Happy New Year! 2016 is finally here and it is going to be amazing! Brassica Designs is starting off the new year at the place that makes it all happen! Alaska Bead Company! Come on out this Saturday, January 9 from 10-6 to Alaska Bead Company for my new year new bead trunk show!

The theme for this years show is Reaction Action or She Blinded Me With Science!

This Saturday, I will be debuting a selection of beads that explore the metal alchemy of glass. We know different metals go into the glass to create the different colors that we see, but did you know that those metals also create a visible chemical reaction when mixed together? Some reactions create a dark outline or a beautiful pearlescent effect. Others create cosmic wisps of color (purple, blue, white, green) within the glass when they are overlaid with clear. Come out to Alaska Bead Company this Saturday to see the results of my mad scientist experiments. Cuz you can remove the scientist from the mad, but you can never remove the mad from the scientist mwahahahaha (insert mad scientist laugh here)!

I will also have spacers and focal beads made out of recycled and new glasses, as well as, bead sets made with ash from Alaskan volcanoes and Bootleggers Cove Clay,  magnetic flower holders (“spring in a tube”), Rainbow Twisty focals, and finished jewelry. Every year, I hope to offer a diverse selection of glass art to excite your creative senses and imaginary mind 🙂

Come on by on Saturday to say hi and just look at the beautiful reactions abound!

Cheers!

Brassica

 

Brassica Designs is in full production swing for the holidays! With one show down and one more to go, I thought I’d update you know what I’ve been up too.

In September, I participated in a ‘Secret Bead Along’ class at the Alaska Bead Company. The ‘Secret Bead Along‘ was a 6 week long class where, each week, we were given a set of instructions to make a component of a larger piece. We were not aware of what we were making ahead of time, so this was an exercise in spatial and color design. My goal when I signed up was to test my ability to ‘design on the fly’ and end up with one cohesive piece that didn’t look like a bad Christmas sweater.

To my surprise, I not only ended up with one cohesive piece  but something I would never have thought up in a million years that came from somewhere within. I learned that when you relax and go with the flow, you sometimes end up with pleasant surprises. A huge thank you to Linda and Jan for all your help with the new stitches and for the collaboration and laughs. I had a wonderful time!

In October, I traveled to Portland Oregon for the first time and it was wonderful! The warm weather, the beautiful trees (oh the earthy heavenly smell of all those big beautiful trees), and the home of Bullseye Glass Co. My husband and I were lucky to get the last two spots on the Bullseye Glass factory tour where we were introduced to the science and chemistry of making Bullseye glass. We saw the mixing room where proprietary recipes of minerals, metals, and silica were mixed in huge drums and then put into huge glass furnaces to be made into plate glass or rod.

We also learned how frit is made from the waste edges of glass sheets by putting them in a crusher machine. Way way easier than a hammer and zip lock baggy, I must say! Speaking of frit, I came
home with some beautiful new colors that I will be using in new magnetic flower holders that will be available at the Artmosphere Studio holiday party on Dec 12th.

One last mention about Portland. I’d like to shout out my wonderful Mother In Law (PaulaP) for which this trip wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you!

So what am I up to now you ask? Well, I was given a bunch of super thick copper wire from my awesome nephew in MN. Thinking about where the wire came from, how old it was, and how it got into my hands, I was inspired to create a new series called ‘Shipwrecked’ that features the copper wire adorned in pearls and crystals.

I’ve also been making an old favorite, beaded Dentalium earrings. Dentalium is a little critter that lives on the sea floor in a tusk shaped shell. The tusk shaped shell is what is used in the earrings. I hand bead the cuff onto the shell to add a splash of color and make them into earrings.

Come on out to the Artmosphere Holiday party next weekend to see the new colors of magnetic flower holders, the new Shipwrecked pieces, or pick up a pair of beaded Dentalium earrings this Saturday, December 12th. Oh! Or you can just stop by to give an artist a hug, get a nice cup of hot cider, and say hi!

