I had a pair of bowls that didn't turn out right. The glass split down the middle of each of the bowls when it was slumped into the bowl form and I couldn't fix the problem. I tried a few times to remelt the glass into a flat sheet and then reslump it into the bowl form, but the same problem happened each time.

I'm told by more experienced heads than mine that it's either a result of mixing opaque and transparent glass in the same bowl or an incorrect slumping program where the glass was heated too quickly and dropped too fast. Since all three of the bowls that I created using a mix of opaque and transparent had the same problem and other bowls with either all transparent or all opaque turned out fine, I'm guessing that's the issue. Lesson learned - no more mixing opaque and transparent side to side. On top of each other is fine, just not in the same layer.

At any rate, since I couldn't make the bowls work, I decided to recycle them in the melt pot and this bowl is the result. I mixed in some clear glass with the bowl shards - yes, it did feel very satisfying to smash them - and then set the melt pot in the kiln to do its thing. I love the ripples in this bowl!

Again, it reminds me of tie dye and it created no problems with the mixture of transparent and opaque glass in the slump this time. I guess that since opaque glass is stiffer than transparent, it holds its shape longer than the transparent and that is what caused the splits in the other bowls. This time the blank had the opaque and transparent glasses so thoroughly mixed that there wasn't a large expanse of opaque glass to cause a split. Live and learn!

With all of the classes I've been taking, the friends that I've made in the Phoenix area, and the Phoenix area groups that I've joined, I've been spending quite a lot of time in hotels for the last year or so.  It finally made sense to buy a small condo that I can use when I'm spending time down in Phoenix. To celebrate my new space and to furnish it with beauty, I decided to make a set of bowls and plates in fused glass.

Joy plateSince I have the opportunity to design the plates any way I want them, I decided to combine my love of the fractures and streamers glass - that's the clear layer of glass with the lines and small bits of colored glass that makes up the top layer on the plate to the left - and the copper accents I've been using lately into these new plates. I also wanted to infuse intention and some of my energy work into these plates, as well. Up in the top right corner of the plate, I added a small piece of coordinating glass to write the intention on. You can click on the image to bring up the larger version that shows more of the detail.

With all of the layers on these plates, they take three trips through the kiln to create.  The first firing fuses the the colored bottom layer of glass, the copper accent and the fractures and streamers glass on top into a new sheet. The second fusing adds the small piece of glass for the intention.  The third firing fuses the writing of the intention and slumps the plate into its final shape.

I'm really looking forward to completing the full set of 8 plates over the next couple of weeks. Then I'll get started on the bowls that will coordinate with them. What fun!

Ages ago, I posted about a new melt pot setup that I had bought and I showed the results of the first disk that I had created using the melt pot. A while back when I was slumping some other bowls I put the melt pot disk onto my wave bowl mold and finished it off.  It turned out great!  You can click the image to bring up a larger version.

Another piece I'm working on is a square bowl done with a new technique I got off the web, called swiss cheese.  By putting clear glass pebbles on top of opaque glass, you can create a really interesting effect that does look like swiss cheese.  I didn't have clear pebbles, but I did have some transparent colored ones and I thought they might work just as well.  Unfortunately they didn't, but they created a very retro looking glass blank.  Click to enlarge this one too.

The red pebbles actually looked pale green before firing, so it seems that the heat of the kiln changes the color of those particular pebbles - that's called striking.  If I had known in advance, I wouldn't have chosen those, since I was trying to keep to blues, greens, and yellows.  I do like the result, even if it wasn't anything like what I was expecting, but I'm curious to hear what you think of it.  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts on it.  It will be going into the kiln either tomorrow or Monday, depending on when the current batch of glass that's in the kiln now gets done.

More to come in a few days...

I really enjoyed making these pendants and I like the way that the copper changes color in the kiln. However, there are very practical problems with 2 of them that really did need to be fixed. The sun pendant lost most of the clear glass that was supposed to fuse the nuts and bolt to make a bail. If the glass doesn’t enclose the hardware, the piece can’t be hung as a pendant.

The bird pendant has a big air bubble hole just above the bird. Not only are the edges of the hole extremely sharp (I don’t want anyone getting hurt wearing my pieces :-), but the glass is really thin there and could shatter during wearing. Not cool. So I’ve put a small shard of clear glass in the hole to even it out during the next firing.

Since the rest of the pendants were going back in the kiln anyway, I thought I’d even out the clear glass covering the star pendant, since it had a few spots that were either too low or too high. And, since I had all of those pieces to fuse, I made a few more. I didn’t take pictures of those before they went it, which is a shame. One of them uses the Swiss Cheese technique I posted a video of earlier here and that would have made a pretty cool before shot. Another of the new pieces is a red pendant with a copper mesh chili pepper and two pieces of millefiore flower cane slices.

In the meanwhile, here are the pics of the previous pieces:

Please leave a note in the comments telling me what you think of these pieces – I’d really appreciate the feedback. As usual, if you click on the images, it will take you to a larger version.

Imagine 5 consecutive days of coaching with five of the best minds in the coaching field. Keith Cunningham (one of my favorite mentors) gave us coaching about how to look at our business from a much higher and broader perspective. Larry Gilman coached us on working with our emotions. Blair Singer coached us on goal setting. Dave the Monk did a morning meditation and yoga practice, as well as the art of looking within. Harv was there in between, pulling it all together as well as providing a little R&R at his home in the evenings.

