Getting back to work in the studio

I found some floor!!! My studio is a fairly small room. In it's past incarnation, it was my den. After a year-plus of real life kept me, for the most part, from working in it, it had devolved into a store-room. I wish I had thought to take a 'before' picture, but when I started cleaning it, I had no idea I was going to blog about it! In my defense, it was semi-organized, and the piles were relatively neat. Stuff for storage here...stuff for Goodwill there...unfinished projects in the wall unit...and dust everywhere! Well, I have decided it is time to take the studio and my artistic life back. It has been a long year, and I have missed my art. This blog fell by the wayside too, and has been long ignored. I am hoping that both my art, and my blog will come to life again, and that I will be able to use each to inspire the other, both to inspire myself, and share with friends along the way.

Having found the floor, it's time to find the flat surfaces. This is my soldering station on the right, and my grinding and glass cutting table on the left. (Ignore the mess under the table...I am!) The window looks out onto the street in front of my house, and keeps me from feeling too closed in while I work. Mostly I just need to organize and dust here...make up a new crockpot of acid, a new bowl of neutralizer, and check the grinder bit. I have designs for soldered glass jewelry to get cut and laid out, a couple of silver and brass pieces to put together, and a peacock stained glass window to design and build. My hands will never catch up with the ideas in my head!

This one needs to be sorted. It's my work/assembly table, but right now it's covered with photo albums, scrapbooks, kidling's school papers, half finished projects, and dust. But you can see the potential! My favorite things? My Ott floor lamp, and my Michael's cabinet filled with ribbons, glass paints, scrapbook paints and stains, dyes, glitter, and everything else small and vital. There is also a bottle of seawater from the Atlantic ocean that we brought home last year from the best vacation ever. Still not sure what I will do with that, but I am thinking about some water-filled glass charms for friends and family who know just what that trip meant to me.

Two more of my favorite things...my glass kiln (the blue one) and my polymer clay oven. I love to fuse glass. There are some varieties of glass that, when they cook, they completely change color. One is as clear as window glass, but cooks to raspberry, and another one is lime green, and cooks to orange. Very cool! Another fun thing is bubble powder...I sprinkle it on top of one piece of glass, cover it with another piece of glass, and when I cook it, it makes crazy bubbles inside the piece. There's glow-in-the-dark glass, iridescent glass, you name it! My latest thing with the polymer is horns. Fantasy horns. Glittery horns, twisted horns, feathery horns... And faeries. Little sculptures of faeries...bad faeries, street faeries...not your typical faeries. I hope to be at Faerie Worlds next year...a huge event in Oregon, as a vendor. Time to make all this pay!

Last but not least, one of my long abandoned projects. It is hard to see in this picture, but this is the Faerie King's Crown. Hand-wrapped copper wire, glass, and pearls. I am about 1/2 way around the first round. When it is done it will have about 2000 beads and pearls on it! I will probably wrap the base wire with ribbon or leather, and now I can't wait to get back to work on it.