Exciting New Foray

I’ve been a teacher of hot-glass since the Spring of 2010.  I’ve been a teacher of warm-glass since the Winter of 2009.  The last time I took a hands-on course was in the Fall of 2008.   NOW I’m finally back into a class where I’m NOT the instructor!  This is VERY exciting for me!

About a week ago, I began a course in “Advanced Sculptural Glass” at the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design (NSCCD).  While I’ve been making Glass Faery Ladies since the summer of 2006, and they are technically sculptural, that’s as advanced as I was able get in Soft Glass (sometimes referred to as soda-lime glass, with a C.O.E. of 104).  Other beads artists experience in both soft-glass and borosilicate glass thought I was crazy to use glass that so easily thermal shocks, but I couldn’t help myself!  Plus, I thought that my gear in my studios (a Nortel Minor Bench Burner running on a single 5 litre per minute oxygen concentrator) was not powerful enough to work with borosilicate (hard glass, with a C.O.E. of 33), but it turns out that I was mostly mistaken!

I say mostly mistaken, on purpose.  While my studio set-up is fine for working the clear glass, it’s not so great with the colours, specifically the Reducing Colours.  Because I need to crank the propane to get the flame hot enough to work the boro, I simply do not have enough “juice” from the single  (5lmp) oxygen concentrator to have a neutral flame, and definitely not enough to even come close to an oxidising flame.   Basically, I’m running a “reduction flame” almost constantly, which means that I’m not getting the colours I’d like in my work, and am ending up with over-struck glass, which pretty much means that icky sickly yellow.

The solution? An additional oxygen concentrator, of at least 5lpm.  🙂

That’s right folks!  This is not a wishful “someday” plan, but one which will most hopefully be executed within the month.  I’ll do my best to keep you posted.

Peace and Love,

~Janelle

p.s.  Here’s a little sample of my first boro attempts (after just one class!)  There’s a group shot to start, and then a marble that I’m calling “Brain Stem”, a few little vases, a nice Flower Implosion and a decently sized Clear Glass Ornament!  Enjoy! XOX!

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Weekend Intensive Underway

Hi Everybody!
It’s been way too long since my last post… To be honest, even in the days of snail-mail, I would write long long letters, and get them into the addressed envelope, and there they would stay, never to be stamped, never to be sent. Apparently this applies to the way I blog, since there are few final drafts with pics that have simply never made it this far.

Sooooo…. I have been teaching Glass Beadmaking at the NSCCD (not to be confused with NSCAD!), and this time round I’m teaching weekend intensives! This means that all the talking and set-up is gotten out of the way Friday evening. Saturday (today actually!) we will be getting into the technical and practical side of the learning, and then we will let our creativity run wild on Sunday!

I was so excited about today that I slept very lightly and jumped out of bed this morning! This promises to be an awesome day, despite the rain!

Hopefully my students won’t mind if I photograph some of their beads, so stay tuned for those…

Much Love,
~Janelle

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Helping Others Learn

   Just the other day, I posted a slide show showing some traditionally shaped but unique beads.   I had a lot of fun taking those photos, and I wanted to post them partly for my future students!

   Yes!  That’s right!  I’ll soon be teaching “Introduction to Glass Beadmaking” at the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design.  The former teacher of this course has literally “passed me the torch”!

   One of the things I’m really looking forward to is the fact that the Centre has a torch available for each student in the class.  What an outfit!  I’ll be checking the set-up next week, and if there is another fabulous aspect to it, I’ll be sure to post some more info.

    Just as a little back-story:  I got my start in all my areas of craft (except wire-working) at the NSCCD.  As I was finishing my Bachelor of Arts, I started taking night classes in Glass Beadmaking, which was affectionately called “Guerilla Glass Beadmaking” by my teacher.  We worked on propane torches, with strips of stained glass, and used simple vermiculite in a cookie tin to slow the cooling of the glass.

   Needless to say, the craft has generally become more advanced since those days.  Now we will be using Oxygen-Propane “Minor Bench Burners”, and a kiln to actually anneal the beads immediately. 

  I expect that my new students will thoroughly enjoy the results of their learning, and I can say for certain that I will love teaching them. 

 I love to teach. 

 I think it’s mostly because I love to see the satisfaction of my students faces when they succeed at doing something that they didn’t know they could do!

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