Fatigue

This past weekend I attended the Decorex show. What a week it has been! I am still pooped and tired. Sleep is sort of priority number one in my life at the moment.

I did some stand duty, and extended my hours myself, as it is really important to have direct contact with the people. (Even though I hated every moment, lol) Ran out of business cards on the first day, and brought much more the next few days. The response to my work was totally unexpected. I sold some pieces, I got some custom orders and made lots of contacts with both local shop owners and international buyers. What I also found interesting was just the rub-off of creativity from other artists.

I am ready to expand the range and started to play with a new idea yesterday. Unfortunately my regulator packed up yet again - had it for about 6 weeks, and it is making a weird noise. Weird noises is not good if it is attached to an Oxygen tank, I think ... So I am back on the Hot Head for the time being, till I can get the regulator sorted out. I just do not have the energy to travel about 50 km to the supplier, as yet.

Now I need to start adding stuff to my Artfire store. I have also been invited to a wine auction in 2 weeks, where I will be able to show my work off. This is in a very upmarket little town that is on the outskirts of Cape Town.

Time to lit the torch ... Have a good day!

Fear for getting it right

These past few weeks was just outright horrible for me. Few hours sleep per day, stressing about the upcoming Expo and that crawling fear for the unknown. 'What if' was on my thoughts the whole time. What if people really hate what I did? What if they like it so much that I have a gazillion orders, and cannot fulfill them? What if they are just bleh about it? Or those, 'I did not even notice it ...' type of reference to my work.

On the one hand I am really glad that I opted out of the dedicated stand on the CCDI's stand. To be standing there listing to others discussing my work would be to painful. I have handed my babies over to a pet shop owner, who is displaying them in the shop window. I have no control over who will buy them, or what will happen to them.

But it is also with a slight sadness that I realise that I have lost the opportunity to interact directly with customers, explaining to them about the hours spent at the torch melting the glass, telling them anecdotes about the glass industry, etc.

Good thing is that I got an order for a set of my cluster rings. Something that I have yet had to develop into a range. So Sunday when I go to do stand duty I will get some bucks ...

I also met John Bauer who did not realise that I was the creator of the bead cups. We had a long discussion about glass, ceramics, and other stuff.

It was good to spend the morning with Ingrid. I would most probably have been to nervous to enter the hall by myself. And she is a talker. She forced me to chat to strangers about my work.

Lessons in Drawing

Yesterday I started with a drawing course at the CCDI, and hopefully over the next 11 weeks I will learn a bit about making pictures. The aim of the course is to give crafters the ability to make better drawings of products during the conceptualization stage while developing new stuff. Now, I have not drawn pictures for at least 25 years, and were quite petrified of what my stick sketches would look like ...

Our little group of 12 were sitting around huge tables, excitement and fear hanging cloud like over the room. Wire workers, potters, seamstresses, a nice bunch of variety is represented.

Anyway, here is some photos of my first drawings. Today's lesson was just a general lesson, getting us used to drawing, and focusing our attention on becoming aware of translating a 3D image to a 2D medium. We had to do a blind drawing first. I was not allowed to look at the paper, but rather just on the flower in the vase.

The second exercises was a continuous line drawing. At least we were allowed to look at the page this time, but oh boy was it difficult to keep that pencil glued to the page!

The last one is supposed to be an enlargement. Something that I could not do as a child in art class, and obviously still cannot do today!

a Loooong weekend

This past weekend was long. Friday and Monday were public holidays in South Africa, but not in the Grieguszies household. Both me and Leo were busy in our studios from about 09 am till 12 pm every day. I used a whole bottle of oxygen during the course of the the last 5 days!!!

Yesterday was the birthday of the Dearly Beloved. And when I arrived home after a day in the city, I rushed to get some foodies ready for our visitors. My hart se punt was impressed with what I achieved ...

Tuesday morning saw me getting up at the crack of dawn to attend a workshop on pricing of products. All I can say was that it was one of the best I have ever attended. Costing of labour, materials, too much to mention. This morning I was ready with measuring tools to calculate my expenses, writing every thing down in my bid to have correct calculations. On some articles I was under pricing myself, others a bit too much ...

My baby has arrived!

