Deep cleansing breaths.....

The hoopla seems to have died down for a bit. I think that's more me burying my head in the sand and choosing to try to ignore the situation while trying to come up with an alternate plan. At least I don't feel the urge to cry every time I think about "it". I've also overcome the urge to commit some kind of bodily harm around certain people :)

In the meantime I got the GRE over with. Took it last Thursday. Did OK. Could have been better but was decent. Now there's nothing left to do but wait. My application for the program is completed and submitted. I only need the GRE scores to be reported directly to the school and then it's all wrapped up. Now we play the waiting game. Have to admit...was never really good at that.

Also got busy and finally committed to getting laser eye surgery done. I have a date scheduled and it's coming up fast! Have to make a note to remind myself to stay out of my contacts at least 2 weeks prior to day of surgery. So excited but also scared spitless!

In the meantime with no more studying to do (yay!!!) I have all of this extra time on my hands and I've committed to getting back to the torch. In the spirit of trying to find my glass mojo I prevailed on hubby to help by making more space in my miniscule studio. This is what we came up with:

We built an "arm" onto the left side of the workspace. Underneath you'll see some plastic storage bins which hold all the stuff that used to be in the dental tools cabinet that inhabited that space. I'm planning to get more plastic bins for the PMC stuff I have stashed underneath the table on the right where you can't see it.

Here's a pic of the old dentist's tool cabinet in that space. I think getting rid of it opens up the space up a lot and also makes for additional table space which is super useful! We also added the pegboard to the wall where many of my tools have now taken up residence. I think this is great and makes everything really easy to find. I'm particularly fond of the blue rod holder thingy on the leftmost side. I think it was intended as a paper towel holder but I've decided that it will hold all my reels of silver. I'm sure that over time the pegboard will fill up with more stuff. For now I'm super thrilled with my added workspace and storage! Have I mentioned how much my hubby kicks butt???

Today I sat down for a few hours and made big hole beads. Some just for fun. Some for a bead exchange. Some may be for sale. It was really nice to have a day with nothing hanging over my head to just sit and mess around. The beads are cooking in the kiln right now but I'll be sure to take a pic when they're done . This is the first step in regaining my glass mojo :)

Hope you're having a great one wherever you are!

Little piece of heaven...

I love my new studio. Have I said that enough? I swear it's just the best little space I could have dreamed of and I have my DH to thank for making it happen.

Here's a pic of me working in my beady space.

It's such a pleasure to have space where you can feel creative. The airy-ness and lightness of this space just makes you want to spend more time in there. Having said that....off to light up the torch!

I've moved...

into my studio that is :) So I'm supposed to be making beads right now but I got caught up organizing and then I liked it so much I decided to take pictures. Long story short....I haven't turned anything on yet but I'm READY!!!

Here are some pics to get you started. I'm kinda 95% moved in and Kev thinks I'm nuts because it's not really final but who cares?

With the lights on.
With the lights off.
This is the top of the dental tools cabinet I got for a song. I totally rigged together something that resembles pegboard to hang my imprint tools.
The lovely powders that I'm going to work with (today hopefully!).
Pic of the studio from the doorway. Funny how all the posters I have are color sample posters. I need more arty stuff :) There was one more photo but for some reason I can't seem to upload it but you get the idea. Have I said again how much I love this space? It's small to be sure but it's fabulous!!!

95% complete.....yay!!!

I looked back on the forum I like to frequent and it was over a year ago that I first hinted that we were thinking of turning the pantry into a mini studio. I remember that there were a lot of nay-sayers (sp?) but my thinking is....it's my studio....I can do whatever I want so long as I adhere to the rules of safety. So...without further ado....here are the 95% finished pics. More tomorrow as I add back some of the gear but for now it looks wonderful!

The corner workspace where I will primarily be working. The vent, instead of going up and out, now goes down and out. We hooked up a honking vortex fan which wound up being too strong so we added a speed dial so that the fan can be adjusted easily. Also, the table tops will be wrapped in metal so no fear of smoldering or burning.

This is the arm of the desk where my kiln will sit. Originally I thought I might try to put glass storage underneath or store my oxycon there after working but I think I might keep it clear because it makes the room much more airy.

