2011-05-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

Spring has sprung. I saw these plants in moss pots in a store recently (at Artemisia in SE Portland) and I was inspired!

Anything round and ball shaped seems to excite me, combined with moss and cute plants - I swooned upon sight.

These two moss ball planters I made myself. It was a fun DIY project. Tim's birthday is coming up soon - so far I have managed to hide these from him. Hope he likes em'!

Ingredients:

a plant (or a clipping as seen in the first picture)
some sheet moss (live moss, you can buy it this way, if you get it out of your yard it will have bugs. So just buy it and it'll be bug free. I happened to notice some animal pried up moss in my yard and ate all the bugs out of it, so I grabbed it the next day for this crafty project! How convenient eh?! If you'd like to buy some, they sell the moss at Artemisia and if you want to buy it online Im pretty sure you can on Ebay)
potting soil
twine
nursery wire (smallest gauge possible), the green flexible wire for guiding plants

How to:

wet soil and compress into a ball
wrap the ball of dirt in twine to hold it together
wrap the ball of dirt in the sheet moss
use the wire to hold the moss onto the dirt, keep wrapping until the moss is secure
make a hole where you want to insert the plant (I used my fingers to do this)
put plant in the hole
sit the ball on some sort of plate as the moisture can seep thru the moss

Lets Make Buttons

2011-05-03T19:16:00.001-07:00

My mother had a basket of buttons with her sewing supplies. I used to love looking at them all, savoring all the little details and differences between them. Did your Mother or Grandmother have a button collection? I have one of my own now, and my collection is made even more amazing by all the handmade glass buttons I have made. A couple summers ago I created a dress that used one of these buttons as a simple clasp on the back of the neckline. It made the dress even more impressive. I've also made some purses that used glass buttons... and a little sock monkey with handmade button eyes... I'm always looking for fun ways to use these buttons.

Want to make some glass buttons of your own? I'll teach you!

Do you make clothing or know a designer who would like to use handcrafted buttons? Do you want to take your craft to the next level with some handmade buttons? They could embellish a purse or a book cover or a handmade doll... They could be the perfect finishing touch on some clothing! Why use store bought mass manufactured buttons when you could make your own! The potential is endless.

There is no pre-requisite for the class.

No experience necessary.

Yes you will play with fire.

No you will not hurt yourself.

I promise you'll have a great time!

Call 503 240-9449 (the Aquila Glass School) to sign up for class

registration is required

May 9th 2011 . Glass Button Making Class . 6-8pm . $124

(all materials and tools provided)

my weekend...

2011-04-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

I had a great weekend full of hikes and glass and spring flowers.

Friday Tim and I took off for Bagby Hotsprings and hiked out in the rain (it was really wet). I've been aching to get out into the woods - the rain couldn't stop me!

The primitive old site has received some serious renovations care of the Forest Service Job Corps Conservation Center. All the old rotting wood was removed and replaced; the bathhouses, the plumbing from the spring, the outhouses and the soaking tubs were all new. The place smelled of steaming hot cedar wood. Gorgeous.

There is nothing that I find more divine than soaking in natural hotsprings out in old growth forests with the pitter patter of cold rain on my face.
The next day I worked at home for a bit and found myself gazing out the window at my blooming flowers... so grabbed my camera and my ladder and went on a photoshoot.

My magnolia tree is in full form... the blossoms remind me of tea cups.

I got out my ceramic kid tea set to use as props in photos. Then I saw my next door neighbor's daughter playing out in the yard, so I invited her over for an impromptu tea party.

We drank imaginary tea, we ate the last few girlscout cookies that I had hidden in the freezer, and we made a mini mobile (she had one of my kits that she brought over to have me help her)

I had to take some pictures of this spontaneous fun. She thought it was pretty odd that we were drinking imaginary tea, but she totally approved when I busted out the thin mints. I really love how her mobile turned out! What a work of art! Its really fun to see how kids react to this kit and make such unique little sculptures.
Finally today, Sunday, I taught a bead making class to some happy ladies that all bought my Groupon coupon. Good stuff. We had a blast.

It was an early afternoon class, and good thing considering today it was full on beautiful outside. SUN! So I went home and sat under my magnolia tree with my computer and edited photos.

I took so many pictures in the last three days, I had to just put a slide-show here so you can see them if you'd like to... although I was a bit inept when making this slide-show, so it just goes on and on... stop it when you've had enough :)

A Little Video

2011-04-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

my Groupon experience

2011-04-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

I buy coupons on Groupon.com all the time. For some reason when I see a sweet deal on this website my brain says "why not?!" and I click the purchase button. They are so cheap and its such a great excuse to go out and do something I might have wanted to do.

Now I am as close as I'm gonna get to the seller end of the deal... its not my Groupon per say, but the studio where I teach that is selling a Groupon today. And its for a class that I will get paid to teach, so this is the closest I will ever get to the business end of Groupon - usually I am a buyer of these coupons! This is my big 5 minutes of fame being the seller.

Its pretty exciting selling a Groupon. I am a fan of the company. Brilliant business-model really. They basically take 50% of all money they make selling coupons (the other 50% goes to the vendor - although the deal is not actually as clean as that, but to make a long story short, we'll just call it 50/50). And they sell A LOT of coupons, so really, they make a good deal of money. In February of 2011 Groupon did $62 million in sales, in one month.

Evidently the owner was offered a buy-out deal from Google to the tune of 6 billion dollars, and he turned it down because he still has more vision for what he wants to do with the company. That makes me curious. This is a business-model that cannot protect themselves from being copied and there are already good competitors out there, in fact they have bought a lot of their competitors along the way.

While Groupon continues to grow wildly and make an insane amount of money quickly, it is not a great fit for many small businesses.

On Wiki the example they give for a failed Groupon is a coffee shop in Portland that was inundated with thousands of Groupon customers on the first day of selling the coupon and they simply could not handle the traffic. Wiki also sites that Gap sold over 400,000 Groupon coupons and their server crashed at the influx of traffic. Incredible.

However there are businesses that benefit from Groupon. Take for example the Oregon Coast Aquarium that is usually kinda empty, lots of nice volunteers waiting around just hoping to get to talk to a visitor. Well they just sold a Groupon that will get 50,000 visitors thru their doors in the next year. That is 50,000 people enjoying the Newport Aquarium that might not have otherwise, they will shop at the giftstore and eat in the cafeteria. Not to mention the amazing fact that Groupon sold more than $120,000 worth of coupons for the Aquarium in 2 days. I think its pretty incredible.

On the flip side, some businesses really don't think it thru and end up selling a coupon that costs them heavily. Say for instance a restaurant that sells an $8 coupon, they sell 1,500 of them on Groupon, making them $6000 (which they will get in 3 chunks of $2000 over the course of the year) but now they have to make and sell $24,000 worth of product. That is a lot of product for a restaurant to sell for only $6k. They will lose money on this deal, between their cost of supplies and staff, there is no way around this heavy loss. In fact, I kinda feel guilty buying restaurant Groupons. All I gotta say is if you do, tip heavily and buy a few cocktails when using a restaurant Groupon. For realz. I don't know why a small business-owner restaurateur would possible sell a Groupon. But they seem to get talked into it all the time. What I think is that they just don't realize how many will sell, they don't crunch the numbers, and they don't do their research. Groupon claims the biggest draw back for small businesses like this is not being able to deal with the flood of business they will drive your way. Perhaps businesses don't believe them when they say that.

Okay, before I start rambling on and on, my point is this - the Aquila Glass School is selling a Groupon for a beadmaking class. We crunched the numbers, we learned from our first Groupon (it was for a Fusing class which Don thought might sell a few dozen then 1,300 sold in reality!) and now we are at it with a bead class. If all goes well I will have a thousand or so new students in my classes over the next year. Lots of full classes and more future glass addicted crafters. For the studio it is a good thing.

Library at the Hong Kong International School

2011-03-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

This beautiful library is in Hong Kong - the designer had me make these custom mobiles for their new space at the Hong Kong International School.
I worked with Matt, of Ekko Mobiles, to have the steel frames made - these mobiles are each about 8feet in diameter and there are four of them in the library.

