Post Script

Some enameled snowflake jewelry in honor of the forecast for the first measurable snow of this winter in the Triangle region of NC.   Thank God we do not live in Boston!

I have been toying with enamels and metalwork since last winter and have scheduled several courses over the next year.  I really hope to reach a point when I make most of own findings with copper or metal clay.

The One-Eyed Beader or Oh, the Insanity!

I realize it is time for my biennial blog  post.  I always mean to do better but life gets in the way...

For the past month, I have been recovering from eye surgery.  After the first few days, I grew bored with my confinement and had to think of some way to entertain myself that did not violate these restrictions:

1) no bending over
2) no lifting over 5 pounds
3) limited light exposure

Needless to say, I was also hampered by the hazy 20/200 vision in the affected eye.

Then I thought what about those boxes of seed beads and books with luscious seed beads patterns that I had collected over the years before I realized that one could not make seed bead projects for profit.

Beadapolooza

So I was off!  Making little peyote tubes into  beaded bead earrings a la Kathy King like a maniac.












Then I gathered up the courage to try a simple project called Easy Big Sky Earrings in Artistic Seed Bead Jewelry by Maggie Roschyk.  It was a little challenging at first because I had never done any stitch besides peyote, but soon I found brick stitch is not bad.   I am a little hooked on these earrings even though they are way too "formal" for me and cannot be sold because I prefer to make minimum wage for my efforts.  I still hope to have time to finish  a coordinating necklace or two before I return to work, but I am currently stalled by learning to make embellished peyote toggles.

Someday I hope to master Right Angle Weave, but I think that is still a distance dream.  

A Valentine for My Mother

I always post a few new glass hearts for Valentine's Day and this year I have been running behind due to the complications of life.   I started writing my blog a few years ago so my mother could see a little of what I was doing since she could no longer travel to visit me.  She died somewhat unexpectedly over the Christmas holidays, and I have been trying to come to terms with this loss.  

 I think my mother really would have liked the new direction my glass is taking. She loved the gemstone flowers of Faberge at the Virginia Museum of Art and the glass botanicals of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and this passion has definitely influenced the evolution of my style.

Thank you, Mother, for exposing me to such beautiful things.  These Valentine hearts are for you.

Passion Flowers!

I took a wonderful class at Arrowmont this August with Sara Sally LaGrand, and it added yet another dimension to my MGPD- multiple glass personality disorder.  I have 10 more shows to go this fall season, but I cannot tear myself away from working on these whimsical pins and pendants.  I have such a passion for them I have dubbed them my Passion Flower series.

Bunny Time

I am getting my rabbits in a row for the Spring Festival in Southport next weekend, April 5-6.

Valentine's Day may be over, but the hearts keep coming.

The hearts are so much fun that I just keep making them. Here are a few of the batch I cooked up the past week. I don't mind having extra inventory since they were popular last year at the Cherry Blossom Festival- now just a month away.

The weather has for the most part been fueling my floral obsession with daffodils blooming in January for the first time in my memory. Mother Nature threw us a curve ball on Monday with a dusting of snow. The yard pictures were both taken last week. The first on Saturday, the second on Monday.

I have also been obsessed with making kumihimo necklaces and bracelets and have started using a bit of borosilicate glass because it makes nice organic focals for the kumi.

AND, as if I didn't have enough to do, I took an earring class Saturday with beading wizard Kathy King and learned to make her special style of "beaded bead" earrings. I think they will be a spectacular accessory for my kumi necklaces. Kathy may have created a monster.

If it's hearts all the time, it must be near Valentines!

It seems so predictable, but I am always surprised when I become obsessed with making floral hearts this time of year. Here are a few of my new offerings.

Sculptural Fun

It is amazing how much other people influence my work. I never was that interested in sculptural beads, but after classes with Leah Fairbanks and Loren Stump in the past six months I can hardly make anything smooth. Here is some of the fun I have been having at the torch this week. It is hard to tear myself away to take pictures.

Valentine's Day is Coming

Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday to make beads. Here are some of my first offerings. I cannot wait to make a few more during this "heat wave" (60 dgrees!) and then start turning them into jewelry.

