Dropped Crystal’s Friday

Who am “I”?  I’m a lampwork glass artist.  I use the beads I create to make unique jewellery.  They are unique because the glass always has a different idea about how it should look than what I had planned.

When I first started thinking about writing “a blog”, I thought it would be a great place to vent and share frustrations about exploding glass, cats, people, drivers and everything else that happens to me on a daily basis.  Then I started thinking about who I was venting about and inevitably it came to me that they might recognize themselves.  Of course, &*($ would hit that particular fan and away we go.

So, I guess I can’t share about a whole pile of things today.  For now, maybe just join me on my journey.

Exploding glass might be a place to start.  If you’ve ever put a cold rod of glass into a hot flame, you’ll know the small frit explosions that happen.  I have some glass that seems to never warm up enough to not explode.  Into the flame it goes and pop, pop, pop, ouch we go.  Long sleeves help the small shards that leap out of the flame and onto my arms, but I still have little scars from the pieces that didn’t get blown off in time.  High necks keep the glass from jumping down my shirt – have you ever had a hot popcorn kernel get into your bra?  Same idea, only you can’t grab it, or shake it out of your shirt.  There’s also the decision to be made – do I sacrifice the bead I’m working on to stand up and peel to get at that bit of hot glass, or do I trust it will eventually cool down, finish my bead and grab the lavender oil?  Thankfully I do wear high necked tops to protect from this and it doesn’t happen often.

I’ve had my exercise class for the day and am on my way to take some more pictures of glass.  I need to get faster, so you can see the works sooner.

I’ll send this out into the ether and see you soon.