Silly Dog Art Glass

Leaded Glass

I started my glass career many years ago with a community college course that taught leaded glass design and technique.  I loved building windows  - designing, drawing and actually building them.  

However, I really don't advertise any longer that I make windows.  I have simply been focused on my fusing and glass painting as an art form.  Making custom pieces, especially windows, almost feels like an intrusion.  But I do like the challenge. Sometimes customers can get me to do pieces that I never would have though of on my own.

Anyhow, I received a call from John Lyles, owner of J. Lyles Architecture.  His wife owns the store The Lakehouse Collection in Lake Arrowhead where I sell some of my boxes full time on consignment and other items during one of their "First Friday" Events during the year. John had a client who owns a home on Lake Arrowhead and is just about finished with their build.  They "needed" a leaded glass window for one of their exterior doors.  They wanted to emulate the feel of another door in the room with a stock leaded glass panel, but with more color and design work.

From pictures of the existing door, I sketched out a design and met with the clients. They loved the design and, like I said, they wanted color.  The wife specifically wanted to incorporate a feel of each one of their family members.  She had a very elaborate story of their favorite colors, but what it boiled down to was that she chose colors for the window based on the colors of the playing pieces they each always used when they had a family game night.

It was such a fun story and so personal for them. 

I know this picture is not the best.  The window was finished and puttied yesterday and is laying on my work table while the putty dries and sets up a little.  I will need to do a good clean up and deliver it to the contractor early next week.   Hopefully I can get a picture of the window installed.  I am proud that it is going into such a beautiful house and has a very nice prominant positon facing the entry and driveway.

 

Sage and Songbirds this Weekend!

I am going to have a vendor booth at the 15th Annual Sage and Songbirds Festival this weekend in the Viejas Casino Outlet courtyard in Alpine, CA.

I am very excited to be outside, meet some great people and enjoy the events of the weekend.

Hope you will try to join me!!

"Little Pearl" - Pearl Crescent Butterfly

 

Still Life

Remember those mini paintings from the last post.  

This was one of my favorites - it still is!!

"Still Life Red Flowers in White Vase"

Check it out in my Etsy Store - 

Minis

After the first two Sculpey jewelry pieces I made, I knew I wanted to make a bunch more.  But first the glass has to go through it's painting and firing processes.

So, this morning I pulled 23 little paintings out of the kiln after their last firing.  I am pretty pleased - they all came out as expected.  I have been focusing on using lighter and brighter paint colors and I think it makes the finished paintings easier to see and more beautiful!  The smallest piece is about 5/8" x 3/4" and the largest is about 5/8" x 1-1/2".

No two are alike, but I did do some similar themes:

Birds---

Flowers---

Trees---

Kitties and Owl---

Sorry about the glare in this next photo - just had the wrong camera angle...

Houses---

These were really fun to draw and paint.  I was leaning towards a more folk-arty feel which is not what I usually do, but love the look and feel of. 

These are my favorites:

I will be working on getting these made into pendants in the coming week.  Looking forward to playing with more clay!

 

Color Failure

I guess I should tell you about my failures as well as my successes here.  I had a somewhat major failure here this past week.  I am working on painting some more bird pieces and had 7 more that I fired over the weekend.

Out of 7 pieces, I got only 3 usable ones.  I have never had this happen before.  I have had some paint colors turn a slightly different shade before. Or get a bit darker than anticipated, but I have never had 4 pieces at one time not only change color, but become so completely unusable.  

Here is the problem - the yellow turned gray.  And with these birds it is quite noticeable and unacceptable.

Not only should this Lesser Goldfinch have a yellow chest, but the flower is supposed to be yellow!

You can't have a Yellow Rumped Warbler with no yellow on him...

Robins are known for their yellow beaks....

And this Kestrel should have yellow around his eyes and an orange/yellow mustache.

So, between the loss of time, paint, frit and electricity, needless to say I was a bit frustrated.  But, I am in the middle stages of completing these pieces again as well as a piece with two Magpies that I am excited about and 2 other birds as well.  Hopefully these will be more successful than the yellow catastrophe.