Well, it’s time to light the torch one last time before the weekend is out. Hope this post finds you happy and well wherever you are and hope you all are having happy holidays with family and friends, or even alone enjoying the solace of a beautiful winter scene outside your window.

Cheers!

Brassica

Fall is here, the leaves are falling and it’s time to turn over a new leaf! For long enough, Brassica Designs blog posts and Square merchandise store entries have come to you via a shared computer or an iPad in my home. For those that have tried to maintain a blog on an iPad, it is much different then the kung fu that a real computer can lend to the task. I am happy to announce that-at last- I am the proud new owner of a laptop computer and this is my very first post!

Rampa and I are very happy to say HELLO WORLD!

Now for updates on Brassica Designs! A few years ago I embarked on a personal search to study the differences between the various torches I have in my studio. The results of the study can be found here.  Yes, I have many torches. No, they do not number as many as Imelda Marcos’s shoes, however, I am a firm believer that a girl should have a torch for every mood, attitude, and day of the week. Just sayin!

So continuing on my personal search, I spent a fair amount of years fine tuning my skills at making glass beads, and in doing so, have missed many a class at the Alaska Bead Company. So I have recently decided to make up for lost time by taking a class a month from Alaska Bead Company. It’s a bit like Christmas, or my Birthday, in that I get to go and learn new techniques that I’ve been dying to learn but just didn’t have the time for. So now I’m making the time and am so happy I did, for they really have the best teachers and every class I’ve ever taken there has expanded my horizons and how I think about my skills in beading.

So now to tie it all together. Many who know me, know that 1/2 my heart lies in glass and the other 1/2 in seed beads (where my roots began as a peyote seed bead artist). That is why you see both disciplines represented at table shows and in my work. I look forward to my next two classes at Alaska Bead Company, where I will finally learn how to knit like a Viking and make a tennis bracelet out of beads.

In the mean-time, I invite you all to come out this weekend to the Crown Plaza Hotel on C St. and International to see my current works at the Alaska Bead and Gem show. I will have my full line of jewelry, magnetic flower holders, and loose glass beads available for sale. The photo below shows the latest creations from my torch that will be debuted this Saturday.

So do come out and visit this Saturday and Sunday, October 10-11 at the Crown Plaza Hotel to say hi or stock up on holiday gifts! Hope to see you there!

Cheers!

Joy (Brassica)

This Saturday, January 10th I will be heading off the annual 2015 lampworkers trunk show at Alaska Bead Company! This is an exciting year in that I will be debuting the fabulous rainbow twisty bead, which is a prism of beauty with all the colors of the rainbow intertwined and encased, then overlain with silvered glass striping that is raked, bringing all the colors together and creating a stunning movement to the bead.

I will also have spacers and focal beads made out of recycled and new glasses, as well as, geology bead sets made with ash from different Alaskan volcanoes and clay from Bootleggers Cove. Bootleggers Cove clay is a local favorite to ceramic workers, as it begins grey and turns a warm orange after firing. Bootlegger beads are a lovely complement to the volcanic ash beads and round out the geology bead set nicely. 

This year I hope to offer a diverse selection of glass art to excite your creative senses and imaginary mind!

Come on out to Alaska Bead Company on Saturday from 12-5pm. Hope to see you there!

Cheers!

Brassica

The Holidays are upon us! Thought I’d give a quick update of the goings on with Brassica Designs. This fall has been busy and really great!

With the bulk of the holiday shows behind me, I have one more fun holiday event to announce.  Tomorrow (yes tomorrow!) will be the Artmosphere Studio holiday party from 10am-5pm. Come and meet the fabulous artists of Artmosphere Studio and the Hot Headed Honeys, as we cheer in the holidays right with lots of yummy food, beautiful artwork, and fire! (No H3 holiday party would be complete without torch demos!). I will be selling “Spring In A Tube” (see image below) magnetic flower holders, in addition to handmade pieces of jewelry. My magnetic flower holders are made from repurposed flint glass test tubes, and are strong enough to hold water and a flower! Real magnetic flower power that’s portable and beautiful 🙂

Spring, in a tube!