Last week I got my first teapot back from the kiln. As much as I wanted this first baby to be mine and only mine, I had to let her go, all dressed up in red with tiny white flowers. She is now with the rest of her brothers and sisters at the CCDI in their Gift Shop. I will miss her, but have already made some more ...

Almost there ...

I just have to show you what I have been up to today ...

On Sunday I casted my long awaiting teapot. My goodness, how long has it been now? Weeks? Nah, rather months! After lots of quibbles and discussions about the shape that I created on the wheel, Leo capitulated, and casted my teapot. But before he did that, we had to determine whether the size globe that I created was indeed gonna give me 1,2 liters of tea ...

That is another story on it's own. I have a mental block against maths, and luckily Leo had some graphs that could help us calculate the shrinkage and eventual size of he vessel. We were spot on! After a final tweak to the shape by Leo the casting process started. In the meantime I was still perfecting the spout. And the piepie that will house the one end of the beaded handle. Oh, and we nearly forgot about the lid! 11 pieces or plaster later, and I am casting teapot after teapot, carefully wrapping pieces in plastic till I have all the parts of my puzzle together. Then the assembly starts. Wow! Do you know how difficult it is to assemble a teapot?

I insisted on having a pot with a strainer in the spout. So that difficulty became my baby. But then - I always go for the just outside my knowledge stuff. I need to learn while playing, have sleepless nights about the wild horses I choose to ride.

I cannot wait for the beginning of next week when I can assemble the first teapot with my lampworked beads. There is lots and lots of beads laying around in my studio just waiting for the opportunity - but before that happens I will need to learn yet something new ... Later more about that, lol.

A Perfect round bead again and again ...

I had posted this tutorial some time last year on Lampwork Etc, and decided that it was time that it was moved to my Blog! This is just a small tutorial how I am able to achieve the same sized round beads again and again ... If you use the standard information to make a round bead, you really need to melt the dinges out of the glass for it to spread on the mandrel enough to make a round bead vs. a doughnut shaped bead. This is where frustration lead me. I normally never use any tools while making a bead, no marver, etc. except for my mashers when I want a round or tube shape.

My tools that I use is just a parallel masher, my trusty surgical scalpel and my torch. AND the bottom part of a brass press!

Step 1:Make a small disk on your mandrel. I normally do about 3 - 4 windings of fairly thin glass.

Step 2:Melt the disk into a small doughnut, allow the glass to melt well onto the mandrel to set a nice footprint.

Step 3:Take your mashers and press lightly, turn the mandrel 180 degrees, and press the same amount, so you end up with a square/rectangular bead. By pressing the same weight, you will spread your glass evenly on the mandrel, to secure an even footprint. Then I normally turn the mandrel about 90 degrees and press again, turn 180 degrees and turn. if the glass is still soft enough, I will continue to press and turn, take the mandrel back into the flame to heat up the gather a bit, and press, turn, press, you get the idea ...

Step 4:Now to make sure that your footprint is wide enough, I place the mandrel over the base plate of a press and measure one of the hollows that I would like my round bead to be. If I need to get the footprint a bit wider, I repeat the press process for a bit, measuring it every now and then. After a few beads, I can eyeball the width quite easily so that I do not really need to measure and press the whole time.

Step 5:Now I need to load more glass onto the footprint bead. Again, rather start with to little, rather than too much glass. (it's much easier to add than remove glass!)

Step 6:Melt it in. You will notice that your footprint is now slightly narrower than it was when you had placed the original footprint down. I loose about 2 mm in width doing this. Eyeball the top and bottom curve of your bead. If it is too narrow, you will have sharp edges on you bead holes. If you have too much of a curve, you will end up with a not round bead, but lovely dimples. I aim to get somewhere between these 2 extremes.

Step 7:Now you have a neat round bead that you will be able to reproduce time and again. Remember that when you add glass for decoration, you might loose your neat roundness, so start with a bit of a not 100% round bead before adding decorations, should you aim for round!

Step 8: Pop bead into the kiln!

Problem solving:Should you have difficulty to obtain neat edges in step 3 and 4, use a sharp knife/blade and cut about 1,5 mm from the edge of the undercut to push the glass to the edge and level to the rest of the footprint. If you do this closer to the edge of the glass footprint, you will end up with an uneven edge again!