Clay Fun

So, a couple of weeks ago I had decided I was going to try making some of my jewelry pieces with porcelain clay instead of the precious metal silver clay.  I kind of knew a little about porcelain, but really not much.  After some research about firing it and looking at info on my glass kiln, I realized my kiln does not safely fire to a hot enough temperature for porcelain (over 2200 degrees).  Bummer.

So I bought another packet of silver clay.  It is very expensive.  I have not opened it yet. 

Today Mark and I were at Michael's and I decided to see what they offered in the way of clay I might be able to use.  I settled on an extremely inexpensive packet of white Sculpey III clay.  Some of you may be familiar with this clay.  It is used for everything from jewelry to buttons, sculpture and a lot more.  

I did not know much about it and found a couple of interesting articles and videos, but nothing that really told me exactly how to do what I wanted to do.  Most of the online info is about making millifiore canes or beads.  So I just went for it.

It's properties make this such a wonderfully workable medium.  And the best part - it only has to cook at 275 degrees and DOES NOT SHRINK!!  I can insert my glass with absolutely no worries.  I am very excited and thrilled to present my first piece of polymer clay and glass jewelry. 

Like I said, this was made from white clay.  I layered a base sheet, stamped it with this attractive tree shape, then centered my glass on the front of that, wrapped a "snake" of clay around the glass, then layered strips across the top all the way around the glass.  With my fingers I smoothed it all around, poked the holes, trimmed it up a little bit, then cooked it in my oven.

Then the work began.  I used a tiny carving tool to carve all of the grooves in to the face of the frame.  I also used an exacto blade to trim all the way around, round the corners and clean up the inside edge of the frame.  I sanded it all over with a very fine sanding pad.  

As I was carving I accidentally carved a hair too deep on one of the corners and the glass poked through.  I thought "UhOh" but did a tiny little patch and refired it and it came out perfect. 

I then put some black acrylic paint on a rag and just basically painted the entire piece black.  Then I took a clean rag and rubbed it all over so that the black stayed in the texture and crevices.  After the paint dried I brushed on a coat of clear satin acrylic finish to protect it.

In some lights it actually looks like silver, but it is very lightweight and not as shiny as silver is.  I attached silver filled chain with beads and a lobster clasp to finish it off.

I am bubbling with excitment and looking forward to making a whole series!!

Wild Birds Unlimited

I am very excited to announce that I now have a small display of my bird pieces in the Wild Birds Unlimited store in Riverside.  You can see their website at www.wbu.com/riverside or pick up some awesome bird loving stuff at their store at 10456 Magnolia Ave, Riverside, CA  92505.

I was contacted by the owners who saw some of my work at the Lake Arrowhead Gallery.  They thought that some of my reverse glass paintings of birds would fit well in their store.  They have never had any artists on consignment, so I am the first.  They brought in a special curio cabinet just for me!!

"Coneflower Snack" - Anna's Hummingbird

I quickly made about 8 pieces, added a couple from my stock at home and dropped off 10 wood pieces and 1 framed piece last Saturday.  Mary called me on Sunday to tell me they sold one.  Wow - pretty cool!  She also asked if I could make more hummingbirds since they were holding a seminar on Hummingbirds this Saturday (tomorrow - March 17th).  Of course I could.  I made 4 more pieces and delivered them on Wednesday.  I am quite anxious to see what the response was.  

"Winter Plumage" - Hooded Oriole

Anyway, this was really cool - to be recognized for my art at a store that specializes in wild birds.  I am hoping the relationship works well, that they sell some pieces and make money for both of us.

"A Mother's Work..." - Anna's Hummingbird

Glass Puddles

I was recently searching online for glass related information.  I came across a website that I have looked at many times, but honestly had not remembered to check back in with on any kind of regular basis.   It is www.fusedglass.org and it has connections to other glass artist,  glass art galleries, links to suppliers and online tutorials and information.  It truly is a wonderful site.

The latest online tutorial was for creating glass "puddles" - beautiful little stripey/swirly glass 'stones' - that can be used in jewelry, fused into a larger project, or rubbed even smoother as little worry stones.  

The tutorial suggests cutting neat little pieces of 3 x 3" squares in the first step.  You take these squares, stack them up, and fuse them fully.  Since glass always wants to be 1/4" thick, it melts and spreads out creating a thin striped pancake that is then broken up.  Those little broken pieces are laid on their sides and fused into little puddles.  You can see the whole tutorial (with pictures) in the link above.

