TODAY ONLY – Groupon is running a promotion where you can get Maker Faire tickets for 50% off! Its a great deal, and makes it far more affordable to go! Get your tickets now!!!

Since I’m sharing our booth (well, make that an 8 foot table) at Maker Faire with two friends, I need to think of a way to shrink my usual booth. Instead of a long table of my own, I have about 2.5 feet square. I knew I needed to go vertical, so, while watching TV this weekend I constructed some shelving from foamcore I had around my apartment, and covered it with Modge Podge and some cool turquoise paper.

I really need to edit the amount of stuff I’m taking to the show because of the amount of space I have. The problem is I’m not finished MAKING stuff. I guess I could just stop… but I have half finished nightlights and bowls and picture frames and stained glass panels, and where are they going to go? Beats me.

Anybody want to make tough decisions for me? Pleeeease?

You read me right, New York City… in only two weeks, Maker Faire is hitting the east coast for the first time with World Maker Faire on the old Queens World Fairgrounds! And yours truly is teaming up with her usual partners in crime, Alison of King Popcorn and Michele of Dial M for Michele to bring you the awesome-est crafty goodness for your shopping pleasure.

This show will be a little different than our usual digs – for one, there is a fee to get in. Why, you wonder? Because its not just a craft show, but instead, a giant grown-up science fair ;o) Its a celebration of human creativity, whether it be through crafting, electronics, music, or any means ;o)

You can snag tickets online, but if you know me (and I know you), swing me an email and I can send you a discount code in advance.

So, here’s a little project I’ve recently completed… I created a slide show of the process of putting it together for an artist’s sharing thing at church.

Also, my little brother recently graduated from college, and I made him a stained glass piece that used some photos he took of his campus.

So I didn’t head up to Corning this year – I stayed in NYC and spent 4 days doing a workshop at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. I had a blast, although I am totally beat now – I designed and constructed a three-layer 13″ square panel and learned to paint on glass as well as to use the sandblaster and atomizer. Also, it was about a billion degrees (working in a studio where there are multiple glass furnaces only one room over on a 90 degree day makes for some out of control perspiration… ) which really didn’t help matters.

We had a really great teacher – Joseph Cavalieri – and I learned a lot. He is currently an artist in residence at my favorite place in NYC, the Museum of Art and Design, and working on some cool pieces incorporating the illustrations of Robert Crumb. Joseph showed us some of his work and actually worked on a piece while we were in class.
Everyone in the class was very talented – lots of painters heading into glass for the first time, and a few (like me) glass people hoping to begin to incorporate painting. You can see everyone’s work stacked in the kiln here.

This is the finished panel I made:

I started working with sketches of ballerinas a few months ago, and thought this panel would be a great opportunity to play with the silhouettes as well as translucence and layering.

I’m mostly please with how it came out. Some of the painting ended up being a little bit blotchy to my taste, and if I was to redo this panel, I would probably simply stick with black enamels instead of playing around with blue. Also, some of my favorite bits are sandblasted on, and are only really visible from the correct angles.

I also made a couple test pieces that incorporated my swirling doodles I do a lot of while watching television. They turned out really well, and I definitely plan on exploring that a lot more.

One final thing – I forgot to post a picture of the stained glass panel I had been working on prior to this! I finished it up last weekend while watching the World Cup final.

It turned out really well and is now hanging in my office window. Now that its back to work for me I’ll be spending more time with my Study in Clear ;O)

Until next time…

Ive been VERY busy lately, just not with much that is interesting for anyone reading a blog about crafting! I have a bunch of half finished projects I’d love to share with y’all if I ever complete them, and I’ve added one more to the bunch.

In two weeks, I am taking a stained glass course with Joseph Cavalieri, perhaps best known as “that guy that makes the stained glass windows with characters from the Simpsons.

(borrowed from Joseph’s Flickr account)
While I love those pieces, I have to admit I’m most excited to learn some of the techniques he uses, such as screenprinting on glass, airbrushing, and etching with a sandblaster. To get THERE, though I need to make sure I can remember how to cut and copper foil a project on my own!

Thats where the above comes in… I’ve been wanting a glass piece for my office at work, and so in short bits over this weekend, I’m hoping to slap this small stained glass panel together. Because the pieces include only straight lines, it was very fast to cut out. But before I can grind or copper tape it, I need to do some stuff for work… check y’all later!

If you ask her, my mom will claim that she is not artistic. This is not the truth, although she does not intend to lie. She seriously doesn’t think she’s any good at art, even though she can draw, is a great watercolor painter, and has made fabulous porcelain Christmas decorations.

Regardless, I went home for her birthday last week and talked her into taking a glass class with me at Hot Glass Houston. She was a little bit nervous, I think, as she was the only one in the class that had never cut glass before, however, she intently took notes and really enjoyed herself. Our class was taught by Donna Sarafis, who recently won first place in the 2010 Delphi Art Glass Festival. (If you are into glass fusing, I highly suggest taking her class – she is a great teacher!).

One great advantage my mom had over the rest of us in the class is her detailed knowledge of botany. My mom is an expert gardener and knows a ton about trees, their structure, and how they grow.

On the left side, we have Mom’s fabulous, structurally correct tree. On the right, we have… well… mine. Lets just say experience in glass does not give you the edge when you’re trying to make a realistic portrait of a tree. After this class, I am definitely going out to buy a book on painting and composition ;o)

And for Mom’s birthday, I made her this bracelet – from gold-fill beads and green lampworked beads with 24k gold foil which I made at UrbanGlass over my little “stay-cation.”

Happy birthday, Ma!

So this is what I’ve been doing with my Stay-cation… lately I’ve had my eye on these prints at Anthropologie of giant butterflies in pastel colors. Unfortunately, they’re insanely expensive – nearly $700 a piece.

So, I’ve decided to do something thematically similar, but in my own way. I’ve been making butterflies in fused glass ;o) Eventually there will be nine 6″ panels which I will copper foil together into a 1.5′ x 1.5′ window panel.

Right now I’ve got 2 panels complete, and the one pictured above fusin’ overnight… will update again (hopefully) soon…. if not, see you in a couple months ;o) ha!

Seriously so. So busy that I haven’t been posting. But not so busy that I haven’t been crafting… so here’s a few projects of the last few months:

Some doodling, a screenprint that Erin and I have been dreaming up for ages (Pride and Prejudice really *did* ruin us for real life…), and the results of a stained glass class I took a few weeks ago.

Anyhow, I’m on a little stay-cation right now, and I’m doing a bit of crafting now, so hopefully I’ll have much more to update y’all with soon!

Well, that was the last time I posted ;o) In part, it was because right after the Third Ward show, my trusty lil’ mac gave up the ghost. Though I replaced it right at the new year, I never managed to get the photos off my camera…

that is until now.

Third ward went well. Alison and I both had better sales than we did at Bust only a week prior. My only complaint was that there is NO HEAT there and we ended up freezing our little hind ends almost clean off!! We were fortunately seated next to Alyssa, who on top of being insanely talented, is hilarious. We tried hard to keep ourselves warm via laughing but, what can you do… (Alyssa’s pottery is below, but I was unfortunately unable to get a photo of her sense of humor…)

As an aside, I sold Leavin’ on a Jet Plane to this lovely customer right here… she gives stereoette two thumbs up!