Airplants in Glass

2011-03-28T09:18:00.000-07:00

If you would like one of these - I listed more in my shop online!

Check it out

Happy Thoughts...

2011-03-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

Today I've been book-keeping. This is one of my least favorite business tasks. So I procrastinated this morning by making up these beautiful terrariums with my glass bits... after loading up a handful of vessels with pebbles and charcoal and dirt I stopped to take a picture...
Funny how the glass steams up pretty quick in my photo studio - the bright lights are hot!
I bought this new little succulent at the nursery. "Baby tears" or sumthin like that... it makes white flowers and has lots of tiny little bits tightly packed together. I thought this might look pretty neat, I look forward to seeing how it evolves.
I got out my little orange glass mushrooms, I had to play with these - they are so damn cute!
They might disappear under the plant as it grows, but they look so happy!
This last one I didn't put any glass bits, no mushrooms or nuthin, just a bit of plant. It just seemed so content as it was.
So I had a good time making and photographing my little creations. Then I attacked my accounting.

A little crafting to keep my spirits up.

Stress Management: How To?

2011-03-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

There is always stress to manage in life, like stacking stones. Stress and then more stress, and more stress on top of that. I love my life and thoroughly enjoy my business and my work - but I am no exception - life is stressful.

My #1 stress management technique is to eliminate all possible sources of stress, but really this has proven to be an inadequate plan of attack. Seriously. Cuz it is not possible.

Stress must be invited into my life occasionally in order to keep taking on new challenges... this year I applied to a host of big shows for my artwork, hoping for the best for my little business.

I was rejected (or wait-listed) from every show I applied to. When last year I was accepted to anything I tried! The plan was to build on my success and added confidence from 2010 and bring my glass artwork to even more shows in 2011. Evidently this is not going to happen. I am trying to roll with the punches, and I feel beaten. C'est la vie. I am busy with many other projects and plans, but its depressing none-the-less.

Heres my personal take on stress. I need to learn better techniques to learn to manage it. Anxiety and panic are unwelcome attendees in my personal and business life. Seems awkwardly overly personal to share like this on my blog - but hey - its honest, and its me. Lately I feel depressed and this is why. Rejection. Blah. Stress. Yuck.

my Personal Top 5 Sources of Stress:

success/failure
rejection
money
time management
general shenanigans

My Top 5 Stress Relief Techniques:

sex
yoga and/or meditaion
making artwork, getting crafty
hanging out with friends
exercise

Looking at stressful things from another perspective can help sometimes too... its a guarantee that there are many ways I could be far more stressed than I already am, and I am thankful for the advantages of my little life, but this gratitude does not alleviate my stress. Depression is a very self-absorbed state of mind.

How do you manage your stress? As an artist, as a human, as a significant other, a friend, a business-owner... how do we do it! What causes us all this stress and how do we make that misery manageable... how do you do it? I want to learn more.

Walking the Rim

2011-03-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from a recent collaborative piece - "Little Women" - my studio mate Dennis McConnell made this beautiful glass "saturn" bowl and he asked me to make ladies to attach to the bowl. The bowl is 22" in diameter and the little ladies I made are less than 2" tall.
Some of the ladies are walking around, some are sitting... there is one that is trying to pull another out of the hole in the middle.
They are very simple, these little ladies, but I enjoy the detail in the animation that is achievable. I like to make them doing things, seems to add a human character, a humor value.

There is one lady that is waving to another lady... a couple of ladies are looking over the edge and one lady is sitting on the bottom looking at the lady that is trying to scramble out of the hole...

Thanks Dennis for asking me to collaborate with you!

Colors of the Caribbean Sea

2011-03-11T17:52:00.000-08:00

This was a happy commission... a mobile the colors of the Caribbean Sea. I put one small bright yellow disc, like the glorious sun beaming down on the warm sand... the curves of the beams in this mobile remind me of waves lapping at the shore, with glass the colors of crystal blue ocean water.
Once while in Belize I stayed in a place that had a long white pier with wooden chairs on the beach outside out little rented home. This is my idea of a great view.

Before I left for this trip I had a dream, I was on a beach staying in a purple hut on stilts right on the ocean. Sort of like a cartoon. Sure enough we flew down to Belize, caught a bus out to the beach (the buses there are brightly painted re-purposed old yellow school buses pumping reggae music) and while wandering around to find a place to stay, there were these huts on stilts, built in rows on the beach, painted perfectly purple. We had to stay there!

The little dock on the ocean was also part of these purple beach houses. We sat on those chairs for a few hours that first day and burnt our Portland-white-kid-white-white-skin. Unfortunately the sand flies seemed to think these beach houses were as cool as I did, the ocean breeze coming in the window at night also brought the sand flies. So we only stayed there one night, my friend got eaten alive all night by the tiny nearly invisible pests (they thought his blood was way tastier than mine) and the next day I found out the solution was rent a room that had air conditioning, the bugs didn't like the cold.

It as only one night, but a great story I think, purple huts on stilts on the beach. In my dream it was something more of a funny purple house on stilts stranded on an otherwise empty island... Heres what they looked like in reality

Ironically, when I fired the discs for this mobile, one of the blue discs turned bright purple in the kiln (I had mislabeled a piece of unstruck glass). I quickly made a replacement that is a beautiful blue-green. The purple disc brought me back to fun memories in Belize.

A Day Made of Glass by Corning

2011-03-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

This video format is too wide for my silly blog... I dunno how to fix that, but its a neat watch. So enjoy!

come and get it

2011-03-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

I'm having a sale in my Etsy shop. A few choice mobiles are 20% off! Which ones? The best ones!!!

http://LeahPellegrini.Etsy.com

After appreciating my statistics on Craftopolis, I have decided to have a quick sale to show my appreciation. The 3 mobiles that stood out as distinctly popular in the "Etsy Shop Lovers" application, these mobiles I have put on sale. Its for a limited time only, while supplies last.

If you have wanted one, this is your big opportunity. The little minis that are on sale are FREE shipping as well. Holy moly I know I'm crazy - I just love sharing! The more glass mobiles I get out there into the world, the more smiles I have shared.

this made my day...

2011-03-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

I was invited to brunch on Saturday with some friends from I Heart Art:Portland and two Etsy employees visiting from Brooklyn, NY.

I brought some little gifts to give the Etsy ladies: some little mini mobiles and glittered nutz for their bikes. Couldn't help myself, I love meeting Etsy people.

As I handed a mobile to Kimm Alfonso, Events Coordinator for Etsy.com, she looked up at me and exclaimed "I've bought from your shop!"

Honestly - how great is that! We really had no idea of the connection until she saw my little mobile. I love to be known by my work. Makes me proud. The shared smiles, its awesome.

Thanks Kimm! It was great meeting you in person! (photo courtesy of Kimm Alfonso's facebook)

Craftopolis

2011-02-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

Okay Etsy sellers - do you know about Craftopolis?! I did not. Now I do. Now you do to.

I linked up my Etsy shop and my Google Analytics to this site and it came alive with info. Its hard to put words to how good it feels to look at Craftopolis and see that hundreds of people are looking and hearting my shop every day. Some days this month it has been thousands! What a pat on the back. I already knew this information, but somehow seeing it all laid out visually and politely made my eyes boggle. Somehow it all seemed so amazing. Makes me proud.

Go check it out for yourself. You do have to have your Google Analytics set up, but if you sell on Etsy and haven't done that yet, its a good thing to do.

Did I mention there is a "Batch Editing" function on Craftopolis. Oh yes. Batch editing (can you see me swooning). Say the cost of your materials goes up, log into craftopolis and you can adjust all your Etsy prices at once.

Craftopolis.com

I made Milk Liqueur

2011-02-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

Im so excited to show off my latest weird crafty project... making milk liqueur!

Evidently this is an old recipe that infuses Grappa with the tastes of sweet chocolate milk. Its a little scary, seems contradictory to my every notion of what not to do with milk. And Grappa - seriously?! I was really intrigued by this recipe because my father loves Grappa and I think its particularly foul! Evidently you can't even buy Grappa in most states (its like grain alcohol, but made of grape skins) - but Oregon not only sells Grappa, I found some that was locally made here in Portland! Usually you can only buy Italian Grappa and this imported product can be very pricey... the local product was much more cost effective. I could have used grain alcohol (for the really cheap version - and yes I can buy this in Oregon as well, there seems to be not limit to what kind of liver pickling booze Oregonians will sell ya) and I also could have substituted vodka for the Grappa. All the blog articles I read about making milk liqueur used vodka. I used Clear Creek Distillery Grappa.

