Dust Bunnies Running and Jumping

Ever since Christmas I've had it on my mind to clean up around here... Life gets busy over the years and the dust bunnies run amok.

I attacked my "office/shipping area". Much needs to still be done, but I cleared out 3 bags of trash/recycling. There are some old computers around here that need to be donated to that local computer place that teaches kids how to work with computers... what is that place called? I know you have to pay to donate, but at this point I am glad to see them gone. Seriously. I am drawing the line at CPUs and monitors. Something needs to be done. You know what I'm saying.

At the glass school there is an ongoing project to consolidate my shelves of stuff. Tools, glass, scrap, frit, components, wire bits and stencils and general whatnot all exist on some shelves that I share. Its that time of year to neaten it up a bit and consolidate. My friend Denis has been using the top shelf and wrangling a ladder to access his stuff on a daily basis. That has got to change! So I am moving down so he doesn't have to use a ladder. And I am short, so I don't mind using the bottom shelves. Well, to be honest I already use the bottom shelves :) I am just wiggling out of one of them to another one of them. ha!

I have so much glass in varying pieces and shapes. Lovely stuff that I adore, but its also a pain in my ass really. There is this one 25lbs box of scrap COE90 fusible glass that I think I might just need to get rid of. As opposed to all the other hundreds of pounds of scrap glass that I have, this particular box has followed me around for at least 5 years. Its very dusty. Its good glass, I just don't care about it anymore. Its one cardboard box that I'd rather not have in my life. I'm either going to donate it to a school or sell it via Craigslist. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I feel I should do the same here at my studio at home. There is a lot of glass that I've had since 2000. That is ridiculous to me and it seems like there is someone out there who might like to use it.

I know I am going to make up a box of glass to take to my tax lady. She is good at trying to save money and she also is a glass artist - I know she will appreciate a whole bunch of free borosilicate clear and color (even if it is in small pieces). Elaine do you read this blog? I'll bring you some glass when I come to get my taxes done :)

I have plans to make large mobiles out of some of my scrap glass... sorta like these ones that I made with my friend Aimee. See how the color is in all these little pieces melted into the clear glass... I am thinking of doing something like this and cutting the mobile shapes out of this patterned glass. Aimee's mobiles turned out fantastic. I need to make more! It uses up all these funny shaped little pieces of scrap.

How do I deal with my scrap?

Today I continued to attack my scrap glass piles (its all gems of colorful goodness, just dirty and sharp and needing TLC). This time I took pictures!

Above you can see how I am dealing with a bunch of blue scrap. The blue bin was so full that I had to deal with some of it - otherwise I couldn't sort any more scrap bucket cuz there was no room for blue in the blue bin! Oh no! So what I do (and I am much more productive when my dear Aimee helps me!) is cut the funny shaped bits up into regular sizes of squares and triangles. These bits are then put in containers for quick access.

Today I even cleaned the glass as I went!! (clearly this is not something I enjoy doing) For a while I had been lubricating the scoring device with mineral spirits, but when I realized how freakin' toxic the fumes from this substance (thanx Jan for educating me!!!) I switched to vegetable oil. Then my friend Denis invested in some great blue glass cutting lubricant that is water soluble (so it washes off the glass really nicely!) - that is what I use now, so most of the scrap is really easy to clean. However the scrap that was covered in vegetable oil now is covered in dust and dirt and glass splinters. And the vegetable oil/silica combo has turned into some sort of strange resin. Its not easy to clean off. I tried the normal glass cleaner (a vinegar water concoction), then warm soapy water, finally I scraped the shit off. The ironic part is that the toxic brain killer mineral spirit I was using in the first place would make a great cleaner to get the strange vegetable oil/silica turned resin off the glass. Hmph. I hate cleaning.
Anyhow - here I am sorting out the bucket... big paint bucket filled weighs 50lbs... I sort it by color so I can then use the glass up. You can see I have laid big crates around to collect the glass bits, they stack nicely and hold a lot of pieces... I've used smaller plastic ice cream tubs for the colors I have less of (like white)...

Then the next step is what was pictured first... I take the glass and clean it up a bit and cut it up more into pieces: square and triangles in sizes that I use to make mini mobiles and earrings.

Adventures with Hubert

Hubert (the car) and I went on a errand run today. Fantastically productive. Fun places too!
I packed the car with boxes and bubbles at Carton Services and then wound around town picking up silver wire from West Coast Findings (for making earring wires, I seem to now require an endless supply of earwires) and I bought a new wire cutter... its a sweet little number... gotta love good tools.

Then I went to Hippo Hardware and checked out the chandelier parts they had on hand. WOW that was fun. I've never been to this place before and it was terrific, totally packed with nick-nacks. The top floor was all lamps and parts of lamps. There was an entire wall of drawers that are filled with chandelier parts, organized drawers of crystals prisms and metal widgets. Oh yeah baby. I've been wanting to find old crystal prisms to make more rainbow making mobiles (like this one) and this place was perfect. They have new ones and used ones. I picked out a handful of different size used ones and one ball prism for myself because I love them! it was new, they didn't have any used ballz :) oh my.
Okay, so Hippo Hardware was a very fun place. I also hit up SunLan Lighting for some more photoflood bulbs, mine seem to have all blown within the last few weeks. That place is also very fun (big store full of nothing but lightbulbs?! whats not fun about that)
Oh here are more pictures of Hippo Hardware, although I also ran around to Harbor Freight, and the Marine Fishing Store (swivel source) and then up to the glass studio to pick up some of my work...

The picture above is a staircase that was lined with doorplates and keyholes of all types and sizes... and then the picture below is a manikin dressed as a nun (in flippers) G pimpin' in a bath tub. Yep. I'll say it again, I enjoyed visiting Hippo Hardware, and I walked away with a bunch of neat old prisms for about a buck a piece.

Its not made of glass, its socks!

I made my first sock monkey today. How fabulous is he!!! His blue button nose is a glass button handmade by me, so I guess there is a little of my glass goodness going on here in this sock monkey!

Hes even got accessories :) A hat (made of the heel from a sock that was being made into a sock elephant) and a scarf made from the scraped fingers from glove animals (a dog and a rabbit made of striped gloves).

I had a lovely afternoon crafting away with friends - we made sock animals. Its always been a curiosity of mine to make my own sock monkey... now I've done it :)

Heres a pic of all the animals that were made, oh there is a birdy that is not in the picture... thanks for such a lovely afternoon ladies!!!

Beer Bottle Recycling Experiments

I am working on a new "green" line for my mobiles.

I am imagining some sort of bubbly bobbly rings of beery remains... I think they'd be great. I'll keep ya posted