Musings

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A Decade Late!

I finally finished a lightbox that I made for a wedding present for a friend and sent it off yesterday. Nothing unusual about that, as I like to make special customised glass pieces for my friends, except for the fact that my friend is celebrating her 10 year wedding anniversary…. yes, that’s right, this piece is literally a decade late!

I am mortified to admit that I started this lightbox back in 2004 while I was still at college, but I didn’t finish it in time for the wedding and it has been languishing in a drawer in my studio ever since! It was about time that I finished it so it finally got photographed and wrapped up yesterday. Happy anniversary, guys!

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New skills

I am dedicating this summer to new beginnings… finally getting myself on social media (which I’ve been resolving to do for years, without ever having even dipped my toe in Facebook!) and making a new website including an online shop. This involves acquiring some serious new photographic skills and finally learning how to use the studio lights I bought years ago. So with this in mind, I signed myself up to a photographic course with Maythem Ridha, a documentary photographer and filmmaker in south west London.

It was a dazzlingly sunny day so coming into a cool dark photographic studio was rather nice, but those studio lights heated up quickly and we got down to some serious work getting our work looking good in the photos. My fellow students were mainly jewellery-makers who have the same issues as me when photographing work, namely those pesky reflections! We used diffuser tents to create a white space around the object in order to get rid of every possible reflection, but the black rim of the lens poking through the tent was still reflected in some of the larger silver pieces. After years of frustration photographing my glass, I was suddenly counting my blessings that I don’t have to deal with the mirror-like surface of jewellery.

I came away with a much better idea of how to use my equipment to make good photographs, thanks to Maythem and Paul. Looking forward to trying out my new skills…

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Samples Galore!

 

SamplesI have been busy making samples for a new commission which I am about to get started on. I just love making samples, and it’s a really important part of the creative process in working out the transition from a paper design or an idea in my head and into the full glassy reality! Sample making can be a bit like brainstorming in glass and sometimes I come up with inventive ways of doing things because the pressure is off and the name of the game is experimentation.

This also feeds into my teaching, both because I like to share my new techniques but sometimes the actual samples also make it into my teaching box.