Ingredients:

I used equal parts of

Grappa
sugar
whole milk

plus a few ounces of shaved 70% dark chocolate, half a lemon and a vanilla bean

Its pretty simple, you put it all in a clean jar and shake occasionally. This concoction sat on my kitchen counter for 10 days looking thick and strange. After filtered the ugly goop I ended up with a golden liqueur that tastes like milk chocolate for big girls. The best milk chocolate ever. Although its a sipper... a whole glass of this stuff would render me uselessly drunk and consume half of what I made! Instead I bottled it in these tiny little bottles. All I got out of a whole bottle of Grappa was four tiny bottles of liqueur. And it took SO LONG to filter. Good grief I went thru a whole box of coffee filters and a package of cheese cloth, filtering and re-filtering. But one drip at a time my golden liqueur slowly accumulated.

Wow its good. Surprisingly good. Although I don't know if I am patient enough to do this again. I am tempted to geek out and do a comparison between using a base of Grappa v. Vodka v. Everclear. But honestly all the filtering made me a little batty - and I find the smell of grappa to be pretty disgusting - it permeated the whole house while I was filtering for hours. But the taste is nothing like the smell. The taste is awesome. Chocolate milk for big girls. Oh yeah.

if you are as intrigued as I am - here are the blogs I read that got me started in this crafty quest

I'm not a quitter...

2011-02-25T14:12:00.000-08:00

As I sit here eating a breakfast sandwich that is oh so tastey, I am thinking about the Portland Saturday Market. Notice the bagel - its from Gabriel's Bakery here in PDX... he sells his baked goods at the PSM as well as all around town in grocery stores and whatnot. I met the baker that owns this company at the PSM years ago. He would set up a small tent down by the Burnside Bridge and sell his baked goods. My brother came home with a bag of his bagels one Saturday and we were amazed by how marvelous they were. I became an addict of his chocolate hazelnut scone, having one for breakfast every weekend. Ridiculous. We became fast friends, the baker and I (not the sweets and me) - his name is Amilcar, he is from Peru. He puts cream cheese in his cookies (1/2 butter 1/2 cheese makes them stay tall and chewy), he uses quinoa in his breads, he makes the biggest cinnamon rolls ever. Basically everything he makes is delicious. On the weekends he sells his baked goods around town at the local farmers markets and the PSM and whatever pastries and breads they have left at the end of the day is donated to the local soup kitchen. Sometimes on Sunday evenings they would leave a paper sack full of goodies in my booth as I was tearing down for the day. My freezer was always full of Gabriel's baked goods. What kind of heaven is that?!

The Portland Saturday Market has been an endless source of interesting friends in my life. I feel reflective lately, contemplating the PSM and its potential. And contemplating quitting the Portland Saturday Market. Yup. Quitting.

I have reached the point of outgrowing the market. I busy myself with shows and selling wholesale and online selling and teaching... doing the PSM every weekend is a bit much. I have to face reality. So I quantify what I get out of the market as opposed to how much it drains me.

To be honest I've been thinking about this for years. Clearly change hasn't happened fast here in the Garden of Leah. I like to stop and smell the roses, rather than rush from one thing to the next.

Its all about the people. The friends at the PSM are a crazy bunch. Its an international motley crew. Something straight out of the new show "Portlandia". Everyone has a such incredible stories, and everyone works so hard. When I think about what the PSM has meant in my life, I can't help but think about the people.

There should be a book about the PSM, portraits of the artists and stories... I would read it!

But here is what I've been thinking about lately (writing it down makes me feel nervous... accountable): I would teach classes on the weekends (for years I have only taught class during the week) and sell a Groupon for these classes. Basically it would be like selling my teaching classes wholesale. This has two appeals for me:

what I make each weekend as an artist would be predictable and dependable
my classes would be full

It would be a lot of classes, so I would be teaching 2 or 3 weekends a month and I would quit the PSM. The market is not a predictable income, and its very exhausting in so many ways.

I meet a lot of great people thru teaching classes, I love to pry people's stories out of them and listen to them talk about themselves. The dynamics between people is particularly fascinating to me... and there is something therapeutic about playing with fire and talking about one's self. Perhaps its my interest in psychology, perhaps its my love for people - either way - its one of my favorite parts of teaching. I like to joke that I turn everyone into kindergarteners: pink cheeks (from the flame and excitement) and big smiles and clumsy awkwardness.

Its a different crowd than the Portland Saturday Market though. I would greatly miss the people of the PSM. I know I could always go down and visit the artists down there, and hang out with them socially and whatnot... its different though when you are a vendor. The comradery of the work involved, its like a family. I have learned so much about Portland because of my involvement with the PSM. It has inspired me, enabled my growth, supported my endeavors and pushed me to use alarm clock at least once a week.

ps. I am still on the fence though, and planning to vend asap as the market reopens next weekend!

I Heart Art:Portland Party Friday Night

2011-02-25T02:49:00.000-08:00

Party at PNCA for IHeartArt:Portland

I'll be there - how 'bout you? Come join me for some crafty good times! There are some fun crafting tables, some music, some cake, some Etsy shop help... I think someone from Etsy is flying out to join us.

I Heart Art: Portland is now one year old and we're celebrating the occasion! Its been a great first year and we have a lot planned for 2011. It rocks to be a crafty artist living in Portland. It rocks so much that now Baltimore has joined the fun and they have started an

I Heart Art: Baltimore. We're downright inspiring :)

Come to the party - celebrate local craftiness and learn more about the

I Heart Art organization.

7pm PNCA be there or be square

1241 NW Johnson Street
Free and open to the public.

I Heart Art: Portland

Advocacy, Education and Support for Portland's Vibrant Community of Makers

I like this green mobile...

2011-02-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

I like this mobile a lot. I might make more, not sure yet. After taking some pictures of it and really loving, I listed in my Etsy shop. Frankly I'm surprised someone hasn't snapped it up yet. Its a deal, its not too big, and its eye-catching. This little dancer will hang happily in someones home/office/garden. I know this for sure.

Researching Etsy Traffic Sources

2011-02-20T22:24:00.000-08:00

I knew something had caused a wave of traffic to my Etsy shop... its never easy to know why. But its possible to find out!

So I checked out this website called CraftCult and found out why. It was an email from Etsy! One tiny little picture in their email newsletter, one small wave of traffic. Excellent.

This website CraftCult is pretty darn useful! You can see all sorts of information concerning your shop, like if you've been on the front page, if you're in a treasury, if you've receive new hearts, theres even some graphs. I like it a lot. The stats Etsy finally gives us on the site itself are pretty slim and not so interesting. CraftCult seems to be picking up the slack. They even have a "vault" of screen captures of front pages. How wonderful!

Dot Mobile

2011-02-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

This mobile is a tribute to the beauty of clear glass. The little bubbles that make me happy. The look of liquid frozen in motion. And yet it is a bright colorful mobile. Each clear glass circle is decorated with a colored dot. I melted one color on each disc - the seven discs play in the wind and the colored dots cast shadows. I like it. I like it a lot.
If you'd like to meet this mobile in person (as in hang it in your home/office/garden) it is available in my Etsy shop: click here

100 Steps to a Private Beach Vacation

2011-02-19T21:05:00.000-08:00

This mobile I made today is simple and small... little blue discs the color of the ocean, one deeper and darker than the rest, one sand colored disc at the bottom. I was telling some friends about a trip I took to Costa Rica years ago... and this story about a villa I found in Manuel Antonio inspired this little creation... the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean...
Heres the story: my 100 steps to paradise.