$2,000 Paperweight

My mother has been bugging me to show her what I learned in Loren Stump's course in Corning last week. Loren was overwhelming and awesome, but I was simply treading water the whole time. I was "exposed" to a variety of techniques which I hope to incorporate into my own toddler pieces if my studio ever warms up.

Usually I bring home lots of products for show and tell, but this time I only had a few unfinished and broken objects which even left my long-suffering husband perplexed. Fortunately, there was still one thing which I had to leave behind in the kiln to cool while I returned to Hillsborough- the paperweight! It arrived in the mail on Thursday and, although imperfect, looks a heck of a lot better than anything else I have.

I should call this a collaborative effort between Loren and me since he rescued me during construction more times than I care to remember. While I was making it, I swore I would never attempt another paperweight, but if anyone has the $2K I paid to be able to make this one, I will gladly surrender custody and take another course.

The paperweight measures around 2inches in diameter.

Happy Halloween!

In honor of my favorite holiday I am posting a picture from The Great Glass Pumpkin Patch in Palo Alto, CA. The annual event benefits the Bay Area Glass Institute and the Palo Alto Art Center. What could be better than glass AND pumpkins! My favorite material and my favorite inanimate object.

In addition, I just opened two new online stores for the holidays.


www.artfire.com/users/GildedLilyGlass



http://www.lilyglass.bigcartel.com/



Stroll in and take a look.

Lynn

White Squirrels and such

I guess it is nature week for me. I just posted white squirrel and acorn pendants in my etsy stores. I made these pendants for the Fourth of July festivities in lovely Brevard, North Carolina, reknown for its adorable white squirrels.

All is well that ends well

My husband and I were quite tickled a couple of weeks ago when a pair of Carolina wrens started building a nest in a squirrel-ravaged bird house on the deck by our kitchen window. (Needless to say, the INDOOR cats were also tickled to have good viewing perches.)

On Thursday, July 1, I finally saw three downy heads bobbling in the nest while the parents were foraging. We went away for the holiday weekend, and when we returned Sunday the three chicks had started to become quite vocal about feedings but were still mostly down. Russell insisted I was annoying the parents with my constant peeks, but fortunately wrens are pretty tolerant.

I grew quite alarmed when I heard the weather forecast for this week. I read that baby wrens often succumb to heat above 90 degrees and the weather reporters were predicting 100+ temperatures. Our deck is particularly sunny and hot so I rigged up sheets across the trellis Tuesday morning to create some shade. I was really worried because the babies appeared to be only about 9-10 days old and not yet ready to fledge.

When I got home late Tuesday night after a high of 101 degrees, I checked but couldn't see any activity at the nest. Wednesday morning it was quite clear that the babies were gone. I had read that the parents will remove dead babies from the nest and feared the worst.

Needless to say, we were both quite sad.

Thursday evening I noticed a couple of adult wrens foraging for bugs in a shady area about 75 feet from the deck. I could have sworn one of the them grabbed a worm out of some bark and took it up to a low branch. I then saw a smaller bird preening itself nearby. When the bird started to fluff out its wings, I saw that it was still quite downy and realized it must be one of the chicks.

Friday morning I went to check on the situation and found a clump of chicks huddling in a bush. All three seemed fine, preening and peeping. Then a couple more chicks hopped in from another part of the bush. I left when the parents started squawking at me but not before I snapped a few pictures. If you look carefully, you can see all five babies in the picture to the left.

I am so impressed that the parents were able to relocate this brood of five when the chicks are not yet flying. The group must have hopped over to this safe new home. The parents continue to be extremely attentive so I am sure the family will be fine.

I won the CGGE challenge! Check it out www.cgge.org

Now I need to get back to work because Artplosure is just five days away.

April CGGE Challenge

Please help me get some free publicity and vote for my Tropical Blooms bracelet in the Creative Glass Guild of Etsy Challenge. http://cggechallenge.blogspot.com/ The theme for April is "Spring is in the Air" and voting ends midnight 4/28.

