Jewelry Blues!

These are just some of the sets and pieces of jewelry that I have made in blues, shades of blues/related to blue, or containing some blue.  A drop in the bucket!

On black velvet... shows some teal...

On bare skin... a little transparent... looks different on everyone, and with whatever you are wearing.

Unfinished blobs have a lot of potential!

Earring options: French Hooks/Wires, Posts (dangling or not), even clip-ons.

 

Many with multiple earring options.

Earring Extenders are also optional.

Sizes generally are within 1-1/4" x 1-1/4".  This one is approximately a 1" square (slightly longer).

These pieces are made from pattern bar scraps.

These pieces are a little longer - maybe about 1-1/2".  The silver dichroic glass reflects a little lavender.

Many are cabochons with dichroic glass inclusions.

Some have crinkled dichroic glass.

Each pieces is a unique, one-of-a-kind creation.  Even earrings will have slight differences.

These have millefiori inclusions.

Many are layered.  This is a combination of dichroic and plain art glass.

There is no end to the variety of shapes available.

This pendant is about 1-1/4" round.

Pendant bails and ear wires/posts are available in silver and gold plating, or sterling silver.

Assorted pendant bail types are available.

A pendant (about 1"x1-1/4") and earrings with extenders (wire balls).

Dichroic glass reflects and transmits light.  The peach color above is from what I am wearing.

Some jewelry pieces are mounted on beaded chains.  Beaded chains can also be purchased change pendants.

Triangles are often overlapped in my jewelry designs.

Add extenders (the square links above, or other styles) depending on the length of hair and personal preference.

Most pieces are sold as sets.  Some pieces are sold individually.

Design your own pendants, choosing metal color and earring type.

Custom designed specifically for your tastes and preferences.

Don't see what you like?  Custom orders/designs available.

2nd Round of Ornaments for the National Christmas Tree!

The Forest Service offered an extension of the deadline to get ornaments submitted for the National Christmas Tree this year.  They needed to be sure they had at least 5,000 ornaments for the tree!  

So, I tried to recruit some more people to make additional ornaments to add to the batch that I had already delivered to the Forest Service Office.  (I heard later that they exceeded the 5,000 necessary ornaments!)

Leslie dropped everything and stopped cleaning her carpets to come over to make ornaments.  Phil ran next door and recruited nearly the whole family - Kim and kids Erik (10) and Ryan (8), as well as their grandmother Mary, and cousin Katie (8).

Katie's ornaments are above.  The rest are below!  

Phil and I made some extras to fill up the kiln.  Phil made his out of the scraps just laying on the table after everyone else had gone home!

Western Snowmen by Erik!

Ryan's Snowmen & Penguin!

 

These are Kim's creations!

Mary's Snowman!

Leslie's Forever West Ornaments

This is Phil's ornament. 

Cat's ornaments.

ORNAMENTS FOR NATION'S CHRISTMAS TREE!

This week, a small group of Laramie artists gathered at the Martin's Glass House studio to
make ornaments for the Nation's Christmas tree in Washington, DC.

Yesterday I dropped off the ornaments at the Forest Service office in Laramie.

We thought that yesterday was going to be the deadline - but the newspaper yesterday had an announcement from the Forest Service in Casper that there is a one-week extension on getting all the ornaments turned in to the Forest Service. So, today - Saturday - we will be creating more!

This first ornament (above) is one that I created.

It is a 9" clear circle with glass scraps on both sides. Can you see the star on it? I am hoping it's easy enough to see!

The 9" and larger ornaments are supposed to be displayed on the 67-foot tree that will be the main tree in Washington - I think at the White House (?). There are several other smaller trees that will be in offices around Washington, DC, so smaller ornaments are supposed to be used on those trees.

Here are the rest of the ornaments we made. After everyone left, Phil and I created a few more ornaments to fill up both kilns.

These are the rest of the 9" ornaments...


Lisa's Ornament.

Can you see the star? Look for it!

Lisa said her sister lives close to Washington DC, so she's hoping her sister can get there to make sure that huge tree has her ornament on it!

I hope her sister will take photos of ALL our ornaments on the huge tree!





This is Patty's large (9") ornament.

The theme for ornaments this year is "Forever West".

This one looks, to me, like a mountain with clouds in the sky and a lot of rivers or lakes...

What do you see in it?






Here is Patty's smaller ornament.

The size is about 5-6".

Dots and Frit...

Red, White and Blue...

Cool!






This is Julie's large ornament.

Sort of an abstract Christmas tree. White frit for snow on the green boughs.

Julie had never done anything like glass fusing before.

Great job for her first time, don't you think?






This is Julie's smaller ornament. The small ornaments are made out of 4" circles.

Another great job! Very colorful!

(So much excitement for Julie at our house lately... She was here last week when our epiphyllum bloomed - again. The epiphyllum bloomed in early August, and again last week. So cool! I'll post some photos of that later.)







Julie brought her friend Jenny with her...

This is one of Jenny's large ornaments. I don't know when she found time to do two of them - and a smaller one - but, she did!

Isn't this great? Using scraps of glass, Jenny found a piece that had had a tree cut out of it! So, there is is right in the middle - a Christmas tree on an ornament!

Good job, Jenny!



This is Jenny's other large ornament.

I see mountains, clouds, lakes... a golf course, too... in it.

What do you see?









This is Jenny's small ornament.

A tree on one side - with frit snow on the tree.
The other side is red and blue - sort of a starburst effect. With the snow, it looks Red, White and Blue.

How creative!







And speaking of creative... Look what Phil made!

He found a piece lying on the table that was a rejected shawl pin. Clarifying with me that I wasn't going to be using it, he used it on this small ornament. Cute, huh?