I was in Costa Rica, it was the rainy season and I was traveling alone. I had no agenda to my travel plans, and even less money to spend on travel expenses. I took a bus from Quepos to Manuel Antonio 3 times (back and forth) looking for a hotel that was both wonderful and affordable - finally walked up the same road for the 4th time and found this place. It was a beautiful resort with a hotel on the beach and grand villas up on the cliff. The place was nearly empty, 3 or 4 families were staying in the hotel so I inquired about the villas. They offered me a great deal, but warned me to check it out before I paid. Sure enough, the lazy American tourists had opted to stay in the hotel because it was on flat land right next to the beach - the villas were incredible but up endless flights of steps. This picture shows one section of the steps, each time you turned a corner there were more steps, and then more. :)

I was in heaven. There were about 100 steps and I gladly took them each time I wanted to go down to the beach or head out to find food. I was walking distance from the Park of Manuel Antonio and my view was something you'd see on a post-card. For a few precious days I was the only person staying in these villas. There was a security guard who would patrol the whole grounds just for me, stopping to speak Spanish with me when I was around. Monkeys would stalk my breakfast and iguanas that would lounge on the stone steps. I was convinced I had the nicest villa (in my mind it was the honeymoon suite) because the biggest of the iguanas (the iguana king I called him) seemed to live on my roof. I could hear him up there, his huge claws scraping at the tiles, and one day I climbed around above my villa to catch a view of him. He was huge.

So thats the story. It was a great set of steps. An amazing view of the beach. And it didn't rain once the entire time I was there. Off season rates and good exercise to boot. I say take the stairs!

My Personal Collection of Little Terrariums

2011-02-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

I thought it'd be fun to share pictures of a few of the little terrariums I have sitting on the table next to me... they are sorta funny, some have grown in odd ways. Each precious little world.

I love this one - its the tiniest ever - I kept it for myself because its so friggin' small.

Glass Fungi

2011-02-17T23:16:00.000-08:00

Why invite a mushroom to the party? ... cuz he's a fungi!

I've been making these tiny glass mushrooms to go in my little terrariums... thinking about just selling little packs of these in my etsy shop... little glass mushrooms for all your terrarium needs... for now its just a thought...

Aren't they cute. Quite the fun guys. :)

Cobalt Blue Glass Mobile

2011-02-15T22:05:00.000-08:00

Want to add an accent to your cobalt blue glass collection?

How about a mobile.

check it out in my Etsy shop

Glass Eyes

2011-02-13T14:26:00.001-08:00

The Glass Eye Maker from Tomas Leach on Vimeo.

Glass eyes... I have always been intrigued. They are amazing, hard to recognize and rarely talked about. A friend in grade school had a little brother with a glass eye (he was born with a birth defect)... my mother had a friend as a child that had a glass eye (he had punctured his eye with a stick)... Did you know Sammy Davis Jr. had a glass eye (he lost his left eye in a car accident). There is always a story behind the loss of an eye, perhaps its the legend that comes with the prosthetic that intrigues me, perhaps its sheer curiosity. Honestly though, I am a glass artist and particularly obsessed with the process of crafting glass, so its the object itself that really catches my attention. Handmade glass eyes - Ocular prosthesis - Venetians began making them in the 16th century but they were fragile and uncomfortable. Later Germany became the source of higher quality glass eyes and the US stopped importing them during WWII. The glass materials were also made in Germany so American makers of prosthetic eyes started using acrylics. Now they are made out of all sorts of materials, I guess we just call them "Glass Eyes", sounds better than "artificial eye". I found this video on Etsy about a London based glass eye maker.

Photo Shoot on the Beach

2011-02-12T13:11:00.001-08:00

Last week I had an impromptu photo shoot with my friend Naomi. Her and her husband Yed own a jewelry business YedOmi and we took pictures of their work on the beach

Ingredients:

Natural light, sun about to set

beach props (dried shells, sand dollars and starfishes)

amazing jewelry

Calder Mobile on Antiques Roadshow

2011-02-11T17:23:00.000-08:00

Watch the full episode. See more Antiques Roadshow.

Fog + Portland + Camera = Fun

2011-02-10T16:24:00.000-08:00

This morning I got up early and went on a photo adventure to capture the fog. Alright, so it wasn't all that early (I am a night owl) but the fog was persistent and I ended up driving around town for a couple hours checking out different sights...

The St. Johns Bridge (photo above) is simply gorgeous, so I headed there first. There is a beautiful park underneath the bridge, with a pier that let me get out on the water to take a few snapshots... there was a goose honking at me as I took pictures. I think he was calling to his girlfriend, or telling me to go away!
I then drove up to the shop to unload my kiln, while thinking about other locations for photo shoots... I passed the Old Historic Columbian Cemetery on the way to do some errands and couldn't resist pulling in to check it out... my photography teacher in high school used to take us to cemeteries to take pictures - and those were always my favorite photo adventures. Something about the different grave-stones and the old stories they contain. The details in the carvings, the remains of flowers left to pay respect, the general decay and crumbling of the years... I have always wanted to check out this old cemetery in N. Portland and it was certainly a neat adventure although I didn't take a whole lot of pictures... there was no fog at this point (wouldn't that have made for some incredible pictures!) just a funky old cemetery. There are a few pictures in my flickr account if you are curious... link
Lastly I stopped at the Grotto, there was still a bit of fog and I had been trying to get a good photo of a tree in a field in the fog... I had circled the Rose City Golf Course looking for just the right perspective on a beautiful tree. Golf courses have great trees and open fields, I thought this would be perfect, alas the fog was being elusive and coming and going without giving me the view that I was craving... so I headed over to the Grotto, they have beautiful trees and dramatic religious sculptures nestled among these trees. Sure enough the fog rolled back in for me and I wandered the Grotto appreciating the sights. Such an incredible place.

If you want to see more pictures, check out my Flickr account

Airplants in Globes

2011-02-07T15:34:00.000-08:00

I've been listing some new airplants in glass globes online - check out my Etsy shop if you are interested!

Working in the Sunshine

2011-02-07T13:15:00.001-08:00

Harvesting Wild Mussels

2011-02-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

We bought some 2011 Fishing (specifically shell-fishing) licenses at the local store. An impromptu beach vacation with friends gave the opportunity to hunt our own seafood dinner!

Our beach cottage was perched on the beach of Lincoln City, on a cliff overlooking the ocean and giant rocks that become exposed at low tide. The rocks are covered with wild-life, a free aquarium to explore and discover.

We brought some buckets and chisels and pliers and paint scrapers... tools are definitely helpful. Last year Tim and I went without tools, just a bucket, and this was silly. Now we know. Mussel beards are really strong (the little hairs that hold the shell to the rock) and tools help to pry the shellfish and save your hands from injury.

Not only did we collect mussels, we also harvested some edible barnacles that look like parrot beaks with long mussels that hold them to the rocks... I had seen Anthony Bourdain eat them on his show and he said they were delicious. They were a little more difficult to harvest, but they ended up being super tasty! (even better than the mussels I dare say!) It was a little creepy that the barnacles made noises as we harvested them. Naomi and I squealed and screamed a bit as they hissed and blew bubbles and spit orange juices at us. What can I say, the barnacles put up good fight! We won.

After harvesting and cleaning and cooking them we had a delicious traditional Moules Marinieres. What a great time! Enjoy the slide-show

Beautiful Pictures

2011-02-02T21:21:00.000-08:00

My Nikon D80 whispers sweet nothings in my ear, take more pictures, play with me, find beautiful images and feel the creative juices. Inspiration. Seriously, I took about 1000 pictures over the last few days... I made Tim pull the car over so I could take pictures of these old train cars... and my little friend in the pictures is 6 and looks so sweet when he plays with his trains... Ah to be 6. When I look at these pictures I can hear his dad bellowing "Alllll Aboard!!!"

My View This Morning...

2011-02-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Puzzles

2011-01-25T15:13:00.000-08:00

Having a little bit of free time lately has given me the chance to relax at home, reading books, cooking a lot, watching movies, getting crafty and playing with puzzles. Yep, I love puzzles. So I looked around online to find out about printing my own images into a puzzle... this is what I ended up getting.

Its from a picture I took of Tim at the driving range. The man likes to golf. I enjoy going to the driving range with him. What a great bonding experience this was to sit down with him and put together this puzzle. Quality time for sure.

