May Madness again!

Yes, its that time of year already when I am surrounded by boxes and a never shortening ‘to-do’ list! This weekend will be the MCM Expo & Comic-con at London Excel, from 26th-28th May, where I have a small booth in the dealer's zone in the North Hall. A lot of people tell me they get lost, the secret is to look at the big section numbers on the wall of Excel itself, we are in section N4 which is the section where the cloakroom stairs are, towards the back of the hall. I’ve attached a map at the end, look for us at BF2.

 

Just because we don’t have a huge stall doesn’t mean I haven’t packed it with as much as possible! I’ve lots of new marbles, pens, pendants, aliens, earrings, plus some brand new designs seeing their first outing at the stall. Look out for a new display box with a weird blue glow coming from it, inside a new range of VERY glowy pendants and earrings, all containing some high grade glow-in-the-dark pigment which the makers assure me can glow up to 12-20 hours after being charged with light! That’s not all, I’ve also a range of glass that only shows its colours when lit by UV blacklights, so ideal for clubs and festivals too, plus lots of other new designs, as well some new big wooden boxes and a show special on ‘B’ movie cushions too.

 

For those of you not coming to Excel who like to come to the London stall I have further good news for you. As some of you may know I’ve been struggling with time issues, finding it hard to be at Covent Garden and have enough time to make glass. I’ve finally got some help with two helpers who are covering the long hours on the stall. I’m still trying out days but at present this means the stall is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays AND Saturdays! Please do pop along and say hi to Ellie and Pip who will have the same high quality glass pendants, pens and earrings, but without my ugly mug to scare you away! One of the advantages of the extra time this will give me is time to create new designs, and some of you may have already seen some of the new mega-sized pendants I’ve been creating for the stall as just one example of some of the new items I hope to introduce over the coming months.

 

As you can see there has been a lot happening here behind the scenes, and this is just the beginning. I’m planning to increase the selection and variety of glass available in my Etsy shop too, so please keep an eye on my shop and Facebook page over the coming months for sneak previews of new designs as well. The Etsy shop is now closed for a few days though so I can concentrate on getting organized for the weekend.

 

I hope I get to see lots of you at Excel this weekend, right now for me it’s back to melting glass and packing boxes!

 

All the best

Glenn

 

LFCC, Birmingham, and Sunden changes of plan

Firstly a big thanks to everyone who came and saw us at London Film and Comic-con at Olympia. For those of you who keep up with my random Facebook postings you’ll know at one point it was touch and go if I’d make it at all! I’m so glad we did, the new layout made walking around a lot easier with wider aisles plus less stair climbing with almost everything on one floor. I’ve already booked for next year, so I’m hopping to make that a regular appearance from now one (fingers crossed!)

 Although this past month has taught me that all plans can suddenly change at the last minute. A combination of transport problems and ill family member two weeks before LFCC caused some very fast change of plans, plus a few sleepless nights trying to re-arrange everything I’d put into place months before. I do dedicate a lot of time and energy before these events to ensure I have everything I need as well as a good choice of some of my best glass for people to choose – but then I also expect last minute things to go wrong, and as much as I make contingency plans forgetting to pack things like enough business cards does still happen!

Recent events behind the scenes means that I am going to have to radically change a few things over the next few months, and regrettably November’s Birmingham MCM at NEC is going to have to be one of the events I am not going to be able to attend. It’s really a shame, as it is such a relaxed event, we meet such great people there, and as a bonus Birmingham has some of the best curry houses we get to visit too! At the moment we may also have to miss the March 2017 one too, but I’m hoping things get resolved before then so we can make our return then. Also I am only able to get to Covent Garden one day a week at the moment, on Tuesdays, and I am also hoping in the next few months that I will be able to get there for more days too. I do also hope to also increase the amount of glass in my Etsy shop too, which not prepping for Birmingham will allow me more time to concentrate on too.

One show that definitely we will be at is London’s MCM Expo at Excel on 28-30^th October. Not only will we be back with as much as I can carry but we will be in exactly the same spot at May, with a ‘booth’ style stall too which makes it much easier to layout and display the glass for you to see. I’m already making new aliens for it, I’ll be extending the range of coloured inks for dip pens too which previewed at LFCC, including three new metallic colours. There will also be pendants, marbles, more rings and earrings, and if we have room some more boxes and ‘B-Movie’ cushions too. I do hope to see you there, so long as nothing else happens in the meantime!

All the best

Glenn

Alien Sea Huntress

Or it might end up just being called Sea Huntress, or The Huntress. In my mind it's just 'why have I got this crazy necklace idea in my head? I've got enough half finished projects already without starting another one!'

This nearly did stall, and I know that I could still be tweaking it, but I'm trying to get back to one of the earliest lessons' I learnt with glass - stop, move on; that's as good as you can do for now, learn by it and take those lessons to the next thing you make. Easier said than done, I even posted some earlier pictures on Frit Happens to get some feedback to see what needed tweaking. I almost ended up with too many ideas of changes, so after a dozen more times threading and unthreading it, moving elements around, adding and taking them away, it ended up going very nearly back to how it started. I did find adding a few small Tibetan spacer beads helped some of the claws sit more neatly, which ended up being the main tweak. I wasn't going to put the spike in the centre, and just have the two claws facing each other, but when I did it was just crying out for something major between them. I even had to make beads for it - yes beads! I hardly ever make beads, and I hated the first ones, but then remembered some 'bumpy' style ones I'd seen somewhere, so made some like that which I really liked, and as a bonus kept more of the metallic lusters.

