Butterflies….Owls…and Bears – Oh My!

I know…it’s been way too long since my last update.  I was real busy with some fall shows upon my return to Florida.  I was trying to cram a bunch of stuff in before the holiday – hoping to clear out some Christmas decor that I had made.  The shows were great and I was very pleased with the results.  It’s all a new learning process for me so a lot of trial and error.  I will be wiser from the experience for the coming holiday season.

In the meantime, it is almost summer.   I haven’t done a show since right before Christmas in Florida.  I endured a long stretch of having no artistic stamina – probably lasted for 2 months.  It feels good to be back on track and producing new stuff almost on a daily basis.  I have moments where it’s almost business-like….I have to step away for awhile to regroup and get back in to the hobby aspect of it all.   We returned to Georgia almost 2 weeks ago to give me time to unpack all of my stuff.  We’ve resorted to renting a u-haul trailer on our trips now in order for me to bring all 25 of my boxes containing my projects, glass and kiln.

I’ applied for 5 shows and was accepted to all of them – woo hoo!  I like the energy of the GA shows .  Here is my schedule along with some of the newest stuff I’ve been working on.

 

My current show schedule – if you are in the neighborhood stop by and see us:

• June 7-8 – The Ridges Landing in Hiawassee GA.  This is an outdoor show  at a local resort on the lake.

• June 28-29 – The Mountain Fling – Blairsville Technical College – indoor show
• July 19-20 – Butternut Creek Festival Blairsville.  This is one of the top shows in the southeast – outdoor venue with lots of great music and arts/crafts
• Sept 20-21 Celebrate Autumn – Blairsville Technical College – indoor show
• October 11 – Church Street Festival Waynesville NC (outside of Asheville) – a one day show in the mountains in the middle of autumn – what more could we ask for!  One of our best friends performs at this show and recommended that I apply.  We usually drive up there just to visit him – so now we’ll have a booth.

 

Here are some of the fused glass mosaic pieces I’ve been working on.  I’m starting to get back in the rhythm of mountain topics like bears 😀    These all have hooks or pegs in the bottom so they can be hung on the wall and used to hang leashes, keys, jewelry or whatever else you can think of.

PLEASE CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO GET THE FULL PICTURE

 

Bear cubs climbing tree – mosaic background – fused bears

Bear emerging from a lake full of cat tails – mosaic background – fused glass bear and cat tails.

Two of the bird villages I like to create. Cute bird houses where or avian friends reside.

 

Here are some of the components that I piece together for wind chimes.  I have accumulated about 40 different wind chimes, sun catchers and spinners ranging from cats to bears to birds.  You can see the before picture which shows the glass as it has been cut and arranged prior to firing at temperatures up to 1500 degrees in my kiln.    Hi-temp wire hooks also need to be place appropriately in order to bead and string the chimes after they have fired.  Most of these are designs that I’ve toyed with over the past year – trying them in larger or smaller sizes – different colors and adding more whimsy.  I take the pictures as they lay on a table – it’s impossible to get good wind chime pictures when hanging.

 

Cats, Dogs, etc. BEFORE firing in the kiln

Cats, Dog, etc. AFTER kiln and stringing

Set up in the kiln and ready to fire up to 1500 degrees

Bear and Beehive – AFTER being fired in the kiln and strung into a wind chime using cut glass components and recycled bottle rings.

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I’ve also been experimenting with ways to incorporate my glass fusing projects into my stained glass work.  I already incorporate the fused pieces into all of my mosaics but the stained glass was a little more difficult.  I use these turtles in my underwater wind chime scene and I thought they would go really well with this particular art glass.  I made the middle section of this with fused glass and then I cut some glass, foiled and soldered it around the turtle scene.  This is approximately 15 inches high by 12 inches wide.

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I’ve also completed some more of my night owls series.  This full moon is keeping this poor owl family awake in “insowlmniacs”.    16 inches high by 10 inches wide.  Mosaic background – fused glass owls.