Moving into the new year, will be my annual lamp workers trunk show at Alaska Bead Company on January 10th. I will have a fabulous selection of handmade beads, including rainbow twisty focals (sexy and gorgeous), flying saucer spacers in all your favorite colors, recycled glass, encased volcanic ash, as well as, finished jewelry pieces and magnetic flower holders. Hope to see you there!

Lastly, some of you may have noticed broken links to the Brassica Designs online store. That is because I am in the process of moving my store over to Square and will hopefully have it complete by the end of the weekend. Square affords a much more pleasant shopping experience and greater flexibility in payment options. Please stay tuned for more info on the online store move! In the mean-time, if there’s a piece you were interested in, please PM me at joy@brassicadesigns.com!

Well, it is time for me and the Elves to go back to work designing and making beautiful creations. I leave you with this holiday tune from the fabulous Barbershop Quartet, Storm Front – Bugler’s Holiday. Reminds me of Dayton’s holiday window displays in downtown Minneapolis on a snowy December evening. It takes a little while to get started but is well worth the listen to get you into the holiday shopping mood 🙂

Hope this message finds you happy and healthy!

Cheers!

Brassica

It’s been raining the last two days and the temps are falling. So what better way to spend the day but writing a post to update you on all I’ve been up too over the summer. This post is more philosophical musing and reflection, from an artists point of view.

It’s been a really crazy summer for me. I underwent a career change, finally landing a job in environmental science as an analyst for the Dept. of Transportation, spent a wonderful weekend at Pilchuck where my glass skills were advanced farther than they have ever gone. Spent two mind blowing weeks in Homer, AK, learning about road construction, and even said the eternal goodbye to a few wonderful artist friends who will forever remain in my memory.

After returning home from Pilchuck, I had rainbow twisty bead on the brain. Working out different permutations of colors for the twisty, I finally landed on a combination that popped and after a few weeks of working on the layering application and reducing techniques, I was able to produce a rainbow twisty bead that had the movement and soul of the twisty bead demoed at the retreat.

During the construction internship in Homer, one of the discoveries made while standing at the side of a 3-1/2 foot deep digout section is that creativity and art is everywhere and everyone has a creative gene whether they know it or not. Yes, there is even art in road construction. Why do I say this? Because there are paintings out there of fruit in a bowl or beautiful naked human forms, both of which are artists impressions of a physical model. Many other artists creations are manifestations of visions in their heads. How is this different than the construction worker in a digout laying fabric at predefined locations per the plans? The plans are like the model or a vision, the construction worker is breathing life into it (or making it real). Art is not just a museum quality painting, or intricate beaded piece. It can be spray painted lines at predefined locations on an otherwise blank dirt canvas that is the precursor for the manifestation of the plans in the hands of the worker.

The fabric artist

Prepping the canvas.

Laying out the first course of a wall.

Lastly, to remember two people whose artistic visions have shaped me and who were taken from this earth far too soon. Bryan McCormick who gave me my first Siouxsie and the Banshees tape as a young teen in North Dakota. He was a poet, a playwright, a true friend, and the most creative soul trapped in human form that I have ever met, and Sally Suddock who was an amazing bead artist, felter, writer, mentor, comic, and friend. She had the most contagious laugh and could see the bright side of everything. I hope you both are in a fabulous peaceful place.

and in parting, something that keeps coming to mind…..

It is definitely all about the journey and getting there isn’t always easy, as we expect, or in a straight line. The the beauty is in what you learn and experience along the way.

So be adventurous, seek out new and exciting things to expand and stimulate the little grey cells, and most importantly have fun, love, and be loved.

Next post will be back to beady business…. Thanks for listening!

Cheers and happy Friday! Brassica.

Sunday, April 27th – Last Day @ Pilchuck (sniff, sniff).

