Fun at BAGI and the Latest From the Wet Lab

My weekends have been a bit busy since I took my glass coldworking class. Our Society of Glass Beadmakers Northern California group had a monthly meeting at BAGI (Bay Area Glass Institute) where I teach glass beadmaking. That was great fun - folks had opportunities to make a blown glass object and/or a fused glass tile, and also participate in the "bead toss". I want to thank the folks at BAGI for hosting the event and offering their time and talent to assist our group of bead makers with their creations. Thank you Tom Upchurch, Mark Murai, Treg Silkwood, and Johnathon Schmuck for all your time and hard work! And thanks to Malcolm for making a "soda run" - you rock!

Here are some pix from our event at BAGI.

In the hot shop - Mark gives a helping hand

In the hot shop - Treg assists

Lampworkers participating in the bead toss -

Johnathon and the fusers on the other side of the wall

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So now I'm getting ready to teach a mini-workshop in Washington over Labor Day weekend. My project is a small felted wall hanging, and I've started another one to bring as a sample. This time it's flowers - no birds, no trees, no leaves. But there will be beads on it - I can't make a felted object without embellishing it!

These are a few pix I took during the process. First I made a pre-felt from which I cut out the shapes for the flowers. Here are the fibers before I wet them down.

After felting the flower fibers, I laid out the fibers for the background. I had my little studio buddy Niki keeping me company - she just loves coming out into the wet lab with me.

After I wet down the background fibers, I placed my flowers, put additional fibers on them, and added wool yarn for the stems.

Now that I've fulled and dried the piece, the embellishing is coming along quite nicely. I've beefed up the stems with some needle felting and I'll be enhancing the flowers with some bead work. Before I head up to the Pacific Northwest this coming Saturday, I'll show you pictures of the finished projects.

Now go have yourselves a happy and creative day!