A pic of the whole setup. I moved my balance ball chair from upstairs to my studio so now I'll have to find alternative seating for the study.

And the room from the doorway. I'm keeping the dental cabinet even though I originally didn't want to because it took up so much room but it's awesome for storage. All my miscellaneous tools, presses and whatnot are easily accessible. And it was a steal at $7!!

I love my room!!! DH worked super hard on it for me - even breaking into his vacation time just to make me happy so I'm a lucky duck :D

The reno continues...

Nothing terribly interesting to talk about. Well...that's not entirely true...there's alot I could talk about but I am unable to because I'd be committing some major HIPAA violations and that's not cool. Suffice it to say sometimes people can really suck and I wish I felt like I worked with more people who are team players. Enough about that.

So Kev had 4 days off in a row which is a really big deal for him! He spent 1 day totally farting around doing absolutely nothing. Day 2 he started working on my room and got some drywall up.

He got the wall directly ahead done. We took Saturday off from drywalling but Kev did pull another line for me and so now I have a dedicated 20amp outlet that I can plug my kiln into.

Today we worked on more drywall and now all the walls are done and we just need to tape and mud (which I really hate doing!)

See that dial on the wall? That's the speed controller for my fan that's going to power my ventilation. I was so worried I wasn't going to have enough ooomph that we kinda went a little overboard. The solution? To put a speed controller on so I can adjust as needed. Kev's the best!

I wish I had beads to show or something fun to talk about but it's really been all doom and gloom at work and the most fun thing I've been working on is the studio. Keep checking in for more!

My tiny studio - in the works!

So a long time ago I promised that I would bring you updates as my studio progressed. Well, so far we've gutted what used to be the pantry and the setup in there is bare-bones with most things mocked up to see if it would all fit and work as a bead-making space.

I'm happy to say that it appears that the space will do nicely for a tiny, in-house bead studio. Of course, it would be splendid if I could build myself a bead castle like some other folks but my homeowner's association would never let that fly and we're saving a major studio for the day when we have a couple of acres to ourselves and DH can have the woodworking space he's hankering for.

In the meantime here are some pics of my very unfinished space.



Above see a pic of just about the whole workspace. It needs tweaking. We're designing a custom tabletop that will be L-shaped so that I have room to spread things out. The kiln that you see at table top level will move up onto a shelf about a foot or so above the tabletop so it doesn't feel quite so crowded at elbow height.

The hood needs some further work. It's been difficult to find the best setup for a corner but everything works nicely and it just needs some beautification. I'm also working on a nicer method of baffling the setup to keep all the fumes travelling in the right direction and not escaping.

You'll see the flexi-pipe underneath the table. That's bringing in my make-up air that flows through a register at the back of my table. The register can be opened and closed so that it keeps out the majority of air when it's not in use.



That cream colored cabinet was a $5 find and is an old dental tool cabinet. It's perfect for that small space and offers a ton of storage solutions. I love the narrow top drawers for laying out tools and storing stuff like silver wire etc. The larger bottom drawers I use for my presses and misc. frit and frit-making tools. The smaller silver cabinet next to it I use for all of my frit jars. They're separated by color family :) This cabinet is almost full!

The opening you see on the left is to the crawl space under the stairs. We're working on emptying out all junk that's accumulated there and then what we plan to do is where the wall is next to the opening we'll open up the spaces between the framing and build custom storage for glass. I'm really only wanting space to stack all the fence rail and perhaps that would also allow for some recessed space where I could put my stereo? Right now my glass is all underneath the kiln (on a rolling cart) and I'd like to get stuff off the floor in that area so that the working space stays relatively uncluttered.

The plan in the next little while is to re-sheetrock the 2 walls that form the corner where I'll be working. I'll be tiling the tabletop and carrying it up the walls to create a 1-1.5ft high "back splash" to protect the walls from all the hot stuff. We found some really cheap, blow-out flooring at the Lowes so I'll have manufactured flooring in an oak? pine? color that I won't worry about glass falling on etc.

That's about all the planning I've gotten done. I'll post more pics as we work on the room and hopefully get to the finished product sooner rather than later!