I used the site Discount Photogifts to get this made up. It was $25 +s/h and it came with the neat cookie tin that contains all the pieces. The tin itself is a treasure. The puzzle was only 551 pieces, so it was not to hard and not too big, perfect for putting on the kitchen table and finishing quickly so it doesn't take up the table all week.

Honestly it was hard to pick an image to use (although I love what I chose in the end) and I had trouble finding anything customizable that was more than 1000pieces. That would be sweet... if anyone else finds something, let me know :)

Portland DIY Resources Adventure

2011-01-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

I can't believe how many stores there are in this town offering great finds and deals to the small businessperson like myself. Tools, supplies, materials, displays, packaging, furniture, munchies, you name it! There is a store in town that sells it - and they do so with such character :)

I took my friend Amy on an adventure last week... Amy rents studio space with me at Aquila and is relatively new to town, I wanted to enjoy the afternoon with her and show her some of these great stores in Portland that are so useful to her crafty business.

Here was our itinerary:

Winks Hardware
City Liquidators
Bunk (sandwiches)
Portland Store Fixtures
Pitman Restaurant Supply Store
Harbor Freight

View Useful Stores in PDX in a larger map

As you can see the tour centered around one particular area of Portland, the SE waterfront area, cuz its awesome and packed with businesses that let their customers wander warehouses full of stuff.

I took Amy to Wink's first. I love me some W.C. Winks Hardware. Its a manly place, a quality hardware store, and its been in Portland since 1909. I love that you take a deli number to get your purchases. They seem to specialize in stocking wire of all types. This is very useful to me as a glass artist.

Then we continued on down the street to City Liquidators. We wandered every floor of both buildings. Its been a while since I've done this - this picture is from one of the warehouses, there is an entire floor of office chairs, we couldn't find the light so it was sorta dark...

photos courtesy of Amy - she was posting pictures of our silliness via her funphone on Facebook while we wandered warehouses!

After 6 floors of seating options, kitchen supplies, tools, office gear, warrior helmets, lighting and file cabinets, we decided it was time to eat. In need of fuel we headed over to Bunk for their famous sandwiches - delicious.

this is a picture of Amy at City Liquidator. Seriously you never know what you might find in this place!

Next was Portland Store Fixtures. This place is fabulous - and - they were having their first ever complete warehouse sale! It was pretty crazy, everything was on sale. Both Amy and I found some things we had to purchase. Everything in the warehouses was price-tagged in prep for the sale, and the labels were cracking me up. I bought this one display mostly because I loved its label, and I can use it to dispay a little mobile :) "Tall Shiney Thing".

We got a tour of all 3 buildings. They have renovated a new space down there right around SE 3rd and Main to rent to artists. Spaces are starting at a flat rate of $100 a month and there are larger spaces as well. Its a wonderful funky space - go ask them about it if this sounds interesting!

Continuing down the street we visited Pitman's Restaurant Supply - very useful place for the glass artist looking to buy inexpensive stainless steel things. They have both used and new kitchen supplies.

Our last stop was Harbor Freight on the way back up to the shop. This place is just amazing. Its like the dollar store for men. Cheap tools. You buy what you pay for, so yes, some of it is total crap, but its all cheap! And they have really useful stuff in there. Both Amy and I found a handful of things that we had to buy. I always seem to be drawn to silly things there... I found this kit from my little friend Micah:

Oregon Coast Aquarium

2011-01-13T11:27:00.000-08:00

I had a bit of fun taking pictures at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. It was cold and rainy, but fun none the less.the jellyfish were amazing and surprisingly took great pictures thru the thick plastic and water...

shrimps - who knew that Oregon had the most sustainable pink shrimp fishing methods around. I didn't. There was an exhibit about it in the waiting area for the bathrooms.

Salmon fish. I believe this one is a Chinook Salmon.

I don't know what kind of fish this is the underside of, its just a neat picture I thought...

There was a swamp exhibit going on, opens up with this great big Anaconda

Giant crabs in a giant black tank

The Giant Octopus didn't really like my flash, he proceeded to run away and hide in the corner after I blinded him with my flash. Sorry Octopus.

Love the otters, the plastic was so wet and thick it was hard to really get a picture of him. He was hamming it up and checking us out thru the window...

while his buddy was taking a nap

spicey hot chocolate

2010-12-20T14:49:00.001-08:00

spicey hot chocolate
Originally uploaded by LeahPellegrini

Finally put up my Christmas tree last night. Found a small Charlie Brown tree that smells good and now its all decorated with plastic Mexican wrestlers and my collection of glass ornaments. I made myself this hot chocolate while getting into the holiday spirit. The green sprinkles really made things festive... the whip cream didn't hurt either :)

recipe: jalapeño infused tequila + vanilla infused vodka + hot chocolate = wonderful

For Sale on Etsy

2010-12-17T23:26:00.001-08:00

I finally listed some of my glass globes with plants on Etsy - get em' while they are there! I will get them to you by Christmas if you act fast.

These little beauties will ship well, they all are USPS friendly and ready to go. Although I am not shipping them over any international boarders, my apologies, yes I know they are sooo super cute and you'd love to get one as a gift for your friend or loved one, and yes I LOVE shipping my artwork to Canada and overseas... however, I just don't know what the rules are for shipping plant life internationally and so I am not going to go there. Domestic shipping only.

FREE SHIPPING to all US customers for these little wonders (there are only 5 listed in my shop right now, so its a limited offer!)

Tiniest Terrariums Cuteness

2010-12-17T14:41:00.000-08:00

I added little glass mushrooms (which I also made) - isn't this just too much!!! My goodness.
And then this morning I made up this one with a little yellow duck...
This duck was made over a decade ago. One of the first things I made with my new torch back in the day. :) Its a treasure of mine, and how cute does it look in this little terrarium, with three different varieties of "Chicks n' Hens" succulents...

Chocolate Modeling Clay

2010-12-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

I bought this modeling clay that is edible yummy chocolate... I want to make little penguins and flowers and little chocolate moss terrariums... but I am constantly making and shipping lately, and then shipping some more... so I haven't had time to play yet... but its so tempting. Smells good too! Oh and I picked up some edible gold dust to make my creations sparkle. Oh yes.

You too can buy these kits at the Chocolate Craft Kit site - they are only $15 or so - great deal - it comes with all the little tools you see in the picture!

http://www.chocolatecraftkits.com/modelingkit.php

Amazing Pendleton Presents

2010-12-14T18:43:00.001-08:00

My friend Aimee works for the Pendleton Woolen Mill company. She is quite crafty and the Pendleton store has great supplies, wool fabric and cut-offs and whatnot... well today she brought me these presents! The picture above is a wonderful soft warm lap blanket and the picture below is a rug that is all folded up, its round and striped and thick when unfolded! - Orange and Turquoise and Chocolate Brown... what a great color combination!

Thank You Aimee!!!

Its a Crafty Wonderland!

2010-12-14T00:11:00.001-08:00

This year the Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Holiday Show was spectacular as always. In fact, it was 2 days of awesome this year (in the past it was 6 hours on Sunday of crazy shopping craftiness).

12,000 people came to shop. Thousands lined up in the halls of the Portland Convention Center in the morning to get the free swag bags. This year they handed out free 2011 Chinook Books with the bags of swag (these are big books of local coupons - worth $20each).

I sold many pieces of my work, all the terrariums I had made went home with new owners and overall I had a really great time. Friday and Saturday nights I was still making things, by the end of the weekend my house looked like a hurricane of craft hit it. Sunday night I didn't even empty the car. I cleaned up in the morning and then brought all my tubs and display stuff inside to be organized back into storage to be used next summer for some big shows. I may vend at the Portland Saturday Market a few times before the end of the holiday season (weather permitting) but I am done with my craft show marathon for 2010. Now I must catch up on shipping and tending to my online orders. Yeah for the Holiday Season! Its an awesome experience to vend at the Crafty Wonderland, its like a big crafty hug... a little sweaty, a little glitter, a little retro, a little sumthin brand new, and a whole lot of awesome.

Awesome Find at Crafty Wonderland 2010

2010-12-13T23:21:00.000-08:00

At Crafty Wonderland this weekend I did a bit o' shopping and I found these illustrations by Lisa Mirella, described as a trio of animals with dirty mouths having trouble with yarn. What is not to love!!!