It's been an interesting project, and bizarrely came from working on the Alien monsters, where I'd developed some interesting ways of adding colour and texture. With this one the colour has a really, really, high silver and metal content, so in real life has some wonderful metallic lusters. Oddly though parts of it show up as yellow when light shines through them, but green-blue when the light hits it straight on!

I am still deciding if I should list this on Etsy, or take it along to the May Expo. When I make things like this, I tend to think 'would this look like something someone of 'Farscape' would have worn?' If the answer is yes, or at least possiably, then I think it's right.

Talking of which, I have some news about the Aliens, but it's not confirmed yet, so you are going to have to wait until the next post, but I will post on my Facebook page as soon as I know it's going to happen.

In the meantime, here's lots of pictures of the necklace.

Plastic and Bullets

I seem to have several projects on the go, the problem often is finding time to finish them or just that last component that will make it work. Embarrassingly, for far too many months gathering dust I have some glass from another artist for a collaboration that have sat in a box in the corner of the workshop/office/studio/storeroom that I seem to live in right now. The problem with that one has been finding two odd bits that will bring it to life, plus some old text books that are buried in the attic. I am sure I will get to it (eventually.)



Crown blank neatly cut out by machine

A newer project that has been rattling around my head for a year or two saw a step closer this week to actually getting out of my head and into the real world. It is going to be a head-dress, or a crown, or something like that - it's still taking shape. I'd could describe it, but I won't, because partly it might spoil the magic of it comeing to life, but mostly because I'm not totally sure how it's going to come together yet.

One key part needed was some old bullet cases, but it's taken until my short New Year break to be able to pop along to a local army surplus store to rummage around for some fired blank shells in various sizes. At the same time I bought some blank tiara/alice bands from a haberdashers which were going to form the base. However once I'd got home I realised they were too thin, too flexiable, and also I'd need to bolt parts onto them at right angles.

Faced with having to cut out a crown shape by hand didn't really fill me with excitement. I was debating between aluminium sheet and acyrlic, both are light, acyrlic was cheaper but I remembered the problems I had last time when cutting through a sheet. I used my trusty electric scrollsaw, very carefully taking my time to saw through so I got a neat straight line. When I finaly got to the end the heat of the blade had just re-welded the plastic together again! So, aluminium it would be.

I was going to order a sheet when on Saturday morning I was setting up at Greenwich and inspiration was setting up a few stalls away in the shape of 'The Shed Laser Co.' who make all sorts of things out of acyrlic! I remember chatting to Sarah who said she could cut anything to order, so I described what I wanted, got a quote, and was sorted!


 Monday afternoon I spent drafting on the PC, then cutting out bits of paper trying to get the shape and sizes right, before emailing Sarah with the design - even down to having the holes so I didn't need to drill them out (and risk cracking the plastic while doing so.) Next Saturday morning I was at Greenwich she gave me the crown base, all neatly cut out! If I'd have done this by hand it wouldn't be anywhere near as neat, I'd have been hot and bothered, broken a few blades, and probably just put off doing it! If you want to do something like this too, and need some plastic 'printed' I know Sarah is in the market most weekends, and you can find 'Theshedlaserco' on facebook too! (I tried to put the link, but for somereason blogger doesn't want to!)

Hopefully there will be more on this head-dress/crown/head-art-installation in forthcoming blogs as i make up some more parts of it.

Decisions, decisions

It's been another tough week, I normally am quite good at making decisions and then going and getting on with things, but not this week as I try to decide 'where next.'

I've been hoping to take a semi-permanent stall somewhere, but as with everything it's all about the location. I wasn't really happy with Spittlefields market, although the people are nice I did feel like my stall must have been touched by the plague as no one really wanted to come and look, and they don't run a Saturday market. Camden was 'interesting' but I was so tired out from doing Spittlefields (plus the nightmare tube breakdown at the start of the day) I had to cancel the Sunday.

I'd really like to be at a dedicated crafts and art market, this week I went to chat to the Greenwich market manager. I am due to do a trial day on Wednesday, but they have a 'no more jewellery' policy which means I'd might not be able to sell my pendants there. That might make it unviable, I am hoping they will see how unique and unusual they are and let them in. If not, I guess it'll probably back to Camden for now, but it's tough trying to sell hand made goods next to cheap imports. As I planned to be at a permanent location I've recklessly turned down a couple of one day fairs, and wondering about trying to book up some now just in case.

In the meantime I'm melting glass like a manic, and it's become a creative time for me again as I re-explore marbles. I've been experimenting with some new design ideas, again based on sci-fi and space themes. I've got no photos yet, they still need some baking to really bring the colours out, but I'll try to post some photos here or on my Facebook page within a few days. If anything fiddling around with stalls and making display equipment is really cutting into time I prefer to be creating. In the meantime I am trying to list at least one new thing a day in my Etsy and/or Folksy shop. I am using the Facebook page a lot more now when I do, so if you haven't found it yet it's on https://www.facebook.com/SteamPunkGlass