Opportunity knocked!

Something very interesting happened this weekend.  I had promised myself a reward for hitting a target some months back, but I never actually delivered on giving myself that reward.  So, this weekend, I decided to "stand and deliver."  I had agreed to attend a 2 hour training session on Saturday morning down in Scottsdale, so after the training was over I went shopping.

Yes, my reward was a shopping trip.  I'm not that much into shopping, but I had lost some weight recently and wanted to celebrate the win by getting some new clothes.  I was over at Fashion Square and had stopped in a department store to pick up something.  As I was walking past the jewelry counter, a particular piece caught my eye and I stopped to study it, thinking that I might be able to create something similar in glass.

One of the sales staff came up and started chatting with me about the current jewelry trends and I noticed that he was wearing a wooden ring.  When I asked him about it, he shared that he creates jewelry out of wood.  In turn, I shared a little taste of my own fused glass work.  As we continued to chat I found out that he's creating a new jewelry line of his own that will be debuted in February.  As part of his new line, he's looking for other artist's work to add to his own work and fill out his Rock Star Jewelry line.

As the conversation progressed, he shared that he was really familiar with fused glass and asked what makes my work unique.  I shared that I was really having fun incorporating copper into my pieces because the heat of the kiln changes the copper in ways that can't be predicted.  As I play with copper washers, mesh, and thick wire in the pieces, it adds new dimension to my work.  He was really intrigued, and suggested having bolts sticking out of the pieces.  I wasn't sure how to do that, but was open to the suggestion.  Bottom line, he now wants me to create AT LEAST 2 new pieces to be part of the show and his line!  Whoo Hoo!

This week, I spent some thinking about how to create pieces for the line and came up with lots of ideas.  I turned his suggestion for bolts sticking out of the pieces into an idea for using nuts and bolts as the bails for the pendants.  Here are my first tries at some pieces before they got fired:

By the way, you can click on each of the images above to see more detail and information about each of them.  The pieces should be almost ready to come out of the kiln and I'm really looking forward to how they'll turn out!  I promise to share whatever happens - good or bad...