It was a dark and stormy night. Just KIDDING! No, day 3 began gloriously with a soft silent rain. I awoke and had a leisurely morning alone in the lodge. It was pretty fantastic and when I went to take a shower, a memory came back from the night before. A couple of bunk mates had procured a stray undergarment from the ladies room and luckily it’s owner was able to retrieve it when she happened to stop by to bid us good night. For we had plans for said undergarment. Fancy plans (and pants to match) 😉 Never get a bunch of past 30-something ladies together in a room with wine. We don’t quite have the shyness and inhibition of our teenage years and we have really good imaginations built from years of experiences. Good thing Pilchuck doesn’t have a flag pole, or do they? Just sayin….

After my leisurely shower, I hiked down to the Trojan Horse for the visit pilgrimage. The Trojan Horse is a magical place, down a jeep road that is filled with trees enshrouded in lichen sweaters.

When I arrived at the trail up the hill to the Trojan Horse, a slug was making it’s way across the trail and stopped to say hello. I asked to pass and made my way up to the great structure made of glass, concrete, and metal.

After I payed my respects to the Trojan Horse, I moseyed down to the shop where Sheila Davis was finishing her second demo, floral#2. I must say, this woman makes beautiful florals.

Next up was Kathy Johnson who graciously demoed her horse bead. Some would say that Kathy is part horse, for she is a master at immortalizing the sleek but soft curves of natures most beautiful creature. She taught us how to shape the strong neck and head of the horse with yummy carmelly colors and how to shape the face and muzzle of the horse and point the ears in such a manner as to make them look as soft and plush as the real thing. Kathy has truly embodied the spirit of the horse in her work, as well. Each of her pieces has it’s own personality, beauty, and grace.

After Kathy’s demo Laura B. helped me with my shorts pendant. I learned how to clean up the edges using the grinder and make a hole using a hand held Dremel device.

After I conquered the cold working of my shorts pendant, I wanted to conquer the lap table. Lady Desta was amazing as she coached me through the different disks and helped me make a flat clear window in my bead I had made the day before. Thank you Desta, it was one of the highlights of the weekend!

After cleanup and packing, it was time to depart. Once again we had an amazing unforgettable weekend filled with conversation, experiences, and laughter that we will never forget.

One last task was to leave a little sumpin behind to remember us by. Thank you Michelle for remembering 🙂

Getting home was a little like getting there. The path from the rental car place into the airport contained curbs, elevators, escalators, buses, and cool twirly things on the banister. What is interesting about the cool twirly things on the banister is that in the 70’s and 80’s they were commonly referred to hallucination devices for pot smokers but now they’re using them to decorate airport terminals, who knew these things were really freakin cool to completely sober tired people too! Yay!

Alas we made it to the terminal and were going through TSA with visions of dinner and drinks in our head. As we were approaching the TSA checkpoint, the officer asked my friend if she was traveling with anyone and she replied politely “no”. He then wisked her into another line. “First one through buys drinks” I replied!  Boy that was tense watching as we were head to head, then I was ahead and then finally, she made it through first!

Finally, we made it in and settled into dinner at a lovely Alaskan themed restaurant in the Seattle airport. Guess we were both missing home a little bit.

The rest is history. But first! I would like to thank all of the Fire and Rain folks for once again hosting an unforgettable retreat and all of the wonderful artists who taught the demos, and last but not least, all the wonderful folks who donated supplies and time to the cause: Bello Modo, Bullseye Glass, Fire Mountain Gems, Frantz Glass, Fusion Beads, Hot Glass Color, Kalmbach Publishing Company, Olympic Color Rod and last but not least! Gaffer Glass!

I know people are wondering about the rainbow twisty bead instructions. I’m checking w/ the artist who showed us to make sure I can publicly post them so stay tuned!

Well, I will leave you with a selection of photos from the retreat that make me smile. Thank you for coming along on our adventure! I can’t wait for next year! Cheers!

Frosting the shorts pendants

Sorta looks like the picture.

My window bead before the window 🙂

The awesome grinder!

Making bracelets!

