Jewelry Show Sunday Nov 6

10 am - 2 pm
3950 Baseline Road, Boulder CO, South Building

My first and probably my only jewelry show! Come join the fun. There are over 20 other artists and the categories include

Fine art
Jewelry
Fabric
Paper
Judaica
Metal
Glass
Needle Art
Photography

At my table, I will have over 100 pendants priced between $5 and $39. I have a several pieces of fine silver, silver embedded in glass, polymer clay, and more. There are finished sterling silver necklaces, a few journals, my sister's stained glass window (a must see!) and I will be taking orders for my Immigrant Peddler Dolls (I will only be taking orders for 4 more....but at least come take a look and see this amazing doll - inspired by mom!!

I can't wait to see what all the other artists have made! I tell myself that I will never do this again....just too much work. But you know, when it rolls around next year, maybe I'll say, "I'll do this one more time!!!" It really is work to get ready for a show like this. But it's been fun, too. I hope you'll stop by and say "hi".

Here's a preview of some of my newest pieces:

The decals are 22 k gold - fun!  And I'm using my wire dress forms for the display - so just look for the booth in white!

See you Sunday!

Jen



Be sure to check out these links:
My Etsy Store
My ebay auctions

And then there's my addiction to glass.....

Actually, glass scares the crap out of me.  I'm so afraid that when I cut it, I'll cut myself!  So what's the best way to conquer a fear?  Just do it!!!  (ok, that does not apply to my fear of heights!!!)

Colleen and I always love to experiment. This time, we played with decals over dichroic glass. I think the background needs to be a little lighter.  That's a tree on the left

These are all 22K gold decals.  We will turn these all into pendants.  Considering that we had never worked with decals before, I think they came out pretty good.  It requires 2 firing to get the glass shaped and polished, then a 3rd firing to apply the decal.  Lots of kiln time for sure.

This might be my favorite of the day.  But I have lots more I just need to photograph and then I can post them.

Opening a kiln load of glass is always such a huge surprise.  You never know what's going to happen.  Most loads take about 10 hours as a minimum, depending on what you are trying to do.

My next experiment will be with crushed dichroic glass.  But in the meantime, as soon as I finish up a few pieces, we did something I'm calling "plaid dichroic" and I totally love the look we got.

OK, time to get off the computer and go get a load ready to fire!

Hope you are playing hard this summer.  I personally think it's the best way to beat the heat!!!

Be sure to check out these links:
My Etsy Store
My ebay auctions

Cutting glass

Colleen and I spend a couple of days working with glass.  We had a few kiln loads that were good....and a few complete flops!  I still have so much glass to fire.  I can only do a 6" x 6" shelf at one time....and that takes about 14 hours to fire and cool.  This is my favorite piece so far:

I forgot to photo all that I made and have already given several away.  But these are what most of the rest looked like:

Then we tried to fix some of the problems, like cutting edges off, polishing, then fire polishing in the kiln:

Next, Colleen taught me how to cut glass to shapes.  Of course, while I did these 4 pieces....she did about 30!  But I am learning....which makes it so much fun!  The dichroic in these pieces turned out brilliant.  Too bad it won't photo!

Our standard "secret" technique.....the pieces of .999 fine silver are embedded under clear glass and over dichroic glass.  Any time I get a kiln of this to turn out, I'm so excited.  Most of you, if you try it, will get silver stain on your glass.  I'm excited to have a whole batch come out perfect!

Stay tuned as most of these will get posted in my etsy store - I hope in the next couple of weeks.

and these pieces - just perfect!  I'll add bails and they will be ready to wear as pendants.

I absolutely love working with glass and silver.  It's such a complete surprise every time I take the lid off the kiln and see what it's done.  And the suspense while you are waiting for those 12 - 14 hours to pass.....oh my goodness!

Next step, to use the saw and cut shapes like a star of david in a piece of glass and fuse it to something else.  So many things to try....so little time!  LOL!

"Plain" dichroic glass

"Plain" because there's no silver in it....but I still love it. Such vibrant colors - so pretty.

These pieces are made from scraps. I just lay down a piece of black glass, put the tiny little pieces of scrap dichroic on that, then a layer of clear glass on top, and fire. They all fuse together, leaving some really interesting designs.

And interesting shapes. Now, I could grind these and fire polish again - which I actually do on a lot of my pieces, but I liked the way these fired the first time, so I'm leaving them alone.

It's probably like everything else in art - when is enough, enough? I keep thinking, I could refire with a piece of silver on top....I could cut, grind and shape.....I could fuse 2 pieces together to make a bigger piece....it just never ends! So, for now, these pieces are "done".

How tiny can you work with?

Get a ruler out and measure 1/8". It's tiny! The Star of David below is from a border punch and is just 1/8" in diameter! Let me tell you - not losing it, firing and POLISHING it - nearly impossible to do! Takes more time than I thought it would, so these will be "rare" pieces for sure!!!

I start with a layer of dichroic glass, then a layer of fired, polished silver (sometimes 2 layers) and then a layer of clear glass

Each piece is uniqu, one of a kind, and depending on how the glass slumps, I will grind the shape to refine it, refire to polish the edges and eventually, hopefully get a few of these up on etsy.

Dichroic is always such a surprise as I'm still not certain what color is going to come out of the kiln! I'm getting a little better....but there are still so many suprises. The good thing is that they are all fun!

Between yardwork, an upcoming garage sale, physical therapy for Kerry, cooking healthy, walking....it seems my playtime is dwindling. And I used to think summer was one big recess!!!

It was a free class!!!

Sometimes, there are benefits to belonging to a group. I joined a Jewish Genealogy group in order to help me out with my research on the Cotopaxi Colony. They have helped me so much! So I offered up a free class to the members. It was so much fun.

We just used scraps of glass that I have to make pendants. We cut the bottom base and then loaded scraps and chips and fired them enough to tack fuse, not full fuse. Here are the results.

Not bad for "free". I sort of liked the ones on a clear background.

Busy playing!

I had a class in dichroic glass here last Friday, so it got me back playing with glass - something I love. This piece is so simple....dichroic, clear glass and then a 22kt gold slide fired into it.

Pre-cut dichroic zig zag pieces fused to black:

Sort of new, pre-cut stringers in dichroic that you can cut and layer:

Another slide on top of a piece of glass:

If you live locally and want to take a class, just send me a note! You can come play, too!!!

Silver on glass

So, if you learn my technique, you can also successfully fire silver on top of glass, have it sink into the glass.....and yep! NO silver stain!!! Rhonda made a couple of really fun pieces here:

She used mini punches for everything. Now, keep in mind, most of these are about the size of a quarter.


And she also made some gorgeous cabachons using 3 or 4 layers of mixed glass:

For this last one, she punched the hearts in a fairly new product - dichroic water slides. You punch them, soak them in water, slide them on to the glass (or between layers of glass as we did here) and fire them together.

What an unusual look, huh? Definitely one-of-a-kind:

I can't remember for sure, but I think she made about 15 pendants total in our 2 days of play - maybe more. What a great weekend! If you want to come play with glass and silver, just send me a note!