Here are the ornaments out of the annealer from last week.  I made a small mistake with the blue and red ones, and the glass got stretched out and folded over when the color was added.  It turned out to be a happy mistake, because the lines of color are more interesting then they would have been had I had no mishaps.

Also, my first glass bowl, which looks like a collapsing sack.  The bowl at least holds water, so I’m going to use it for growing paperwhites.

I did this to play around with scatchboard art a little. The format is sort of an homage to Jennifer Hewitson, whose art I admire.  I finally got some decent tools, so removing larger areas of white isn’t such a chore.  The size is only 5×7.

Just got my first ornaments out of the annealer from class.  The red one got blown a little too unevenly, but the red and yellow one looks pretty good.  Next week I should be able to post pictures of a really ugly bowl I made.

 I finally finished the little books I was working on. The last ones I made were for art journals for my sister and her friend, and the ones before that were for my daughters.  These are going to go to friends of mine, who don’t know they’re getting them.  It will be a surprise.

 I didn’t photograph the end papers, but the end papers were chosen to suit the themes of these books.  The covers are cloth collage/ art quilt, and they wouldn’t look so messy if I had planned them a little better, but now I know more.  I made the wing and coin embellishments out of fimo, and I embossed the velvet with a rubber stamp and an iron.

One thing I did on these books which I quite like is that I burned phrases on the side.  These books read “Do not cage your muse” on the red-wing book, “Quality work has no fear of time” on the green-Asian book, and “Inspiration may strike at any time: Be ready!” on the dragonfly book.  In retrospect, I should have burned the words before I put the covers on, because the covers were made of synthetic material, which melted on contact with the edge of the woodburner.

For the next ones, I’ll make sure the collage squares aren’t larger than the covers of the books.  I don’t like that they overlap the edges; it looks messy.