Yeah baby! Fish tacos!

Trail from the lodge.

Glass table!

Liquid Oxygen. Torch crack. Just sayin.

Rainbow twisty for my rainbow twisty bead.

Night view of Pilchuck from the trail.

Lady Ali Vandegrift demo.

Pondering Ali’s beautiful beads.

Even the food is served in awesome glass pieces!

A couple of treasures acquired at the retreat. Libby Luechtman and Laura Bowker look good together!

Laura Bowker!

Desta Dickenson Window Beads!

Bullseye shorts pendants getting ready to fire.

Deb’s got a lot of tools 🙂

Gaffter goodness!

View from the library.

Making the Bullseye shorts pendants.

Happy Michelle at the torch!

Desta rocking the lap table!

Desta’s stunning bracelet!

The lodge.

Bye bye Pilchuck! See you next year!

The next morning Michelle and I headed out to replenish the wine supply donated to the cause the night before. We missed the Sheila Davis demo on how to make floral beads but got back just in time for the second demo of the day.

Libby Leuchtman unraveled the mystery of the Cleo pod where she reminded us frequently to heat our butts. For a chilly butt could result in shock pop and the butt end of the Cleo pod cracking off, which would then change it into a non-podlike structure with non of the grace and intrigue of the Cleo pod 🙂 Just in case we forget, we learned the chant “heat yer butt, heat yer butt!”, to be spoken to trigger the artist to, well, you guessed it.

After Libby’s demo the Gaffer girl and boy came to visit with Gaffer goodness! They provided samples of their new 104 clear, as well as a selection of their wonderful glass and posters! Did I say posters?

The next demo was part II of Desta’s window bead where she showed us how to hand flat lap a window into our beads. This was my first lesson in cold working and I must say I was immediately hooked. Lap tables are wonderful pieces of equipment that can double as a coffee table (just kidding). No really, the art of hand lapping is a very delicate balance of keeping the bead flat on a rotating disk (very fast rotating disk) that’s has water running over it. It’s kinda like crossing a rushing stream where the rocks are slightly below the water. The end result is a polished window reavealing the core of the bead where the pretty dicroic parts are.

Remember when I mentioned in Part 1 about the fused glass pendent? Well the next demo was by the lovely Leslie Goldstein and fabulous Laura Bowker, who taught us how to cold work our bullseye shorts fused pendents that we fired the day before.

Using a glass grinder, we smoothed the edges of our glass pendant. An option was to rub the pendant in silicon carbide slurry to give the glass a frosted look. Then we got to use power tools IN WATER! We placed our pendents on a piece of 2×4 submersed in water, then used a Dremel type drill with a diamond bit to make a hole. We then switched to a ball shaped bit and countersunk the hole. Then we completed our masterpiece by adding a jump ring and hung them on a chain. I found an awesome pictoral on how the different grit silicon carbide creates different degrees of frosting. 

Unfortunately, I’m a little slow at the cold working, so I totally missed lady Shela Wills-Fosters demo on how to make soft glass marbles, but I was able to get one from her at the last retreat 🙂

Next up was Liz Browning who taught us how to make a wrap bracelet with our very own spacer beads! One of my favorite parts of the bead retreat is when we learn how to make jewelry out of our beads. Liz showed us how to how to balance our beads between to rails of leather cord, using hypo cement and thread. Thank you Liz for all your help with the bracelet!

After Liz came Alaska’s own , Michelle Pearson who taught us the Swedish craft of making Glaskolben or hand blown glass ornaments. After Michelle made one, Desta (honorary Hot Headed Honey) and I each demoed an ornament, as Michelle coached. Blowing soft glass is way different than boro.

After Michelle’s demo, Leslie Goldstein demoed disk beads, twisties, and dots.

After the days festivities, I headed over to the kitchen to secure some glasses for the evenings ‘post torching’ festivities. In the dining room were two guys from the hot shop that I had met two years ago. Apparently, in 2012, I made an impression as “the girl who bought all that frit” from my shopping excursion in the Pilchuck School store. Well, I did fill my carry on suitcase, but they do have a lot of Bullseye frit!

