bowl me over

As per usual, I have gotten behind in my updates.

Life has been especially busy lately and I haven't had a lot of time for crafting. I've been putting in crazy hours at work (12-14 hour days) to try and get caught up with all my assessment reports. Although the work day is pretty long, it hasn't really been that bad. I've been staying in town on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights so at least I don't have the commute adding 3 hours to my work day. Other than work I've been collecting study material for upcoming registration exams. Ugh, I was really enjoying being finished school and am not looking foward to all the studying that is ahead of me.

Although I haven't spent much time fusing, I was able to get a few bowls completed over the last few weeks. I also ordered some new molds, which arrived last week. I've prepped all the molds but was only able to use 1 of them so far. Hopefully the rest of them will be tested this weekend.


Recognize this one? This is the geometric-designed piece you've seen in a previous blog. I finally got around to slumping it into a bowl (8" x 8"). As you can see, one side drew in more than others. I guess this gives the bowl a unique and handmade look but it wasn't my intention and I was a bit disappointed when I opened the kiln. *Sigh* I'm trying to figure out why this happened and how to prevent it in the future.


I was practicing cutting even strips of glass here. The strips are 1" x 8".


I like how this one turned out! I was very pleased that it worked out because it was made especially for a friend's birthday. The bowl is now in it's new home in Pennsylvania.


Another gift for a January birthday. This one went to my brother. He has 2 dogs that he absolutely adores, I tried my best to represent them. This was slumped into one of my new molds, a 7" x 7" plate.

I initially made this piece to be 10" x 10" but when I put the glass into the kiln to full fuse it, each corner of the glass slightly extended over the edge of the kiln shelf! This discovery made me come to the realization that I hadn't taken the interior size of my kiln into account when ordering the new molds! The 10" x 10" square mold I was going to use wouldn't even fit into my kiln! I ended up having to cut the piece down to fit a smaller square plate mold. Bummer.

I also did a batch of pendants, earrings and pendant & earring sets last weekend. I remembered to take pictures and will post them soon.