Thank You!

Firstly before everyone goes away and settles down for the Xmas holidays, a bit thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past year. It’s not been an easy year, but it’s been lovely to have ‘met’ (albeit virtually) so many great people in the glass and crafting worlds. Thank you to all who’ve taken trouble to comment on my blog, given inspiration and advice, and of course special thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to buy some of my glass creations! It is very appreciated, not just because it means I can buy more glass, but it means I must be doing something right for you to want my glassy bits!

It’s not going to be all rest for me over the next few weeks, I want to get into the workshop and try out some new ideas and continue to strive to improve some techniques over the coming year. If the snow thaws I might even battle into the shed and try and make some things I’ve promised for myself (I still have a half finished walking stick in there somewhere!)

Thank you, and have a merry Xmas, and a great New Year!

Glenn :-)

Quick update and Spoonerisms

Thank you to everyone that replied to my blog, it has been very helpful, and if anyone else would like to add I am still very interested to hear what you have to say!

Been a little more than hectic this week, not helped by spending most of it on trains going nowhere. I posted some weeks ago my idea to give those of us who still have to commute (working on stopping doing that) a little something back. I sent it to the train company, who then two days later promptly decided they weren’t squeezing enough money out of their franchise so reverted it back to ‘public ownership’ which seems to mean no ones in charge. Having said that I quite like the new bizarre mix of 1970’s and 2006 carriages linked together, the old ones are way more comfortable too! However it's lucky dip as to if they are running on time or hugely late though.

Back on the creative front the other week I popped into the Folksy Xmas do-thingie to hear what Folksy had planned for the site and to meet a few fellow sellers. One of the lovely people I met there before I had to rush off was Claire McNeil who runs an Etsy and Folksy shop called Spoonerisms http://www.etsy.com/shop/spoonerisms

Claire hunt out old unloved spoons and turns them into Jewellery, on the night she was wearing a lovely pendant made from the end of spoon which had stunning art-deco style pattern. I think it says a lot for craftsmen of old that these old spoons had such wonderful detail on them that can still be reworked and re-envisioned into something beautiful and desirable again.

One of the lovely things Claire has also done is create a series each with their own stories of past loves, broken friendships, and times past called ‘Broken Promises,’ each spoon having a personal memento embedded in resin in a spoon. The stories are very personal indeed, my favourite is an earring given to her by a chap she met in a bar, clicked with, exchanged numbers, but never saw again. It has the romantic title of ‘the one that got away.’ There are so many lovely ones it was tough to pick a picture, and some with such heartrending stories, even an old engagement ring that never turned in to marriage. Gulp! I do promise that not all the stories are quite so sad though!

I’d love your shopping feedback!

Flower Disc
Originally uploaded by steampunkglass

I really would love to get some feedback from you all, especially all you lovely people who have supported me by buying at some of the sites I list on.

At the moment I seem to have bits of stuff all over the web, which is a bit messy and I suspect very inconvenient for you, the buyer. Some of you have been really lovely, stalking around the various sites and setting up accounts to be able to go in to buy my glasswares; thank you for going to the trouble!

I’d like to make thing easier and better, and maybe try and concentrate on fewer, and better, places to list my items. At the moment I have stuff on Etsy, which is a very good site but all in dollars. I have a lot of stuff in Folksy, plus a sprinkling of supplies in Misi and other bits at Coriandr!!! And then of course there is also Artfire which I hear good things about but am not listing in (yet!?)

On top of that I have an option to have a shopping cart on my website instead, which I turned off as I had so many other sites with listings in already.

Help! I am not sure which is better, so I’d really love to hear YOUR feedback as to which venue, as shoppers, you’d prefer to use, and also which you hate to help me decide what would be the best to concentrate on. I don’t mind if you want to leave a comment on my blog, on my Facebook page, on twitter or even email, I’d just really appreciate hearing what you think as shoppers.

Thank you in advance!!! Glenn :-)

Random SteamPunk Post - Doing it with Style!!!!

‘A brass unicorn has been catapulted across a London street and impaled an eminent surgeon. Words fail me, gentlemen.’

Indeed! I am sure the knowledgeable and film geeks amongst you will recognize these stunned word, spoke in such a way you know the words are spoken by an Edwardian Gentleman (in Capitals, of Course! Emphasizing he is a Proper Gentleman!)

No? Well ok, I’ve only managed to see the film once myself so far so I wouldn’t have know the quote either! I am talking about the incredibly bizarre, and slightly daft, Vincent Price ‘The Abominable Dr Phibes!’

For some reason I have seen the sequel ‘Dr Phibes Rises Again’ several times, but the original hardly seems to be shown, and I’ve only managed to see this 1970’s classic once (which will be handy for my Other Half to know if she’s thinking of xmas pressies, hint, hint!)

And the reason I mention this? This weekend I have watched a couple of big recent blockbusters, dripping with CGI, big names, cerebral plots, accurate research, quality acting….. yep, really disappointing. Whereas there was nothing wrong with them, they lacked a certain soul and fun that these old cheesy 1970’s horrors could get away with. Where all the lead men were busy giving brooding looks, I’d rather have a daft line like this to keep me awake and smiling!