Once again retiring to the room to converse with new people and learn new things. These really are the best group of ladies I’ve ever met!

Stay tuned for the 3rd and final chapter! 

Or affectionately called Michelle and Joy’s Excellent Adventure – Part Deux

Getting there is 1/2 the battle:

The first part of our adventure was like something out of an episode of the Amazing Race. Michelle traveling from Texas, and I from Alaska, managed to loose a purse (Michelle), loose a car (Joy), get delayed for a nose tire change out (Joy), and get trapped on the N concourse at SEATAC in the early hours of the morning, by an over possessive tram that had conflicting communication issues. Apparently, your hearing is the first thing to go when sleep deprived, because even though the signage said to stay on the tram until Baggage Claim, the recording was telling me to “Get Off” and me and 20 other weary travelers ignored the recording and got to ride the tram twice that day. It’s times like these when the movie Ground Hog Day makes a whole lotta sense.

By 4:20 a.m., I made it to the hotel where Michelle was resting and promptly passed out w/in 15 minutes of arrival. There’s something to being horizontal after being vertical for almost 24 hours.

The next morning I was awakened by Michelle with coffee in bed (it’s been YEARS since I had coffee in bed!). We gathered our things, had a power breakfast at Denny’s with a comical waiter who pretended as though we were in a fancy french restaurant, and used one of those ginormous pens that you used to only be able get at Disneyland. After breakfast we hopped in the rental and were on our way to Pilchuck.

The drive out was great! Hardly any traffic, weather was awesome, and of course the WA scenery is very beautiful.

Schedule:

Friday, 4/25/2014

First up, Ellen Harbison demoed how to make bell flowers on wire, and bails out of molten tongues of glass. It only took 15 minutes before we had our first ‘aha’ moment from some cool new trick we had learned (making bell flowers on fine silver so they could be made into dangly earrings). The first of many ‘aha’ moments for the weekend.

Next up was Desta Dickinson who taught us the ways of the window beads (and how not to burn the heck out of dichroic glass).

In between the demos, there was a mini fusing class where we learned how to make a fused pendant out of bullseye shorts. This is my second glass artists retreat at Pilchuck, and I have to admit that each time I reach a point during the retreat weekend where I’ve hit the wall of overstimulation and just need some quiet time. Both times, there has been a way cool, low key, project that results in a way super cool piece.

Next was Show and Tell, where I scored a really pretty window bead that Desta made out of that awesome color (the name of which I have forgotten already). 

Then Ali VandeGrift introduced us to the art of balancing a pound of glass evenly on a mandrel while applying delicate wisps of stringer into what I call curly Frank Lloyd Wright window patterns.

Her ax is a GTT Kobuki. An amazing suite of 3 GTT torches in one. The center fire is a 7 jet Lynx, middle fire is a 15 jet Phantom, and the outer fire is a single ring with 32 jets. Yes, in one torch Ali has more fire power than my entire torch collection!

It was an amazing demo and I was fortunate to go home with one of her beads. Though it was too big to fit into the bead vault, I needed to build it it’s own special drawer 🙂

This next part is a little graphic. If you are a spider lover, you might want to just skip this next paragraph.

The three remaining members of the NWWS retired to Desta’s room to catch up on the last two years and share our glassy growth with each other when a ginormous spider came down a web just above Desta’s head. The scenario went like this: Me (looking above Desta’s head): “Um, Desta, Don’t look up”. Desta: “What”(as she looks up into the million eyes of the spider that was making moves on her wine glass). I quickly (not really action movie quickly, but quickly enough) jumped off the bed exclaiming spiders and I don’t mix, when Michelle (our savior!) came forward and defeated the sneaky 8-legged bastard with the bottom of her shoe.

The rest of the night went much like Vegas. What happens at Pilchuck stays at Pilchuck. Stay tuned for Chapter 2!