I know that I have mentioned my ever-increasing stash of scrap glass to you all.  I figured, why should I cut up perfectly good sheets of glass when I can just layer my scrap glass into neat little piles.  It worked like a dream!  I layered pieces to create approximately 3 x 3" square piles up about 6 or 8 pieces high. (sorry, I forgot the picture of this).  Then after firing - I did not look back at the tutorial for the firing schedule and just guessed how long to hold it at top temperature and so it did not get as thin as it should have - my resultant 'pancakes' were more like 3/8" to 1/2" thick.  Still fine, but much harder to break into the small chunks than if they were 1/4" thick.  I ended up scoring them with the glass cutter then smashing with my hammer.  

You can see all of the colors I used - green, almond, tan, terra cotta, blue, yellow, red, clear, black ....and probably some I forgot.  I ended up making 3 different color patterns.  So, then these little chunks were laid on their sides in the kiln again and fused again to make them rounded and 1/4" thick.  This time I used the correct firing schedule.

They are a lot of fun and really cool to just run your hands over.  I am considering what exactly to do with them - sell as is for "worry stones", turn into jewelry, maybe do some painting on some of them before turning into jewelry?  Maybe all of the above. 

If you are a glass artist I hope you will check out the FusedGlass.org website and check out all they have to offer.  It's great to have a resource of artists and suppliers and they surely do not balk at "silly" questions. 

I Was Framed

Several weeks ago I sold a framed glass tile piece at the Mountain Arts Gallery in Lake Arrowhead.  I have a small section to hang some of my art on there as well as a glass display case.  Since most of my work is 3 dimensional and does not need a wall, this is perfect for me.  

I had not made any framed pieces in some time, so when I looked in my inventory at home I realized I needed to get to work.  I went down to Michael's and picked up 6 frames.  (I love their buy one, get one 50% off sales.)  I looked for some frames that were more long and skinny than usual in order to accomodate some tall tree paintings.  I ended up getting one that I really love the shape of - it is 10-1/2 x 16" overall and I cut a mat with an opening of 4-1/2 x 10".  

Here is the close up - much better to see the glass

"Twist and Shout" 

In another long, tall frame instead of a tree, I ended up going with this gorgeous Scrub Jay.  I drew this one from a photograph taken by a friend of mine - Lee Reeder - he has been doing some wonderful bird photos lately and gave me permission to use them as I needed as reference material.

"Long and Tall"

I painted 3 more birds and another tree to fill all 6 of the frames.  

"Morning Song"  - Purple Finch (also from a photograph by Lee)

"Rusted"

"Western Tanager"

"Full and Round"

Leaf Coasters

So, I have made coasters in the past and they usually sell fairly well.  Usually as gifts around the holidays or for housewarmings.  But, I have been so focused on my glass paintings that I hadn't made any in a while.

I am currently getting ready for the season of shows coming up and thought coasters should be on my to-do list.  Several months ago I purchased a couple of sheets of 6mm clear fusing glass with the intention of figuring out a new technique for coasters.  

Well, after rolling it around for some time and peeking at one of my favorite books - Richard La Londe - Fused Glass Art and Technique - I decided to try a layered frit idea.

I know it is hard to see in a photograph, but what you see here is before the first firing.  I lay down a thin layer of vanilla colored fine frit, then carefully layer one color of frit for the basic shap of the leaf.  Next I sprinkle on two other contrasting colors of frit, then break and lay down the pieces of stringer for the veins. Finally, a 4 x 4" piece of the 6mm clear is laid on top and it is fired to 1480 degrees.

After the first firing I paint a black outline around the leaf edges and veins, then fire it again to 1450 degrees. 

The final coasters are bright, cheery, smooth and have a really cool almost double image where you are seeing the black paint "floating" above the colored leaf. 

All Seasons Coaster Set

After a pretty long hiatus from Etsy, I have decided to post my new coaster sets on there for sale.  Click Here to see my shop.  I will be adding more of the leaves and possibly some other designs soon.  Enjoy and Drink Up!