I really like it when he gets involved in these projects. He really has some creative ideas for a comical (I mean chemical) engineer, don't you think? :-)

Trying to make up for destroying a 24"x24" piece of amber glass for one project by using a scrap laying around on the table....


This is a small ornament that I made.

Supposed to be the sun and sunset, over mountains, amber waves of dry grasses, a lake, a river, a few green trees ...

This is Wyoming. This is the West.






This is another small ornament I made.

A tree with a star... and the sun... and some splashes of sunsets.

The West.








This is one of the snowmen ornaments (small) that I usually make.

The traditional image with the corn cob pipe and a stove pipe hat. Later for Christmas this year, though, I think I'll work on making some with western hats.

This particular snowman has brown eyes instead of eyes made out of "coal".

I will never forget the year that I made a snowman with blue eyes. It looked just like Bing Crosby.

I wonder who has that snowman now...

And this is another ornament I made - just to fill up the kiln quickly. Just pieces of scrap glass. No particular "meaning" to it.

Maybe you see something I don't see?

Cat's Basket Weave Cake - Before the Collapse

Fortunately, we took photos of this cake before it left Michael's!

This was my first attempt at making a basket weave cake. Looks pretty good in this photo; but by the time I got home, the basket was pretty much pulling the cake off the sides. Probably too much weight from all the frosting, as I drove very carefully and there was very little traffic going home.

Pretty much the same flowers as used in the tiered cake (previous post), with the addition of daffodils on this cake.

The blue birds were made from gum paste. I'm going to try putting some powdered "dust" on the birds (and other items) in the future to make them stand out a little better - look fancier.

This is a carrot cake with sour cream-raisin filling from a recipe I found in an old cookbook I checked out from the public library. Caramel Penuche Icing mixed with Buttercream Icing for the frosting.

The cake isn't going anywhere... it's a mess!

Flowers, Butterflies and Birds

Inspired by the new colors I'm using in the living room, I created this 9"x16" window hanging.

I used "my version" of the technique I learned from Richard LaLonde when I took a class he taught in Boise, Idaho last year.

This is made primarily from glass frit, which is ground up glass - most of this was from powdered glass frit... some from finely ground glass frit.

There are also bits of dichroic glass in the butterflies. Too bad we didn't realize what the piece looks like from the other side... the dichroic really stands out much better from the reverse side.

The piece is currently hanging in the window at Gallery West/ The Frame Plant in downtown Laramie - for sale! It is gorgeous! You need to go see it from both sides. If it doesn't sell, I'll get it back again in a few months to enjoy it on display in my new living room "gallery," as I've run out of room in my studio gallery!

Continuing the color theme... Here is a photo of the first tiered cake I've ever made.

I call it "Cross Training" for my glass art - I have been taking some cake decorating classes at Michael's in Cheyenne, WY. I like the colors in my living room, so carried it over into my cake decorating colors for this cake.

The top is a 6" cake, the middle is 8", the bottom is 10".

The cake is from a recipe called "Italian Wedding Cake." It contains pineapple, coconut and pecans. I was aiming to find something "sturdy" so that the layers would stack well.

The filling is pineapple curd - a recipe I found in a fairly old book that I checked out from the public library.

Part of the fun of baking cakes is finding new recipes.


The photo below is the top of the cake. The flowers are all made of Royal Icing. The butterfly is gum paste.

I got the idea for the butterfly from something I saw on You Tube. I never found a butterfly gum paste press, so I used a cookie cutter to cut out the gum paste.

I'm not a big rose-making fan... still need some practice. The other flowers are a lot of fun to make, though. I actually like the challenge of trying to make them as small as possible so that they can be used on cookies - or even sugar cubes, if anyone remembers when people used to decorate sugar cubes. Does anyone still even sell sugar cubes to do that anymore?

This (below) is the arrangement of flowers under the top tier.

Can you see the butterfly wings? (You can click on the photo to make it larger for viewing.)

When I added the orange color (a combination of burgundy and yellow coloring) to the gum paste, I didn't knead it all thoroughly because I kind of liked the marbled effect of the two colors together.

I dipped the edge of the wings in Royal Icing, then into yellow colored sugar sprinkles just for fun.

And, here (below) is a photo of the bottom layer - so you'll know it was there! - with some of the decorations on the side of the middle layer.

The biggest problem I had with this cake was trying to figure out what to do with it all when I got it home (safely, by the way).

We still have the bottom layer here at home. The other two layers went with Phil to where he works. I wonder if they're going to get tired of having cake there ... Phil is going to take the next cake class segment with me, so we're going to have twice as many cakes! Next time with fondant!

JULY CALENDAR

JULY CALENDAR!

July is packed with things to do - whether you have a project to finish, or whether you'd like to start something new.

Just click on either of the images in this post to see everything large enough to read and print!

REALLY NEW THIS MONTH!

Martin's Glass House is probably the only place in Laramie currently offering you an opportunity to Paint Your Own Pottery!

This is a great opportunity for you to do something quickly for gifts - whether for weddings, baby showers, birthdays... even gifts for pets! It's always great fun to personalize a gift for someone special in your life.

Our stock of bisque ware is limited right now (see photos and costs, below); but if you want to do something special that we don't have, we can special order it for you. (Please plan ahead!)

There are plenty of times scheduled this month, too, to finish up projects that you have in the works - or you can start something new.

MELTING POTS!

This started out as an experiment to see what would happen if I just melted some glass over a flower pot. I kind of liked the results - and think you might, too.

So, come join us to play around with some glass and heat - and see what you can make. You can be certain that every piece will be a one-of-a-kind original! You never know what you might end up creating!

See you at the studio really soon, I hope! Remember to please reserve spots in classes and for Fusers at Work Studio Times - at least one day in advance!