5 posts tagged “glass”
I finished up baking the wedding cake… in a range that now has a (temporary I hope) wooden handle, that’s right ladies and gents, my kitchen range is sporting a 2x4 where the handle should be. One side of the handle came off yesterday as I was putting the first cake in the oven. Later, the other side came off as well, right in my hand. With the new chunk of wood, I can get in stuff in and out of the oven much easier. And that was all that mattered while I was baking the wedding cake. Tomorrow I will ice the wedding cake, Saturday morning I will deliver it and then enjoy my cousin’s big plain Mennonite wedding.
Just about the time I was headed off for a nice leetle nap, I saw that the USPS had delivered my box of broken NASA glass… which sent me downstairs to the kiln. I played with the pretty bits of dichroic glass and put a round in the kiln to fire up. I spent some quality time with the whammer, making broken glass into more broken glass, managed to wham my own finger like the genius I am. Owie! I just finally pulled that batch of glass out of the kiln just now, they were still 102 degrees, but that’s better than 1500 that they were earlier. I think they turned out beautifully in spite of the fact that three of the six have crack marks in the center. I’ll ask a glass friend what that was about but I’m pretty sure it’s because I opened the kiln door to peak at the wrong temp and the glass just couldn’t contain it’s joy at seeing me and it's heart just burst right there in the middle. Or something like that. Temperamental stuff, peaking in the kiln at the wrong time is a bad idea.
I was serious about getting that nap so I tried again. This time the phone rang just after I had
dozed off. The hubby was on his way home
and bringing the father-in-law with him.
He was just passing through but we managed to talk him into staying the
night. I would have cooked but he just
wanted food, a shower and off to bed with him.
He’s driving some kind of big rig through the area. We ordered a pizza and that was that. I like to cook, and I would have loved to
cook for them but they were looking for something a little more instant. To bad, their loss.
I managed to put some glaze on a series of wine
glasses. It seems like wine glasses were
good for me this month in sales. The
second round of glazing will come tomorrow and then I’ll get a feel for whether
or not I like them… so far myeh. That's how they always look after the first round, the second round is what makes them beautiful.
While I was working on the glaze my friend Michelle called. She was here for a few nights last weekend and I made home made hot poppers. She was making them and trying to remember what I'd done. Just cut the peppers in half, remove the seeds and membranes. In a microwave safe mug put half a block of cream cheese in the mic for 30 seconds. Stir in some salt and peppa, onions, paprika, garlic and some swiss or sharp cheddar (in fine chunks) or whatever your favorite cheese is. Stir it all together and put in a pastry bag (or a ziploc bag with the corner clipped if you don't have the other) and pipe it into the pepper halves. Line a pan with foil, put cracker crumbs in the pan so the peppers don't stick, top the poppers with more cracker crumbs and some parsley. I popped them in my toaster over at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, served with cold sweet n sour and duck sauce and YUM! Michelle was trying to remember what I'd done, she'd been watching while I made them when she was here. She'd found a recipe online from Emeril... but she said it was too complicated. Michelle liked my recipe better than Emeril's!! *wistful bits of happy joy and smug self approval*
I just put another round of glass in the kiln and set it off. By morning I hope it is back down to a temperature that I can get in there and see what they look like. I love working with glass, you never know what is going to come out of the kiln, but honestly, waiting to pull them out after they are back down under a hundred degrees is really hard. I am curious and impatient.
It’s time for full tilt production for the holidays. I want to get my work into a few more galleries and see if I can rock this holiday season. I hope so. That would be cool.
Then maybe the first of the year I can work on transforming my kitchen. I’m thinking a new floor – which I think means the old vinyl will have to come up. And since it’s been down there since 1975 I don’t know how hard it will be to get up. And everything needs a coat of paint. The walls, the cabinets… everything. It’s going to be a really big job but it will turn out fine, if I can ever make up my mind on the colors. I fear that I don't really want to live with the gray I've chosen. It would be beautiful in someone else's home, but other people can live with colors I can't handle and the opposite is true. (I remember well my fuchsia bedroom - it rocked - but to be fair it was mostly concrete, steel, glass and hardwood... but still the one fuchsia wall ROCKED!) Hmm...
I still hope that we can get the adoption in by the end of
the year, mainly for tax reasons but honestly, hope is waning for that. And the possible financial repercussions of
that kind of suck. But whatcha gonna
do? There isn’t anything I can do but
wait. Well... I can blubber over it, but I've already done my share of that. Honestly I don't know whatever possessed me to say that I'd pay thousands of dollars and wait hundreds of days for something I'm not sure I can handle when it comes. I'm just sayin.
That's a day in the life of an artist. Never a dull moment.
Hey everyone, I’m trying to raise some money to get a new floor in my kitchen before the kids come. And since I’ve just started learning how to fuse dichroic glass in my kiln, well… this is your shot at getting a great deal on a new piece of jewelry for yourself or a gift. Check out the options here.
I met a local Doctor this summer as I did the Farmer’s Market and now I’m going to do gifts for all her nurses and staff. I’m excited. She was here today, blew through like she’s on some kind of “fast forward” but she liked my ideas and my work and she ordered twelve, so I’m tickled. Plus she paid half down. Yeah baby! The cash is a big help right now, let me tall ya!! And will be as long as I’m the annoyed owner of two houses!
The idea I pitched her was a candleholder with candle from my hand painted art glass collection. Then three bars of soaps that match, plus a coordinating bag of my herbal spa soak. So the ladies can light their candle, draw an herbal bath to relax plus three matching bars of soap that will last quite a while. And they will be in white bags with matching tissue and ribbon! All for $25, and completely hand made and all matchy-matchy by me. I think they will be marvelous! I’ll be making them over the coming days and as I do, I’ll post photos.
She has a running joke with a friend who eats everything in sight – especially chocolate - so she also bought a collection of my gourmet soaps plus the edible fragrance guest bars for that friend. I wish I could be a bug on the wall when that gift is unwrapped. LOL!
I did corporate gifts for an office at GE for a few years. They like to do handmade artisan stuff and I worked that process to get two years out of the deal. Usually they choose an artist and then a new one the next year but because I work in a variety of media, I was able to do it twice. They spend $70 each year – KaCHING! Seriously, I love this kind of thing. I totally get all jazzed when people like to give my stuff as gifts! Plus, it was fun to send my art glass to different countries all over the world. United Arab Emirates, Japan, France, Germany, etc… yeah baby!
Anyone else want in on this? I’ll be happy to make corporate gifts for anyone else who needs them! The woman at GE that I worked with just made her Christmas cards and sent them to me, picked from images I emailed her, then her assistant gave me the credit card number and that was all she had to do. Done! I created the gifts, packaged them along with info about me, included her Christmas card and shipped them out. Yeah, that was fun!
Check out my website and then email me with your price range and number of folks you want gifts for and I'll email you a list of options to choose from. It's fun! And it's another thing off your list! I love my job!
It’s been a crazy busy week as I prepare to take work to a gallery in a nearby town on Monday. I’ve been full tilt at this now for so long I think it has all started to blend into mush in my head. Anyway, as I look around at the glass I have finished this evening, I’m pretty happy with the results. When I left my job in 2004 to go full time artist, this was the media I was working in. And I laid it aside to focus more on the jewelry and here I am again. Next week I’ll be back into soap I suppose. We’ll see.
If you want to see the rest of the photos check out my art blog: http://croseprose.blogspot.com/
Off to bed for me. I have to get up very early for a show in the morning.
