Studio Tour

A couple of things have inspired this post. First, I loved Lori Greenberg's posts (and this one and this one) about her studio tour. While Lori wasn't talking about a tour of her studio it got me thinking about mine. I showed you my living room a little while back but maybe, just maybe, you would want to see other parts of where I live. I have to admit that at night I look into the windows that haven't been covered and are brightly displaying the contents of the room inside. As I drive by, of course... I've never actually stared into other people's windows. That would be weird. But here in this blog I basically have an open window into my life. So I figured I should show ya where I live. And of course I spend a whole lot of time in the studio.

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It's not a pretty place. I've never invested in making it that way because my heart is so very set on moving out of it soon. It looks like the next studio will be in trailer that will be pulled behind the RV and will hold the car while we're on the road. I'm really looking forward to building that... and I'll go through some effort to make it an enjoyable place to be. That's important as I've spent a lot of time in this studio I'm not that fond of. And I do have to admit this studio is messy. (Sometimes I keep a neat work space and sometimes not... this studio has tended towards the not.) When I took these pictures I decided to be extra honest and not clean anything up. Really. That was hard to do but... I also apologize about the picture quality.

This is my general work area. You can see my big homemade mailbox kiln on top of one of the benches. My torch is on a shelf on the big table with a TV and DVD behind it and most of my glass storage back there, too. You can see my vent with stickers and magnets on it. Parts of the tubing are flexible and I can adjust it to suck in the fumes at the tippy top of my flame regardless if I'm standing or sitting (with the shelf removed). The vent also has a part that goes off the the left that I can set up for a 2nd station. You can see my larger fusing kiln in the middle of the picture which also serves as storage surface (a no-no). Tubing lives under the mailbox kiln (along with many storage bins full of tool and such) and boxes of boxes (really) live under the 2nd torch station.

That's a close up of the top of the kiln with a box of samples I won at the Female Flame Off, my mandrels, bead release, mica samples and a cup that has no reason for being there.

That's a bead I received from Kim Fields in Kansas City this summer. I adore Kim's florals and turn to them whenever I'm thinking about doing some relief work on beads... I think I should probably give her some credit for some of the floral things I've been doing very recently. I don't often pull beads out of the collection to hang out in the studio so I though I would photo this one. Birds of Paradise, by the way, are by far my favorite flower.

[There was once a shot of the bench with torch a flaming here. I removed it in Dec. 08 because it showed a horrible safety violation... I simply can't have anyone thinking what I did was OK to do]. (I had been working soft glass when I stopped to take these photos.) The flame is about half of what I usually work on soft glass but you can still can see how it shoots right up into vent. When I work soft glass the preheater lives right under the flame to provide a warmer environment for my big beads (to try to prevent cracking). The preheater bends my rods near the front where the element is so it gets to at least 1050 degrees. When that heat rises, I want my bead to be in it. I figure that's better than having the bead in a colder environment, anyway. I also preheat elements on top of it and rods in it (the rods come out the right side). I keep most of my enamels off the left of the preheater (far enough away not to melt the plastic jars). Just to the right of the torch you'll see my bestest tool friend, the pliers. I use that pliers more than any other tool in the studio. I go a little weird if I can't find it. I started using it, by the way, when I couldn't find any tweezers and I had to rip the end of a rod off. The pliers was hanging out of the tool box so I quick grabbed it and it's been my best friend since.

This is on the table beneath the shelf that my torch sits on. I keep larger tools towards the front (easy to grab while torching) and behind that tends to get really, really messy. A lot of frit lands there for some reason (really I don't know why) and while I'm working boro lots and lots of scrap lands back there. I have two or three tap off jars off to the right that I make sure all the really hots stuff lands in but... well... you know.

Off to the left of the TV is where I keep most of my boro when I'm working soft glass. It's close enough to grab if I want to work boro on the spur of the moment but put away enough it stays away from the soft glass. You can also see some of my mandrels. I keep them in a sand right next to the kiln so they dry a little faster.

On top of the TV you can see my big graphite tools that I only use for boro (thus far anyway). You'll also spy my favorite jar. Yup. I have a favorite jar (remember, with me its usually the simple stuff). Its from my honeymoon in the Osa peninsula of Costa Rica. It's mud from the jungle... or at least it was. Now it's just my favorite jar. That's a bear on the TV. I was watching a show about Yellowstone in winter on PBS. I love PBS!

To the right of the TV,I keep my soft glass in a weird storage system that evolved with little to no planning. I'm actually really low on glass in this picture... I just got an order of a little more than 20 pounds, which is about half of what I needed to order when I get to thinking about it. I don't usually have much pulled stringer around but on this day I had pulled lots of stringer because too many of my beads were cracking (being down to just one oxy con!!) And sometimes when you can't get anything else to work it's best to pull stringer (or points).

The room was yellow and wack-ily painted when I moved in. I didn't bother to do anything about it because I've never really invested a whole lot of time or energy into the space. I would do that differently if I had a do-over. Because there is panelling on one side of the room, I've never hesitated to write on it. A lot of my favorite sayings and happy thoughts are written on the wall. The dry erase board has lists of things to do, glass I need or tools I want. It makes ordering easier. Otherwise I googly eyed with all the pretty colors and awesome tools I want. Are you wondering about the lamp? I keep melting them. One landed in a hot bead and really ticked me off. But I really like to keep my hot glass lit while I work it. I have four of these lamps and this is the last one to be retro fitted by Adam to better deal with the heat. It's just one connection that keeps failing in the heat so after it's replaces I'm pretty good to go. Now all lamps are ready to withstand some heat. It was just odd timing that this one broke while I was taking the pictures.

Off to the left of the kiln and my bench you'll find the 2nd torching station which is set up for taking photos if there's no other need for it. I keep lots of stuff over on this half of the room, most of which are odd things from house remodeling. I also take my beads off the mandrel over there (be the hobby vise) which makes this little corner kinda messy on it's own right.

The last part of the studio is my desk. I had a much, much larger desk in here up until a month or two ago. But I figured all it held was mess so I might downsize in favor of more floor space and less opportunity for mess. I do lots of my listings and interneting here between beads, or as everything warms up in the morning. There always seems to be a healthy pile of sweaters and sweatshirts on my chair as I put them on in the morning and as I and the studio gets warmer in to the night I take what ever warmer layers I'm wearing off and put them over the chair.

These are the shelves above my desk where I keep more mess - all of which has purpose of course. I keep all my cold working stuff on the shelves (etch, toiletbowl cleaner, drill press and such) as well as my inventory, extra glass, accent beads, and a mess of reading material/manual/other papers. That's paper pile is the true abyss, I'm afraid.

It looks like I forgot to photo how I power up my studio! I use a Bethlehem Barracuda powered, normally, by 2 M20 oxygen concentrators. I store the concentrators in a small closet to the left of the 2nd torching station (so I can't hear them) and I keep the propane outside (theres a small hole in my vent system that I can feel the line through to get to the tank outside. I use a temporary putty to block the old air from leaking in around the hose. I also have a small oxygen tank that I like to keep around for just in case. That lives just the the left of the small desk.

Some time in the future (and after a quick clean) I'll blog more of my house for ya'll. Let me know if there's something you want to see in particular... keep it G rated, please.