Fused glass mosaic titled INSOWLMNIACs

Small plaque featuring more night owls with a full moon and starlit night.  Approximately 10 inches wide by 3 inches high.  Mosaic background on a ceramic base with fused glass owls.

night owls plaque

I had these terra cotta pot bases that I picked up on a recent trip to Ikea.  I knew they’d make a great mosaiced bird bath….I just didn’t know what to do with them.  I’ve been playing around with this frog design for a few months – never quite happy with it..  I like him now – especially in this application.  The birdbath is approximately 14 inches across.  The bottom is glass mosaic and the frog, toadstools and dragonflies are all fused glass.

Frog with toadstools bird bath

I am also starting from scratch with my tent and display this week.  We have the tent erected in the driveway right now – strapped to the fence with 40 lb. weights holding it down.   Why?  It’s going to be there for at least 5 days while I fiddle around with my new mesh wall for display and my new table set ups.   We’ve had a fair amount of wind in the afternoons and some thunderstorms rolling through – better safe than sorry.  I don’t want to have to chase my tent down the street as it flies away in one of the gusts.  It also gives me an opportunity to test out the new weights that my handy-dandy husband made for me.    He put the tent up this morning and attached the new stabilizer bars to the bottom in addition to adding the new mesh wall on one side for a hanging display.  It’s coming along – i’ll be sure to take some pictures next weekend at the show once i’ve tweaked it a million times.  We will head to HIawassee this Friday afternoon to set the tent up – we’ll roll the sidewalls down overnight and return early Saturday morning for show time.  We decided to drive back and forth each day – so that means 3 round trips to Hiawassee next weekend – 45 miles each way.

Until next time…..

What’s Baking in the Kiln – Wind chime components

I’ve signed up for another show coming up the weekend of October 19-20.  This one is outdoors…. I bought a canopy about a month ago even though I didn’t want to do outdoor shows.  Too many things you have no control over- weather….bugs….did i say weather?  I bit the bullet and signed up for the local Fall Festival that’s held at our local farmers market in downtown Blue Ridge.   I’ve been to it a few times and haven’t seen anything like what I make.  We’ll have to see if it’s the right type of venue for my stuff…. or if it’s more suited for baked goods and beaded jewelry.

I’ve kept myself busy making wind chimes, wind spinners and yard art.  I don’t “market” the glass as wind chimes because I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression.  These aren’t meant to sit in the breeze and make a lot of noise.  I do add components that let them “tinkle” in a light breeze.   No secret – these are made of glass – therefore, I highly recommend that they be kept in a more enclosed environment.

Here are some pictures of the latest creations – Pardon the setting – do you realize how impossible it is to take pictures of wind chimes??:

I’ve seen notecards and posters that show a funky bird sitting on top of the cat… i didn’t know how it would translate to glass so i thought i’d experiment.  There are a few refinements needed..but I’ll worry about those later.

these little owls are from a small stained glass pattern that I saw a few years ago…i added the embellishments to give them a little style.

i try to incorporate melted bottle parts in most of the chimes too.  you see the little rings – those are the necks of melted wine bottles.  There are also larger rings and the bottom to the bottles that have been melted as well.

crazy cat-bird.   he won’t be able to make up his mind 😀

these are in the kiln right now – baking away.  i don’t fully fuse a lot of my stuff – i prefer to run a special contour fuse program that i’ve created specifically for my kiln.  this allows me to keep some ‘relief’ in the item versus fusing it completely flat.

As you can see, I’ll be busy wiring up more wind chimes in the next two days.   We are heading to Atlanta tomorrow so I can stock up on some more glass.  I order it online and also visit Armstrong Glass in Canton, GA.    I have a few ideas for more things I’d like to have completed before I do the next show….if only I had 4 hands and another kiln 😀

Pelican Portrait Mosaic

Anybody who has known me for longer than 5 minutes – knows that I absolutely love birds.  I have excessive amounts of camera equipment just to satisfy my bird watching habit.  I need an excuse to go out and look for birds so I drag out the big boy lenses and digital camera and head out to the local wetlands.  It’s one of the great advantages to living in the state of Florida – so many birds!

I’ve probably taken over 5000 pictures over the years – I would guess that almost 60% of them are birds.  The rest are vacation pics, flower/botanical pics and some of the feline variety.   What do I do with all of these pictures?  Well, sometimes they sit in a directory on my computer untouched for months before I decide to go back and refresh my memory as to what exciting thing I saw in nature that day.  I crop them and might change a little bit of the lighting but mainly leave them untouched.  Every time I open one of the picture folders,  I can remember the beauty of the variety of wildlife that I’m surrounded with on a daily basis – my form of meditation.