Anyone who has spent a bit of time with me knows that I have an uncensored potty mouth.

These illustrations are printed on canvas and stretched, so they each look like little originals. The octopus needing a 9th arm to untangle his mittens, the fat bear in his unraveling sweater (aptly named "Shitty Yarn") and the giraffe who lost his scarf... all can be found in the Milktooth Etsy shop, there are both the prints and greeting cards, it looks like they sold out of the Fuck print right now, but if you send them a message maybe they will make you more!

http://Milktoof.etsy.com

Sneak Peak of my Tiniest Terrariums

2010-12-10T01:27:00.000-08:00

Consider this a sneak peak. These terrariums (as well as the few I had left after last weekend) will be coming with me and my mobiles to Crafty Wonderland Holiday Show 2010. So exciting.
Each one is so unique. So lovable.
I have just a couple with airplants, they are just so fantastic, but I don't have many airplants yet... next week I will have more and I will be listing them in my online store...
These two are so incredible, they are like little models! Any which way I turned them they took a great picture...
This one below is bigger than the rest and I might keep it for myself.
Ah... the chicks n' hens... so cute...
so precious and small
some of them I put with buddies

And many of the terrariums I filled with my favorite "String of Pearls" plant... jewelry that looks like peas...
The one above is like a pot on its side, its a one-of-a-kind.This plant is so amazing - and I just love how it looks in these tiny terrariums. They are cute - undeniably and deliciously.
I love this shape for the glass the best, and its fun how each one turns out just slightly different...

and there are a few that look like pitchers pouring out the plant...
Come visit me at Crafty Wonderland. See them for yourself. Get some to give to a friend for the holidays. They are the perfect little desk plant, preferring indirect sunlight and not a lot of water... and they are so unique! I love them.

Crafty Wonderland is at the Convention Center in Portland Oregon all weekend (December 11th and 12th) - come early, everything is one of a kind and some vendors sell out!

see you there!

Pancakes Please

2010-12-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

For all my Portland friends: go eat at Slappy Cakes. Seriously. The place makes me smile. I like it there. Let me tell you why :)

1. the decor is all orange

2. you get to play with your food

3. its very tasty (they offer a lot of food besides the DIY pancakes)

I highly recommended Slappy Cakes on SE Belmont in Portland Oregon

ps. I also love the paintings of pancakes on the wall. They are wonderful.

Sold

2010-12-06T12:12:00.001-08:00

This blog post is really just an excuse for me to pour longingly over these photos of my Tiniest Terrariums. I took them Thursday night as I was prepping for the show. I knew I wanted to capture their loveliness before they all flew the coop!

The airplants are a new addition to these little glass worlds. I LOVE this creation. I must make more.

These are some of the terrariums I sold this weekend at Urban Craft Uprising - I hope the lucky recipients of these treasures will love them as I have. They are sooo cute, they make me smile.

This one just makes me gasp - cute is the only word I have to describe it.

Seriously beautiful.

Enchanting. I love this little chick in a little vase. I must make more of these...

This one above I thought was sorta funny, the vase flopped out on the top in ways I hadn't really intended. But somehow its lovely in its wonkiness, especially with the strands of pearls cascading over the wobbly edge. And now its being given as a gift to someone. That makes me smile.

I LOVE this one above... its the simplest of them all, but for some reason I just love it. All the round shapes, of the vessel, the peas, the hole...

This shape was the only one I made like this, I must make more, its sorta a stretch fat tiny droplet shape, with the peas cramming themselves out of the hole. I love it.

this one (above) the little "chicks n' hens" has a small tiny baby attached to it, can you see it? Oh how these make me swoon!

This shape I took a pair of shears to the hot little vessel and cut the little slit, then I pulled the two pieces down to make the "shirt collar" look. *love*

Its hard to tell from this photo, but I put a little pour spout look on the top of the vase, so it looks like the plant is pouring out of the tiny mini terrarium.

The shapes of the little wisps of new plants coming out of the hole is just so delicious.

The "String of Pearls" plant (aka Senecio herreanus) is such a proud plant. It likes sun, but not directly sunlight, it likes water, but it prefers to go dry between waterings. Looks like jewelry made of peas to me.

This was just a silly little vessel with two bulbs. It found a good home. She came back for it, leave the show without it. Gotta love that!

Hope you enjoyed looking at these photos with me. I certainly did! These are just such a pleasure for me. I am exhausted from this past long weekend, but looking forward to getting my second wind. The holiday season is far from over!

If you are interested in purchasing one of my tiniest terrariums - I will be bringing them with me and my mobiles to Crafty Wonderland this weekend, and you can also purchase them at Splurge in NE Portland.

Pictures from Urban Craft Uprising 2010

2010-12-06T00:42:00.000-08:00

Urban Craft Uprising Holiday 2010 - nearly 10,000 shoppers came thru the doors of the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. It was awesome. There was so much crafty goodness it was nearly overwhelming. The shopping frenzy was buzzing as usual. A lot of my artwork (as well as all the other vendors at this show!) will be given away as presents this holiday due to the success of this show.

I would like to say big Thank You to everyone involved, shoppers and organizers!

This is the line on Sunday morning of shoppers waiting for almost 2 hours to get free swag as they entered the show.

This is Moxie's booth - she is one of the wonderful women who throw this show. Her felted creations and new book I Felt Awesome are amazing! Monsters and octopuses and mushrooms and balls and bowling pins and felting kits that come in milk shake containers.... oh how I swoon...

These felted terrariums were just scrumptious! Amanda Fiebing creates these incredible little fiber creations - look at the felted mushroom terrariums! They are just too cute!!!

I loved this sock monkey booth - so bright and colorful...

meant to buy one of these kits from Monkey Sock Monkey... but I had trouble getting out of my booth (cuz it was so busy!! yeah!) and when I took these pictures there was no one around to take my money (it was in the morning before the show started)... the kit is great, comes with everything you need, and they have an orange kit. What more could I ask for!

Beautifully handcrafted dolls with handmade clothes and accessories, and more handmade mushrooms

Bird Mafia

Bread and Badger

and this little video shows my booth... this was in the morning on Saturday before we opened... you can hear Moxie announcing for the volunteers to gather and get ready to open the doors! What a fun and exhausting weekend.

Urban Craft Uprising

2010-12-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

I will be there - come check me out if you live in Seattle - I have packed up my car with all sorts of beautiful mobiles and cute glass bits... much including an exquisite batch of terrariums... and if I remember to make up a sign - I have a free ornament with every purchase!!

36 Tiny Terrariums

2010-12-03T01:38:00.000-08:00

These little tiny terrariums simply make me swoon. I love their every detail. Pictures were taken and I didn't even edit them, I just made the collection of photos into a little video to share and remember... I know they will all find good homes.

Holiday Craft Show Prep

2010-12-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

I am knee deep in holiday prep - working my way thru holiday craft shows. Prep involves many things, like stamping bags....I tried to take a few pictures today so I could share here...
I've been making more terrariums... these pictures are fun because people keep asking me how I make the tiny little arrangements - look see! - I use my old dissection kit!
The q-tips are for cleaning the glass if I get a bunch of dirt stuck to the inside of the terrariums...
I also made a bunch more "care cards" and stickers... more packaging details... the care cards are for the terrariums to tell people how to care for them...

I've been strategizing on how to fit a lot of stuff into a small vending space... this weekend I am working with 5ft by 10ft. Last weekend it was 6ft by 4ft. So I made up this piece of graph paper and cut little pieces of paper to represent my display stuff... put a little sticky glue on the back of the cutouts and this way I can play around with display ideas...

Last week I sorta set some stuff up in my living room to see what I had to work with...

and I bought this cake plate from Ikea to display my tiny terrariums underneath. I LOVE it.