As for the recent rash of films like Saw, don’t get me started! Please just stop at one! Besides, you want interesting ways of revenge? Vincent Price was having people eaten by locusts and popping them in giant gin bottles before some of these people were born!

I rather like the style and eras these old shlock horror films were set in, a sort of clean scrubbed Technicolor Victorian/Edwardian London; Such a shame men these days have rappers and football stars as fashion icons, whereas I had Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as well dressed respectable men to emulate – stopping short of course of tramping around graveyards in the dead of night digging up people and shoving a stake in their chest.

Or is it just me? Am I a secret Victorian trapped in an era of baseball caps, when you can’t wear a hat in a pub because the cctv can’t see your face (Yes, that really happened to me, I was told I couldn’t wear a hat in a London pub!) Certainly nice to see SteamPunk getting a bit more mainstream credibility; it’s almost becoming an reaction against ‘casual;’ putting on something nice and special to go out shouldn’t mean put on a different designer checked shirt and jeans surely? We are well overdue a return to style I say!
(Photo Credits:US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Ok, time for my Laudanum; I promise my blog will return to normal next posting and I’ll waffle about glass instead!

Bottle stoppers have stopped – but your flower colour suggestions are welcome!

Bottle Stoppers
Originally uploaded by steampunkglass

I am still having problems getting some of the really nice bottle stoppers that I top with my marbles. I’ve found other ones, but they aren’t as good quality so am holding out for new stocks to come in. I was quite pleased with the gold ones I got as alternatives (very Christmassy!) but now they’re out too! Argh!

The other weekend I found a local clearance store had some bottle stoppers on sale, fitted with some terribly made glass ‘shapes’ (distorted blobs I’d call them) – and there was me thinking I’d been first with the idea! They were so cheap, and in a custom made display box, I was sorely tempted to go back and get some, take off the naff glass, and fit my own. I went back intending to get some to see me through and then decided not to. For one thing it goes against joining the SRA as it supports badly made imported glass from sweat shops (literally in the case of making glass!) However just before I walked away I took a closer look and was glad I hadn’t wasted my money. The stoppers had been thrown into the boxes with the glue still wet, so some were stuck to the lining of the boxes, glue was smeared down the sides, and even the chrome plating was so thin I could see the base metal beneath.

I think I’ll just keep making marbles and flowers and wait until I can get some new stoppers that I know are made well.

In the meantime I’ve been playing with pendants again, this time putting some of the flowers I’ve been making inside some small discs of glass, they’ll be about 1 1/2inch (about 40mm) a few bigger and a few smaller. They look pretty good, I’m being rubbish at getting photo’s taken but hope to make and list some more this weekend. I threaded up one last night on some nice sea-green ribbon, it’s white and dark turquoisy blue petals and if I get chance I’ll try and list it tonight!

In the meantime any requests or suggestions for flower colours you’d like to see? I can’t be sure I’ll be able to do all the colours but I’d really like to hear what everyone would like to see or wear!

new crop of flower stopper marbles

new crop of flower stopper marbles
Originally uploaded by steampunkglass

Sorry for the rather thin on the ground post the past couple of weeks! I seem to be doing my headless chicken thing here lately. As promised here are some pictures of the alien blood flowers I was making the other week. I am hoping to get back into the workshop and work on some more of these.

I did manage a long session the other day where I tried some really quite advanced techniques, however despite all the separate ‘bits’ and techniques working a treat, when I tried putting them all together everything failed! Never mind; if it was easy it wouldn’t be worth learning after all!

Hopefully I will have more to blog soon, in the meantime I’ve snuck some more stoppers into my Etsy shop, here are some of the alien flowers in the meantime; some are test ones which later got rejected, and they haven’t yet been properly fixed into the stopped, but it’ll give you an idea of how they are going!

Alien Blood and Flowers

I have been struggling to make anymore razors at the moment, my failure rate has really gone up on these which made for a rather disheartening session on Saturday, especially when one really cool looking one cracked right in half then tore up all the bead release which mixed into it. Sigh. I was so expecting to get lots done too that day, but several hours and throwing four in a row into my dump pot (big jar of water for broken and unhappy glass) I decided to give up on those for a bit. I will battle on though; I will get some fresh bead release and try again!

Sunday was a much more fun day! I found some old cd’s I haven’t listened to for ages and went back to flowers for a bit. I made this flower marble the other week which came out really thin and translucent which I’ve popped onto a nice chrome bottle-stopper, ( now in my Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33964917 ) this single flower technique takes a bit more time, but is rather rewarding and so I thought I’d explore it more, and found there was a lot to learn about it.

The glass makers produce some colours that are ‘odds-lots’ or experimental, and a while back Emma at http://www.theflyingbead.co.uk/ who is another Borosilicate addict (do take a look at her lovely beads!) swapped me a rod of ‘Alien Blood’ one of Northstar’s batch of one-off colours – and with a name like Alien Blood how could I resist a rod to play with! It puts me in mind of the X-files! It’s a very pale green-white colour, and it’s rather nice to work with! I do hope Northstar decide to add it to their range as it thins down to a quite realistic looking floral white, and stays more solid in colour – although I haven’t looked in the kiln yet, this is what I can tell from what they looked like before annealing. It’s been a while since I was so excited about what’s cooking in there as it ‘felt’ like a good session where I got to grips more with this technique. I am keeping my fingers crossed!