I especially love to take pictures of pelicans.  My husband and I see them glide over the waves at the ocean and marvel at their skills.  To see them on land, you’d think they were clowns.  They are so ungainly and look like they will tip over at any minute as they waddle around.   I haven’t taken any pictures of pelicans  for a few years but as I was going back through some of my old picture directories, I came across a folder full of brown pelican pictures I took about 10 years ago.  I fell in love with the spectacular blue eyes and the personality they exhibit through those eyes.

This picture is not the best – the lighting is all wrong….the beak is cut off….but I loved the lines of the pelicans head and beak with a full-on shot.  Who knew that one day it would be the inspiration for a new mosaic.

I really struggled with this project.  I started it one month and worked on it for a few hours a day until I lost focus.  It was only half done at this point.  We left for the summer to spend 5 months in Georgia and when I returned home to Florida, I spent countless days looking at the unfinished work trying to find inspiration.  I just didn’t know how to finish the bottom of the bird.  I had the face done but I lacked incite on what to do with the bottom.  Do I show anything but his head?  What colors?  What shape do I want his body to be?  Finally, after about 3 weeks, I woke up one morning and just started playing around with the glass and finished the bottom.  Yippee!  I was so happy to have this one done…I thought for sure it would end up in the “unfinished projects” part of the garage shelves 😀

Here he is – WIP….still contemplating the final moves.

Here he is ….finally finished!

Home at last – here he is hanging out on the secluded side patio.

So glad to have him off of my workbench and hanging on the wall.  Now I wonder if I learned my lesson…..  have a plan.  Work from a pattern??  That would be too easy.  I don’t want to crank things out like a robot.  I’d rather let them sit and mellow with time.  This affords me the opportunity to change direction on a whim.

Mosaic Bench – Titled “Watching Over You”

Not long after I started experimenting with mosaic work – i decided that i wanted to make a bench for the deck at our mountain house.   I can’t figure out why i always go ‘big’…versus just trying something small.  After all, this was only my third or fourth mosaic piece.  I saw plans for this beautiful wooden bench in a lowe’s magazine…that was the beginning of the end 😀  I showed it to jay and said ‘we have to make this’…so i can mosaic something on top of it.  A few trips to lowe’s and we had all of the supplies necessary.  It took us a few days to complete the wood-working part.  The whole time we are playing with power tools, I’m trying to figure out what design i can come up with to put on the top.  I knew i had to start with bears….i ♥♥♥ bears. 

Bears….  a momma bear and her two cubs – she’s trying to coax them from the tree.  That’s where i started.  I worked with no design plan whatsoever…just whatever popped in to my head when i woke up in the morning.  I knew i wanted to incorporate the whole animal spirit theme with native american’s so i finally found some direction.  Fox, eagle, deer, bears – they all play a relevant role in the native american tradition.   Our summer house is situated in the middle of what was once Cherokee land.    I’ve read a lot about the history here, there is so much to know.   Also, the house has a lot of artwork that I’ve acquired over the years from the Cherokee’s in NC.

The mosaic work was done using stained glass that i already had on hand.  I don’t follow any type of mosaic design  – just a random glass pieces – large and small.  I suppose i’d need to take a class to learn how to do real mosaic work.  I honestly have no desire to do that….  I would draw a small section at a time – ie: the bears.  I’d cut the glass from what i had on hand and apply it to the cement board.  It took the entire summer for me to complete this bench.  I never thought i’d finish!  I probably learned my lesson too….no more projects without patterns or a plan!  okay….forget that…i didn’t learn any lesson because i have continued down the same path –  of starting with nothing…i’ll have to show you my pelican mosaic one of these days. 

oh, did i mention that the damn thing weighs 100 lbs?  it’s sooooo heavy!

This is the finished bench – just getting started on the mosaic.

here is the bench – mosaic work completed but not yet grouted

here is the finished bench – do you see everything?  the eagle…the fox….the deer….the bear….bear momma and cubs….purple mountains majesty….the teepee’s on the far side of the lake?