We're not supposed to share much about the actual exercises that we did during the program, since the content of the program is copyrighted by Peak Potentials. I have to say that's really a shame. There is quite a bit that I would love to share about my experiences and what I got out of the course, but it's difficult to talk about the lessons without sharing at least a little of the content that lead me to those realizations.

What I can say is that there was a lot of accountability by all of the coaches during every part of the course. It helped me to see how I show up (or don't) for a lot of my life. There are little things that I do or don't do that don't seem to have any impact on anyone but me. The program helped me to see that often, what I see as not having impact on anyone else is really not true - those things DO have an impact on the people around me, sometimes more than I realize or give credit for. So that change has already started to ripple through the choices I make - I show up with everything I've got to give as soon as I arrive and I arrive on time or early. So Be It.

So here is a screenshot of my new website, created entirely at the Ultimate Internet Boot Camp or UIBC. The class is offered by Peak Potentials and run by Alex Mandossian and his team of wonderfully helpful coaches and mentors. Each of them specializes in a certain area of website creation, promotion, and social media funneling. They are extremely helpful and, true to their mantra, "no one is left behind." Everyone was able to create and monetize their site during the 5 day course. The cool thing is not the $13 that I made at the course, but the truth that I now have a formula for how to create a site, promote the site, do the regular posts on Facebook and Twitter - as well as creating blog posts directly on my new website - that will bring the traffic that will eventually buy something from me there.

A funny thing (for me) was that I went in feeling very skeptical about this actually working once I went home, since we had the support of the coaches and pack while we were at the course. I am now completely non-skeptical. While I did ask friends and family to get the website off the ground, they responded favorably and bought the product in order to support me. That got me the Facebook "likes" I needed to be able to register my custom URL for the Facebook fan page. It also gave me the confidence to go out and post on several Facebook groups that I belong to, asking for folks to help me out. They did!

Not only was I actually able to monetize the website (ok, in a small way, but still...) but our small pack was the winner of the points challenge! Each smaller pack (I think that there were about 15 packs in our class) totalled up the members' points for the last two days of the class. We received 10 points for our first sale of our $1 guide (these sales had to be from outside of our class) and 1 point for each sale after the first one. So my $13 in sales turned into 22 points to go to our pack total. I don't have the exact numbers with me, but we had well over 300 points for our pack total. In fact, our pack set a new pack record high! It came as an incredible surprise to me that we were tied for top score at the end of the first day, since one of our members had not yet made a sale. It was even more of a surprise when they called our pack's name as the winners. It took a while for it to actually sink in - they had to call us up to the stage 3 times before we started to move!

So I now have a little plaque with the signatures of all of the trainers and coaches on the mat commemorating our pack win of the point challenge at UIBC. I'll never buy into the skeptical mindset that I hear from many folks saying that "you can't really make money on the Internet." Yes, you can!

There are very limited opportunities to break into the local wealthy group, even if you do already have some wealth. As a result, most of the people that I hang out with typically have less than I do, so they don't help to stretch me - I tend to make them stretch. That's neither good nor bad, it's just what is.

The Phoenix 2% Club is a group that Jeff Fagin started. It's a group of Phoenix-based people who meet in person monthly and hang out online in a Facebook group in between meetings. The members of the group reinforce the thoughts and behaviors associated with success. They share successes, celebrate wins, help as a mastermind group to give others ideas when they get stuck, and generally help to boost each other up the ladder of success.

Nice! I went to my first meeting on Wednesday evening and it was a lot of fun. They run the meeting Peaks-style, with lots of high fives, participating out loud, plus informative and entertaining speakers who have been trained to engage the audience with enthusiasm. It was very enjoyable and one of the members gave us plenty of concrete ideas for writing articles and blog posts that I found very helpful. So, you'll probably be seeing more from me here in the future.

In the meantime, I'm sharing this partly to say that if you don't have a support group in your area of like-minded folks who are cheering each other on, you might want to consider starting one yourself. It can start out small - our group had about 50 people in attendance and several people mentioned to me that it was the largest turnout yet. So you don't have to start with a huge crowd, a small pack meeting in someone's home or business might work better to start with.

I may even take my own advice and start a group closer to home...

 Marney from ArtellaLand has done it again!  She's got another f*r*e*e teleseminar going next week that you creative folks out there might be interested in, called the ARTsignment Power Hour.  I've already signed up for it because I know that I can always use a creative boost to spark new ideas for my business, for my art, and for myself.

The ARTsignment Power Hour event takes place on next Tuesday, August 2, 2011. In this fun, free full hour of hands-on ARTsignments, you will:

• Identify what your creativity needs...learn what truly "sparks" you!
• Connect with the power of your creativity to help you make the most powerful and powered-up choices in your life!
• Apply your creative power to the very biggest questions in your life right now, receiving new clarity and guidance that will dazzle you!
• Truly experience your creativity as a renewable resource...and learn how you can plug into it, anytime, anywhere!
• All participants will also receive a fun, follow-up workbook with more fun exercises and ideas to help you "plug in!"

I think you’ll love it and I hope to "see" you on the call! You can get all the info here!