Give Handmade

2010-11-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

The Give Handmade Sale was this past Sunday - previously known as the Secret Society Sale - it outgrew its old location (the Secret Society Ballroom) and moved to the Left Bank Annex this year (and took on the new name)
Here is my spot (fuzzy picture) next to Isaac Watson and Amy Stoner - excellent neighbors! The show was full of all sorts of wonderful things...

there were owls

chocolate and flowers

mushrooms

clothing

bags

accessories

glass and mosaics

artwork, prints and paintings

soap and lotions

here's my neighbor Isaac and his cuffs made from camera lenses

this amazing old hoist was hanging from the ceiling. I want one of these in my studio :) The Left Bank Annex is a really great space. Its an old building that was re-done a couple of years ago... this was the first time I'd been inside.

I had fun, sold lots of little miniature mobiles and earrings... and I sold some terrariums - they make me smile.

Team Building Exercises

2010-11-28T19:26:00.001-08:00

This garland of handmade panties has been hanging as an installation at the coffee shop across the street from Tim's apartment, the Albina Press.

While waiting for our drinks we were admiring this garland of underpants the other day... Tim told me that when he first noticed it he asked the coffee barista if it was a team building exercise. She said it was not.

This makes me laugh. A garland of handmade panties = a team building exercise?! And why would baristas have team building exercises? And panties? Why? They are pretty crafty too, some are embellished g-strings and whatnot, some are paper creations. Its pretty awesome, and strange... and I simply love the idea that making such a thing could be a team building exercise.

Maybe for my Idle Hands Ladies Auxiliary Club... now that could be a fun crafty get together!

4 Years on Etsy

2010-11-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

I opened my Etsy store 4 years ago today!

Four years of sales and hearts and feedback and forums and street teams and trunk shows and meetings and get-togethers. Its been pretty amazing. I have sold a lot of mobiles thru my Etsy shop - and I have worked hard for each and every one of those sales! Whew, its sure not easy!

Want to help celebrate my four years of success - I am offering 25% off all day for my anniversary! Help me share my mobiles with this holiday season - this is my way of saying Thank You to all the Etsy shoppers out there.

Use the code 4ETSY in your purchase from my shop today and you get 25%off

Rain in Portland

2010-11-22T10:24:00.000-08:00

Its been raining a lot in Portland, supposed to snow. Up at elevation around here it has been snowing a lot... down at my house its just wet and the grass is freezing at night. Tim and I want to head up Mt. Hood to go to Bagby Hotsprings while we still can (its too remote and they don't plow the roads so its not accessible during the winter if there is a lot of heavy snowfall) but I fear it may be too late... and I have so much work to do... we'll see. I would like to see Bagby one last time before the Forest service sells that chunk of old growth forest.

My Dad took the picture above. It arrived in my email box today. I love how you can see one little flower in the rain drop. Delicious. Great photo Dad!

Chocolate Party!

2010-11-20T23:14:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness I went to a chocolate party last night. It was exciting! We made chocolate creations out of chocolate modeling clay at the Chocolate Studio in NE Portland.

some chocolate was tasted

and we brought libations to honor the chocolate

the proprietress made us chocolate blanks on which to craft our "cards" - they are delicious!

we had tools to work with and all sorts of cute little embellishments, edible balls and hearts and skullz and such

Glitter. Yes there were lots of edible sparkle options. There were various ways to use the sparkle on the chocolate. In particular the neat modeling clay became sticky right after sculpting (from the heat of my hands) so the sparkle luster would adhere easily with a simple paint brush.

This is the beginning of my first project... I started with a glass of wine and two different shades of orange and a white chocolate blank. I didn't know what to make! I'd been making mobiles for quite a few hours that day (holiday production is in full swing) so I went into production with the chocolate and made little tiny petals, with which I made little tiny flowers... they sparkle
My friends made all sorts of wonderful cards. There were cutters and rollers and piping chocolate, chocolate on brushes, chocolate with prints. It was pretty insane :) I think I touched about a bazillion things I wasn't supposed to. I felt like an idiot.
There were lots of different types of flowers made...
and balls... the ball tool was quiet popular as well...
In all the chocolate was both fun to eat and fun to play with - I want to buy some to play with at home!
It was a great chocolate experience - I think I might buy some kits and have a party :) Chocolate snowmen? Chocolate terrariums? Chocolate warm fuzzies?
below is a picture of the kits - as you can see they are very affordable, and they come with the "wondertool" which was the little purple number with which I made my flowers, as well as a bunch of other tools and clay... you can buy the kit on the Chocolate Craft site

Tiniest of Terrariums

2010-11-20T00:39:00.001-08:00

The tiniest of terrariums are knocking my socks off. They beg for photos. My friend Naomi took some scrumptious shots of them as well! (check out the photo below - she found some mini flowers and used the tiny empty vase!)
They make great gifts for any plant lover, even someone who is not that good at keeping plants alive. Terrariums require very little water, very little sunlight and really very little attention. All they ask is to be swooned over occasionally!

Each one is so sweet!

I love these "String of Pearls" succulent - so hardy and so cute in the little glass bubbles. They seem to thrive in these conditions. Well, they seem to thrive in just about any condition, but still!

Made in Oregon Sign RIP

2010-11-17T00:14:00.000-08:00

I love this sign. Its a landmark in Portland Oregon and literally a visual reminder of what I do for a living.

The White Stag sign (its real name) was originally built in 1941 as an ad for a sugar company, it read "White Stag Sugar". In 1959 the tradition began of lighting the nose on the stag with a red bulb for the holiday season. In 1978 the sign was designated a City of Portland historical landmark. Its changed messages a number of times over the years as the building has changed hands. Officially it became the sign I know and love in 1997 when the letters were changed to "Made in Oregon" (and the bottom little letters were changed to "Old Town" - they used to read "Sportswear"). When the Naito family sold this building in 2004 the cost of upkeep and maintenance on the sign became an issue. Actually, the monthly electrical bill and upkeep have been a problem for decades, but the last few years have seen a push to reconcile this issue.

Working down at the Portland Saturday Market I have watched the transformation of this building. Made in Oregon (the store) moved out and Venerable Properties moved in with demolition crews. They renovated and developed the White Stag Block... in 2008 the University of Oregon took a lease on the building and I was quick to note they specifically leased the sign as part of the deal. A request was put into the city to change the sign to "University of Oregon" - personally I had my own theory that they simply wanted it to read "Go Ducks!" or "O". Ug. Fortunately these plans were turned down and by 2009 the University had ceased leasing the sign. Wikipedia offers the whole story with all the details, but basically the short end of the story is that now the sign will read "Portland Oregon" and the city will be paying $2000 a month (note: not taxpayers money, its all $ generated from a city parking facility) to the previous owners of the sign to continue the monthly upkeep and maintenance. The property owner (Venerable) put up the $200,000 to have the letters changed. There is going to be a grand re-lighting the day after Thanksgiving.

Today when I drove across the Burnside Bridge I happened to notice the transformation of the sign. I didn't know that the change was happening right now, so this took me by surprise. Literally I exclaimed "Oh Snap!" and lunged for my camera. Um, I mean I stayed focused on driving while quickly snapping a few pictures.
This is what I saw. *gasp* I knew it was going to change eventually. I just didn't know it was changing today!

Crafty Display Ideas

2010-11-16T21:35:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about neat display ideas to spiff up my craft booth stylin' this holiday season... and I saw that Naomi at Splurge had put a bunch of my packaged mobiles in a large glass vase (see below)
and then I was at Stumptown indulging in some liquid coffee yumminess and I noticed they had put the coffee cup to-go lids in these big glass jars (see picture below) and little labels on brown craft paper were taped to the jars (these could be price tags right?!). I really like how this looks and even more, I like how it functions as a retail display. The price is clear but small, the container is glass and it holds a lot of product... and its a crafty use of something that is meant for something different!
So I have been prowling local GoodWill for big glass jars/containers (no luck so far)... I went to the craft store and stood in front of their large glass vase assortment for a while. There were a lot to choose from and I always get 40%off coupons in my email for these crafty stores, so this could be an option. I had thought I'd like the big tall cylinders, but honestly they are either too small or so tall that if I filled them up with packaged mobiles or little DIY kits, once some of the kits had sold it would be hard for customers to reach the rest at the bottom of the cylinders. This would not do! As these are supposed to entice retail purchases, not prevent them. So among the various jars/vases at the craft store I found myself captivated by the huge size round fish bowl type vase. I like em'.

