Bar Be Que

It 's going to be a long, beautiful weekend of grilling and hanging out. 

It's the Roc City Ribfest and some friends have mounted a team and joined the competition. Happy sigh, the whole weekend will be spent on the sandy beach of the mighty Lake Ontario, sitting in lawn chairs, drinking cold ones with friends and making bbq - how sweet it is.

My contribution to the festivities? I made some Smokin' Dopes buttons, designed the logo for the hats and am fixing to make red velvet cupcakes.

the Smokin' Dopes... that's how we roll.

Cute As A Button

The bug buttons are all composed and even printed out.
I am just waiting for UPS to get my new box of 1000 blanks here all the way from Arizona. Can you hear my impatiently tapping toe?

Infested

More small bug images. These are all brush and ink.

They are all quite small and range in size from 2" to about 4."
The plan is to make buttons from the images.

Off Mandrel Pod

A little glass seed pod, made off mandrel. It is about an inch and a half long.

O beautiful Rochester - where the dirt is free.

Smokin' Dopes

I took some time out from the usual creative grind and drew this reprobate pig design for a friend's foray into competitive BBQ.

His team is called the 'Smokin Dopes.'

It will be printed in black on the white foam crown of a trucker cap - the rest of the hat is black. Should be pretty cool.

I got a chance to torch last night. Check back there will be lots of new bird beads up in my etsy shop in the next couple of days.

Ferns

The ferns in my garden are almost fully unwound and getting taller by the day.

Earrings with fern inspired glass beads.

The glass is bands of Double Helix Gaia applied over a base bead of Effetre white. The bands were melted in, raked, hand shaped into lentils and then heavily reduced.

I love how the interaction of the silver in the Gaia with the white glass forms the lustros caramel colored trails.

The earrings are up in my Belvedere Etsy shop.

Murder

A flock of crows is called a 'murder of crows.'

All of these little glass birds are freshly hatched in my 'Belvedere' Etsy shop.(pair sold, largest sold)

Tail Feathers

I finally managed to flamework a crow bead with a nice notched tail.

It has a good shape from side to side too. I feel like I am finally getting somewhere with my beads being more representative and sculptural.

The glass I used to make this little bird is plain old Effetre black with swirls of Double Helix Triton that I heavily reduced at the end to give it the blue-black iridescent sheen of a raven.

All I need is more time and more practice - easier said than done these days. I am having fits of frustration over my work schedule. As an adult I understand it fully and even agree with the situation, as a three year old I would just like to kick someone, really hard, in the shins. When I talk about it with my husband says he can see the cartoon steam coming out my ears.
This little bead is up in my "Belvedere" Etsy shop. (sold)

Bitten

I have been lampworking some glass bugs and last night I got the itch to make some little ink study paintings of insects. The plan is to start incorporating some crawly things into my large floral paintings. I am just trying it out to see if I actually like painting bugs in terms of form and color.

It's kind of weird that I am suddenly interested in insects. I am not the biggest fan of bugs. When they're in the house I am not at all happy - but I really do not like killing anything, even bugs and weeds... Sigh.

I loathe spiders.

I once woke up in the middle of the night to a horrible tickling in my nose. I swatted my nose and felt, what I thought was, a giant booger fly out. Laying there, not wanting to sleep with a nasty wet booger in the bed I turned on the light and there was a big ball of crumpled white spider on my pillow. There had been a giant spider up my nose - shudder..

These little paintings are really small - the largest is about 4" square. There done with ink (brush & pen) on heavy weight watercolor paper. What really does not show up in the photos is that there is a lot of metallic and iridescent inks mixed in so they have a bit of shimmer to them. Very bug-like indeed.

Snow Squall(or)

So many goings on...
Margaret's back from college - a wonderful time seeing her school friends and attending the senior shows.
The house is torn apart as my husband packs for the Brimfield flea markets this week.
I am undone by the oil spill in the gulf - seething with anger as we destroy ourselves for profit.
The promise of a yellow lilac for mother's day.
It snowed, no, really it snowed.

I stole this photo from Declan - I was too depressed to take any snapshots.

The last half of last week was spent making lots of earrings. I was getting ready for a little Mother's Day sale on Saturday. That went well. I only managed to photograph a few pairs before they went away.

These were my favorites - little blue glass seed pods made with Reichenbach Multi glass - imagine, all those violet blues from the same little rod of glass. On top of the pods are peacock 'cornflake' pearls and the ends are little bits of labradorite.

Big Hearted

It's a day about love - Mother's Day.

A large, 2 inch long, focal bead.

The speckled bead has a base of Cim's transparent blue Sapphire, which is the most beautiful blue ever.

After sculpting the heart I covered it in silver foil and then dotted the foil with Double Helix Gaia.. Finally, the dots were melted in and the whole bead was heavily reduced and loaded into the kiln.

Blown Out

I am feeling a lot like this tulip. A bit tattered and shot after the party but still happy.

The tequila part of cinco de Mayo is always problematic, eh?

Pigeon

Pigeons are to birds as dandelions are to flowers.

They're the weeds of the bird world - so no surprise - I love pigeons.

The glass did all the work in this bead. The base is plain, old dark ivory that was rolled in some coarse Double Helix Triton frit. That's it, all the lacy lines, caramel color and iridescent blue green is the combined glasses being freaky.

This bead is up in my etsy Belvedere shop.(sold)

Brush & Ink Birds

A few small brush and ink on paper paintings.

"Red Winged Blackbird"

I'm not sure if they should be called drawings or paintings? Which is rather unimportant.

 "Boat-tailed Grackle"

They're small, 6"x6" on heavy rag paper.
  "Worm-eating Warbler"

They remind me of vintage fabric for some reason but they are based on Audubon's Birds of North America. It is weird working without color.

"Cowbird"