Always practicing

Practice is necessary. 

Sure, it would be wonderful if everything I ever made was a beautiful and sellable work of art, but glass doesn't seem to work that way for me. So, I do force myself to work out of my comfort zone with glass. I make stuff and lots of it without any intention of selling it. 

The problem is that this stuff just kinda accumulates in my workspace. I don't want to throw it away because it took me time and materials to create it, but it's not very good, so I don't want to sell it or even give it away.

So, I thought before I threw it away, I might share some of my out-of-the-comfort-zone pieces. You have my permission to laugh at them. I laugh at them even if it is a frustrated laugh. So, without further adieu, here are some experiments

Played around with hollow forms. I did ok in my boro tubing class, so how hard could it be in soft glass? The answer is, very hard. Still something worth playing around with.

Implosions have eluded me for a long time. I understand the concept, but I always struggle with the technique and I think it's something that is better suited to borosilicate, but I keep trying. I finally had some success in some soft glass implosions. It's not pretty, but it's a step for me.

Years and years ago, I took a class with Emilio Santini where we did sculptural figures off mandrel. I did alright, but I kinda wish I could retake it with the five additional years of glass experience that I have under my belt now. I still got a lot out of it and remember the concepts that were taught about soft glass sculpture. I played around with making a mousie and a muscular man. I accidentally cracked the man and he lost an arm. He also doesn't have a head, it's ok.

Boro tubing practice! These are pretty boring because they are just clear balls with a loop. I'm still trying to work on getting the shape how I like before adding some color. I will ramp up practice and hopefully production on these once it gets closer to Christmas tree season.

And these guys. They are weird, but I like them and hopefully they will bring a smile to someone's face. These are just a test pair that haven't even been annealed, but I will definitely be making more.

Diverge

6 years ago, I went down to part time from a steady full time job, so I could put more time and energy into selling beads to jewelry designers. If you had asked me then what my plan was it would have been to sell only beads on Etsy and a few bead shows per year. 

At the time, that was enough for me as an artist and it pulled in enough income for me to be reasonably comfortable. 

Things have changed a bit since then. I still love beads and creating them, but I want to do more. I'm still creating new designs, but I'm very much feeling limited by working with practical bead sizes and being realistic about what price points work for sell-able jewelry.

A little over a year ago, I started working on focal beads that really are not practical to create jewelry with and are more intended as display pieces, but that scratched my itch for pushing my own limits in what I could do using stringer.

Do they sell particularly well? Well a $150-$200 bead can be a tough sell, but they do slowly move and I get to make more of them. Again being realistic, there just are not that many people who collect beads (I do though!).

The next step was for me is to make this for a different market. So I started making marbles. There is a decent sized community of folks who collect glass marbles. It also helped me to discover that I really enjoyed working off mandrel. So, I started using bead techniques and making soft glass marbles with them.

Upon discovering how much I enjoyed working off mandrel, the next logical step was to create cabochons to be set using copper electroforming. So now, I have these awesome jewelry pieces that are totally different from what my jewelry designer customers create and I can still really push my limits when it comes to what I can create using glass stringer.

So now, here I am with three different types of items with different buyers all made using my skills with glass stringer. My biggest challenge lately has been trying to market them to different audiences. Do jewelry designers want to hear about marbles? Should I make different social media and mailing lists for jewelry, marbles and beads? Did I just triple my marketing workload? 

I wish I could focus on only one thing, but it seems that I need to diversify to be able to make a comfortable income lately. Been feeling very fractured and unfocused. Wish I knew what the right answer is, but the only way to find out is to try.