Positive Feedback

2010-11-12T12:49:00.001-08:00

I received this email after a class I taught last night:

I totally appreciate you, your class and your teaching style! I've listened to you teach various torchworking classes over that past few months and love how much fun you make it. I'm glad that I asked you about the torchworking for fusers - I think it is really what I need to just add some additional little loving touches to my pieces. As I was falling asleep last night my mind was creating those little twisty piece candy cane type pieces (latachino?) and imagining how to use them.

Your laugh is infectious and it helped make the atmosphere so light and simple that, like you said, it really was like kindergarten and there was nothing I could do wrong.

Thanks again. Not everyone can be a great artist and also be a great teacher. I think you have done both!

-Gina Granato

Thanks Gina! And thank you for letting me share your kind words on my blog!!

I hope my students know I appreciate them as much as they appreciate me! Teaching classes for the past 7 years has been a pleasure, an act of reciprocity and a constant challenge.

Come take a class with me - I promise to show you a good time, certainly laughs will be had and you will get to play with hot glass in the flame!!

http://AquilaGlassSchool.com

Why I Love Portland Oregon

2010-11-11T12:18:00.001-08:00

Okay, so this video is too wide for my blog... but I still had to share. Its a video love-letter to Portland and its wonderful.

Another Little Terrarium

2010-10-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

BOO!

2010-10-30T12:38:00.001-07:00

I made this little ghost a few years ago... dug him up to take a picture because my friend Deb was at the glass studio the other day and asked if I'd ever used glow in the dark powder in my glass creations. Indeed - here is an example. I mixed some of the bright green glow powder in with Borosilicate Kryptonite colored glass (cuz this color already looks like it should glow - I think it makes a great combo) and made these little ghosts. The more powder the better, and you have to mix it into the glass, as it will not stick to the surface really - but if you get enough in there it really glows quite powerfully!

here are a couple links for the powders:

http://glowinc.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=3

http://www.sundanceglass.com/glow-glass-powder.htm

http://www.lampworketc.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3146795

I Challenged Myself Today

2010-10-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

Usually I say no, its easier that way. People come to me with tear jerking stories of their broken glass trinkets (that I did not make) that hold so much sentimental feelings, they are looking for someone to fix it or replace it. I have a strict policy of saying no. It is the best answer for 3 good reasons:

1. because many times these pieces just cannot be fixed
2. incompatible glasses - I never know what type of glass something is made of, so I cannot really get it hot and add anything, as this would inevitably make it fall apart even more
3. I really have no interest in fixing something someone else has made.

If people are really persistent I educate them on what they can do at home with some Epoxy or UV glue. Or at least thats what happens when I am feeling sassy!

With all that said... a few days ago a nice woman named Judy called and asked to have a small glass figurine remade for her. I called her back and we spoke for a bit, seemed like something I could reasonably do. Against my normal policy - I said Yes! Yep, I broke my own business rule and I said Yes and made an appointment for her to come in and today was the day.

Judy brought me this tiny little glass antelope. Its one of a family of these little guys and they are all symbolic for her, a gift from her daughter-in-law and simply a small treasure that she holds close to her heart. The littlest antelope had broken (into a zillion pieces) - so I remade him! In the pictures the one I made is in front on the right.

It was a challenge, I enjoyed that. I made the head first and the body I actually did twice before I really liked it. Lastly I made the antlers and damn that was finicky! I could have done better, but its a pretty good try and Judy was pleased. It was really fun to make. And Judy was a sweetheart. In the end I was really happy I said yes. Not that I'll be doing it again any time soon (honestly people ask me this all the time at the Portland Saturday Market, at least once a weekend) and I know I could make a little money occasionally if I did this, and I know I am capable of this kind of torchworking, but I just don't want to. Refer to the above listed 3 Good Reasons to Say No.

Fusible Decal Paper on Glass

2010-10-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

My friend Laura made these little glass pendants using images that were printed onto photo fusing paper. She pointed out that if you use French Vanilla Bullseye glass (the reactive glass 0137) instead of White (0113 or 0013) the decal looks almost black (note: its not really black, but the dark brown reaction with the vanilla looks black!)

The image above shows one decal fired on White Glass under clear (the pumpkin) and another fired on French Vanilla under clear (the witch). I'd bet the new Reactive White (0009 Reactive Cloud) would also make the decal look sorta black.

At the Aquila Glass School you can get Don to print out your images onto "Photo Fusing Paper" (he has the paper and a laser printer) and many people use this product to put images into their fused glass projects. They bring in their image saved onto a memory stick and he prints it out onto the decal paper. You wet the printed paper and slide the decal onto your glass. The results can vary, but its a simple and effective process.

The iron oxides in the laser toner make the image withstand high temperatures of firing the glass, afterwards it leaves a sepia-tone type image (sort of a burnt rusty color).

Here is a link for more information and prices for having Don print your decals:

http://www.thestoreataquila.com/photo_fusing_paper.htm

to check out Laura work:

http://appleglassoriginals.etsy.com

Earrings Defying Gravity

2010-10-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin Patch Time!!

2010-10-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

It was a rainy weekend, but I made it out to the Pumpkin Patch at Sauvie Island with some friends. I love this picture... the corn stalks blowing in the wind, the pumpkins rotting in the mud.

I couldn't bring myself to sit around in the rain for the second day in a row at the PSM, and I had this coupon for the Kruger Farm Pumpkin Festival staring at me... this is how it went: picking pumpkins, riding the tractor pulled thing, wandering the corn maze and eating roasted corn (they dipped it in a crock pot of butter!) and candied apples (good lord this made me drool - literally!)
The pumpkins were kinda funny looking, but we picked some out. Tim found us a great one. I enjoyed taking pictures! I put more up on Flickr - click here to see them

Clear Reactive Glass Fun

2010-10-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

I made myself a bowl. Perhaps for ice-cream or cereal... or beans and rice... last night it held Tim's keys and wallet.

Recipe for the bowl: one circle of clear reactive glass, one circle of clear glass (on bottom) and a pile of little colored strings of glass on top.

This is what it looked like before firing. I wanted to be sure the little strings didn't disappear after firing, so I used the clear reactive glass. Some of the colors have a chemical reaction with this glass causing brown lines, some of the blue, purple and green glass strings reacted... turned out really neat!
I made myself this bowl because I was cleaning out some stuff in my studio and I found a container of little colored stringers waiting to be made into something neat. The stringers originated when I made a bunch of dots to make these Christmas tree ornaments (see below) using a torch and when the little gather of glass gets hot and falls off the rod a little string that connects the two falls as well. I kept the strings because there were so many and I thought they had potential. Then I forgot about them! Years later they became my new bowl!

First Kiln Firings

2010-10-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Mustafa (my new kiln) has been workin' hard! I documented my first fire in case anything freaky happened, taking notes of any little changes in the kiln program and pictures of what the glass looked like before and after. As you can see, I didn't really do a "test" as my first kiln load of glass... as in, I could have put just a few choice pieces of glass in to see what they did before loading it up with a bunch of work and hitting start! :) But rest assured Mustafa is treating me well and there have been no kiln snafus so far.
I was somewhat conservative in my program as well as the distance between pieces (just in case the kiln had hot spots or the programmer was not properly calibrated)
And I made these two little piles of glass in an open spot on the shelf... they were tests to see how much the glass was moving at these temperatures... you see, this white glass is really stiff, so is the pink and lime green, so I made these little piles to see how flat they would become. If I raised up the temperature of my "Full Fuse" or kept it at that temperature for longer (currently Mustafa stays at full fuse for only 3minutes) I could get these piles to fuse flatter.
Lastly - for all my readers that are fellow glass artists - here is the kiln schedule that I am using:

Segment ..... Rate ... Temp... Hold
1 350 500 0.10
2 450 1000 0.05
3 200 1250 1.30
4 9999 1488 0.03
5 9999 900 1.30
6 50 800 0.01
7 75 500 0.01
8 100 300 0.01
9 Idle to room temp.

Wonderful Graphite Marble Mold

2010-10-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

My friend Elaine was using her new graphite marble mold the other day and I had to take a picture - what an awesome marble mold! I like it.