Studio Tour

My studio is low budget. I would like to take you on a tour of my lampworking studio. It is small. It is at the mercy of the local weather. It does, however, have the essential components of a working studio – glass and a torch. And a fire extinguisher. Ventilation? Yes, it has that too, as it can best be described as being outside.

Because of the expansive proportions of my studio, I am diverging from my normal blog layout to show you larger photos. So, here is view #1. This is the main part of the studio. It has a desk that was salvaged from an old computer desk that, well, fell apart. Upon the desk is an array of glass, some of it is sheet art glass that I have cut up. That is stored in the little drawer bin. The rest is in various metal cans that have been salvaged from the kitchen.

The torch is there in the lower left quadrant of the photo. It is difficult to spot in the visual cacophony that is my studio. In the very bottom of the photo is the chair that I use. It was salvaged from a neighbor’s trash pile. It is a nice chair; I just had to wash off a lot of spider webs and other storage funk before I could use it.

To my left is my glass storage. I am sure that you are very impressed at the supreme organization skills that I have displayed. I actually purchased the storage containers. They are quite sophisticated, don’t you agree? In the box in the foreground of the photo is a whole box of clear. I use a lot of clear, and don’t usually bother to unpack it. I don’t know why that bundle of green is trying to masquerade as clear. I can tell the difference.

Also off to the left is the kiln, but I forgot to photograph it. The kiln was not salvaged, but the table upon which it rests was.

To my right is the fire extinguisher. It is easily accessible. I have not used it, but we did use its predecessor to put out a fire on our tractor / lawn mower. Good thing we had it.

I also have two chest of drawers in which I store miscellaneous items. Items that I rarely use. I did not even attempt to photograph those chests, because they are currently buried under a large amount of pop (soda) that was on sale. We had better consume that 1.) before it freezes and 2.) before I need one of those miscellaneous items.

Well, so there you have it. I sometimes feel funny calling it a studio. It is located between my house and garage in the breezeway. It has neither air conditioning nor heat. It has been furnished in what best could be described as dumpster diving. It is really tiny and shares its purpose with food storage. But it is where I melt my glass, so it’s my studio.

Take a moment to look at some beads made in my studio at my shop at Etsy.

Bedroom Window

This fiery crimson red Japanese Maple is right outside my bedroom window. In the mornings, the sunlight this time of year illuminates it so vividly, it is almost too intense.

Seven Legs

While hiking yesterday, my son spotted a Daddy Longlegs.

They are not spiders, but they are indeed arachnids, so they should have 8 legs. Rarely do I see one with the full compliment of 8 legs. This fellow (gal?) has 7.

It was really scooting along though, so much so that I had a hard time photographing it.

Driftwood Sank

My second post on this blog was about some baby plecostomuses that had come to live at our home.

When I bought them, I had asked the breeder what tiny plecos would like to eat. He told me a few things, and one of them was that a piece of driftwood was good for them to nibble and to just hang out on.

We did not want to put just any chunk of wood into our tank, so this gave us an excuse to trot over to one of our favorite local pet stores, Two Turtles. There, they had a stunning array of driftwood. Each of the driftwood selections were attached to a piece of slate and we inquired about its purpose. The sales guy told us that it was to help anchor the wood to the bottom of the tank and that we might need to add even more weight to keep it down. His parting words to us were “good luck”.

See, we had pictured the driftwood nestling gently on the bottom of the tank and maybe tilting a little requiring a small adjustment now and again. Wrong. wrong. wrong. We couldn’t even get it all the way into the tank, it was so bouyant. Definitely not expected. On the bright side, part of it was in the tank, and the plecos cheerfully did indeed nibble at it and in general hung out on it.

So, now we have this driftwood a little into the tank, a lot of driftwood sticking out of the tank, and the lid of the tank hanging open. Ok, at least there are no jumpers in the tank right now. So, we had to revise our expectations of the behavior of the driftwood. Maybe it will get waterlogged and sink in a couple of days. Then we can place it in a tasteful location of the tank.

Time passed. The driftwood barely budged. That was unexpected.

Finally after a couple of weeks, it did take on enough water to sink enough so that the lid of the tank would once again close. Victory! Of course the plecos did not care where the driftwood was and continued to blissfully nibble away at the wood.

Fast forward, now two months have passed. The driftwood has finally touched the bottom of the tank. I am now really beginning to understand the “good luck” admonition from the pet store guy!

Getting Organized

I had photographed and put numerous beads up for sale in the last few weeks.

What I had not done was to put them away into a safe place. One of my fears is that I will sell a bead, then I won’t be able to find it. Usually, I have a safe box that I stash them away (which I have misplaced on occasion). This time, I had just left them in a ever growing pile on the table where I had photographed them.

One of my other fears is that I will sell a bead, and then I won’t be able to identify which one it was. Now, that fear is a little more irrational, since my beads tend to be unique. Nonetheless, I have a numbering scheme, and each bead is identified with that number as I photograph it.

My daughter and I spent some time sorting out the beads, and putting a little label with the identifying number in a bag with the beads. See the spacer beads in their little baggies in the upper left of the picture?

It was time well spent.

Take a moment to look at my beads at my shop at Etsy.

Finding Inspiration

Sometimes it is hard to decide what to make when sitting down at the torch.

I am particularly interested in shapes of beads, so often one of the first things I think about is what shape do I want to make? Am I in a big donut mood? Maybe a big olive shape? Maybe something smaller? That seems pretty obvious, but it just helps me get a little direction.

Then, I decide colors. Color inspirations can be just about anywhere – magazines, photos that I have taken, mail order catalogs, or outside my window. Lately, I have been trying to really think differently, and have been getting color combinations from ColourLovers. I really love the Ecstatic Pink color combination – I wish that the beads photographed better, they are much more ethereal than what shows (but that’s another days post – right?).

I think I’ll go pick out a new color set today. Ok. There is it – up in the corner there!

Added: Now this is too funny! I looked at my blog with my last post and this one at the same time. The color in the new color palette in this post strongly resemble the photo in my last post. Coincidence? I think not!

I make beads with many color combinations – check my website – Spawn of Flame or look at Etsy.

Elusive Bird

Recently, we hiked around the reservoir at Hinckley Reservation. All summer long, I have had a quest to photograph this white bird, but all summer long, the bird was too far away to get a good picture.

On this occasion, Bird was actually quite close to the shore, but, surprise!, I did not have my camera with me. I did have my camera phone with me, so if you inspect the picture real close, there are a couple of pixels of white that represent the bird – my holy grail of photos.

Wow! Think what a zoom, better optics, and a bigger photo would have been like.

I really should know better. This is the second time I have been empty handed of my camera on this particular trail. If I had brought my camera on the trail on the day of the lunar eclipse, I would have had the shot of a lifetime. Yeah, well, in theory anyway. The other part of the story on that day? I had left the camera on the picnic table when we decided to walk the trail.

When I am not hiking, I make beads. Check them out at Etsy or my Spawn of Flame website.

Spacer Rainbow

I am listing spacers in my Etsy store throughout the day. Go see the rainbow!

Cat Dog

Our dog, Spike, was peacefully sleeping on the couch when my husband decided to get her attention by throwing (clean!) laundry at her. She was much too content to respond and seemed to like her new blankets.

The cat, Opel (spelling from the rescue agency), absolutely cannot resist laying on clean laundry. Apparently it does not matter even if the clean laundry happens to be on top of the dog. And the dog didn’t seem to care either.

These animals are both about 10 years old and have lived together in the same house for 7 years. Up until now, neither has barely acknowledged that the other even existed.