Making Saturn

Dobby gives Saturn the Sniff Test

Loving astronomy, and becoming a glassblower, it was only a matter of time before we would try re-creating the planets and Sun in blown glass. It is an interesting challenge to figure out the right mix of colors, the density of the colors and how big or small the chips of color (frit) need to be so that they will mix and swirl together and look like whichever planet's… Read the Full Story...

I Have the Best Friends in the World!

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Recently, we ran a Kickstarter program. Kickstarter.com is a place for creatives to post a project they’re trying to raise money for. There are art projects, films, books, inventions… all kinds of really cool things on there, all trying to get funding so that they can be created. The artists/writers/inventors/whatevers post a story about the project they want to do and offer “rewards” to anyone who will donate to… Read the Full Story...

New Kickstarter Project

Saturn Glass Scupture

Each year, we travel to Colorado Springs to attend the National Space Symposium. Actually, we don’t *attend*, we work. First off, we move the giant glass sculpture from it's home at the Space Foundation corporate headquarters to where the conference is. When we're done moving and setting it back up, we spend the rest of the week exhibiting our work in a booth in the exhibit hall with… Read the Full Story...

Who Doesn’t Love Cupcakes???

Red Velvet Cupcake

Over the past several months, I’ve gotten the love bug for cupcakes. My mom got me a book for Christmas that was all about cupcakes with different recipes and decorations and then my friend, Sandra Salamony, sent me her wonderful book, 1,000 Ideas for Decorating Cupcakes, Cookies & Cakes with glorious pictures of all sorts of different decorating ideas. Of course, I wanted to make them… Read the Full Story...

How Things Ought to Work!

Seafoam 12 inch Baptismal Bowl

I love it when things work out just right.

Ten days ago, I got a call from a lady who had seen our Baptismal Bowls website and wanted to know if we could do a custom piece for her church. The bowls on the website are large – 18 inches diameter by 5 inches deep. She needed one that was about 12 inches across by 4 inches… Read the Full Story...

Focus on One Thing, or Many? – Part II

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A while back, I wrote a blog post about if it were better to focus on just one type of art, one technique and get really super good at it, or if it were better to focus on a number of different ones. I don’t have much of a choice but to do the many, as my mind is scattered over so many different techniques and my attention… Read the Full Story...

The Bummer of Being a Commissioned Artist

Barrios Awards Sketch and Finish

In the previous blog post I wrote about the custom commission I was designing and creating for a company – their 30-year service award, to be given to two of their employees.

A risk involved with creating custom pieces is that the client may get the piece and decide that they just don’t like it. When you sell a work in a gallery, the new owner sees it… Read the Full Story...

Design to Creation

Barrios Award

A really fun part of my job is the first contact I get with a new client and they say “We’re thinking of something, but we don’t know what. Is that possible?” and then from there, based on their budget, the use and how wild they want to be, I get to design and create a piece of artwork that is new and truly unique.

A little… Read the Full Story...

New Year of Marketing

Kittens & Friends Calendar

The new year brings me anticipation and hope. This past year had some ups and downs certainly, and from an economic view, it was indeed crappy. What it *did* do was force me to look into other products and skills to learn and offer. I’m not sure I would have done many of these things if not for searching for more sales, so I count it as a good… Read the Full Story...

Kittens!

All five kittens, back together again

Back a few months ago, I captured a little stray kitten along the road. When I first saw her, I also saw her mom, a small black cat, and another little kitten, black, running up the road. By the time I caught the first little one, the other two were gone. I brought that one home to keep her, but continued to watch for the mom and the… Read the Full Story...