Virginia Hot Glass Festival

I am busy getting ready for the Virginia Hot Glass Festival this weekend, April 24-25, at Sunspots Studio in Staunton, Virginia. It is my favorite show in my favorite place- Virginia's spectacular Shenandoah Valley.

Three floors of an old warehouse full of artists selling glass and giving demonstrations of their techniques. It is definitely worth the drive. You can check out the website:

http://www.sunspots.com/VA_Hot_Glass_Fest.htm

First Show of 2010

My first show of 2010 is tomorrow at Ornamentea in downtown Raleigh. Mention you saw this ad and get 10% off purchases. To see who will be there, check out the website at www.designersdowntownmarket.com

Belize

I know I promised to blog more faithfully, but I have been recovering from our Belize adventure a couple of weeks ago. My husband Russell and I had such an amazing time that I thought I would give you an abbreviated travelogue.

We have been interested in Maya culture for the past 15 years so we bypassed the obvious attraction of the Belizean beaches and headed straight to the town of San Ignacio close to the Guatemala border in the Cayo district. The town is in the valley of the Macal River and is bordered by the Maya Mountains.

Here is a view of the valley town from our balcony.

The hotel is on the highest hill in the town right next to an early Maya citadel. After walking up the gravel road from the town just ONE time in 104 degree heat, I understood why it was such a defensible place for a settlement. Here is one of the many small temples in the lush site called Cahal Pech.

We have made several unsucessful attempts to visit Tikal in Guatemala. My primary purpose for this trip was to get there through the back door, so to speak. The only delay we encountered this time was a teacher's strike that blocked up the border for a couple of days. It was a very pleasant group of strikers.

Tikal is amazing. The site is protected jungle and has an abundance of wildlife. Here is one of the furry friends we made. I was especially taken with the huge Ceiba tree, which is the national tree of Guatemala and has a significant role in Maya cosmology. The ancient Maya of Central America believed that a great Ceiba tree stood at the center of the earth, connecting the terrestrial world to the spirit-world above.

But we came to Tikal to see the magnificent ruins. Visitors are allowed to climb to the top of a number of pyramids via wooden stairways of varying steepness. The climb was worth the effort due to the views,
but my ankles were swollen for a week after a few days of this.











The next day we went to the Maya site called Caracol with a guide who is studying traditional Maya herbal medicine. This site is only around 50 miles from San Ignacio, but the trip there took three hours due to the terrible condition of the road AND the van. Our guide provided a lot of interesting information about current Maya beliefs and was excellent at spotting wildlife. Here are two of a group of five scarlet macaws we saw.

The remoteness of the site of Caracol makes it intriguing and very un-touristy. This was the beginning of the dry season and the archeological team from the University of Central Florida had just set up camp for the excavation season. Here are a few shots of Caracol, including Russell inspecting bromeliads growing on the roots of the ubiquitous Ceiba trees.


On the way back to town we stopped at the Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Falls. Here is a picture of some visitors enjoying the cave. When we were leaving Rio On, our transmission blew out and Russell was certain we would be stranded in the jungle with only two hours before dark. Then out of the blue Super Allison, a fearless pet-sitter from the DC area, drove up and agreed to carry us back to town. Allison, if you are out there, please email me!

The next day we took a local bus to a nearby site called Xunantunich, and it was our favorite place of all. The site is small and must be approached by a hand-cranked ferry, but it is very park-like and full of butterflies . We were also excited because we finally spotted a howler monkey. When Russell was reviewing the pictures, he noticed that the little guy had a friend located to the far right of the frame.







The flight back home the next day was annoying but eventful. (Our plane had been struck by lightning on the way down.) We were glad to be home with our animals, but we left a little of our hearts with the friendly people we encountered in San Ignacio.

Some New Glass

I thought I would show you what my sandblasted glass looks like at the beginning of the process when I stack pieces of glass 3-4 layers deep. The first shot is of the larger pendants. The second photo is bars of earrings and small pendants.

After the glue is set, I fire them and then they are ready to slice with the tile saw.

I was finally able to dig the tile saw out of the snow and cut the new glass this week. I took this picture after I had used it. Still a lot of snow left.

After the bars are cut into pieces, they undergo grinding, two more firings, and sandblasting.