Texas -Sized Sale Coming!

I am a proud member of ETC...Etsy Texas Crafters. Our next First Monday Sale is going to be as big as all of Texas! It will be combined with a special event at the Etsy Labs in New York City! Several great Texas crafters will be representing those of us who were not fortunate enough to be able to attend.

Etsy Texas Crafters' wagon train pulls into New York City ETC Trunk Show At Etsy Labs, 325 Gold St, Brooklyn September 28-29, 2007. Enjoy the best arts and crafts that Texas has to offer, and visit with some terrific Texans, without even leaving the city! The fun starts Friday, September 28, with the Etsy Labs Last Fridays Trunk Show from 6-8pm EST. Then, because things are bigger from Texas, the show continues on Saturday afternoon from 1-5pm EST. With more than 50 Etsy Texas Crafters represented, you get a taste not only of Texan artists and Texas size art but also of terrific Texas edibles and door prize drawings every half hour throughout both shows (no need to be present to win). And if you're one of the first 25 early birds at Friday night's opening shindig, receive a goodie bag, guaranteed to be Texas sized and Texas Special! One of the goodies included in the bag is a chance to win one of my signature fused glass pendants, "Catch a Falling Star!"

The Etsy Texas Crafters Trunk Show is free and open to the public -- but please rsvp to rsvp@etsy.com so we'll know y'all are coming!

Don't know how to get to Etsy Labs? http://www.etsy.com/labs/visit.html

Can't make it to the show? Attend virtually via Etsy.com workshop (link will be posted prior to shows), shop the sales in the ETC shops at Etsy.com throughout the entire weekend, and participate in an online treasure hunt (with prizes!).

Visit the Etsy Texas Crafters website at http://www.etsytx.org/ or our team shop at http://etsytexascrafters.etsy.com/ for more information and links.

This promises to be a fantastic weekend of great deals! Don't miss it!

Lowcountry Boil and BFFs

It's a great day at the beach! We finally have a sunny day, and the crowds from Labor Day have gone home. Yesterday was not so great a sale day on Etsy after all, and I am working at staying optimistic about my glass work being able to support itself. But today more than makes up for the disappointments of yesterday! Our golden retriever and I spent the morning down at the beach watching my husband fish for redfish. Last year there was quite a run, and he and several of our friends spent days taking out lines and reelin' 'em in. It was great. The redfish haven't really started running yet, but we're hoping that they find their way here soon. In the meantime, there are plenty of shark. They make a great shis-ka-bob, so that's not so bad.

Our best friends of over 30 years are on their way down, and I am going to make a giant shrimp boil. They have a house right up the street. It's quite convenient. I found this recipe some time back, and it is the easiest and quickest thing to make. Here is the link to the recipe:

http://www.coastalliving.com/coastal/food/entertaining/article/0,14587,609731,00.html

The recipe doesn't have any garlic...I may have to add some. As they say...

Good friends, fine wine, mellow music, and something with garlic...

ETC First Monday Sale

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”

Busy, busy, busy...Iam determined to post in my blog today, but I am also involved in a serious promotion in my Etsy shop!

For over 150 years, there has been a gigantic flea market in Canton, Texas on the first Monday of every month. In those years he market has gone through many changes and enormous growth. There are many stories as to how First Monday Trade Days began, from suggestions that the district judge came to town that day to convene his court to an informal gathering time of families and friends in an era of poor communication, among others. No matter how it began, it has evolved into an gigantic opportunity to buy everything from antiques, to crafts, to emu oil. Texas crafters on Etsy have jumped on the First Monday Trade Days with a huge Frist Monday Sale of our own. Check out http://etsytexascrafters.etsy.com/ for a list of stores that are giving discounts on some really unique and interesting items. I will be listing quite a few pieces myself. Here are 2 I have already listed: Color Cues and Southern Comfort

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Old Dog...New Tricks...

Who says, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks?" In the past year I have learned glass fusing, how to blog, how to photograph jewelry, and way too many computer skills to mention! Today, I participated in my first chat room. WHEW! And the sad part is, there is so much more to learn!

In the meantime, I'll practice my fusing skills
and continue to add to my Etsy shop.

Here is something I recently added...

It's called Beyond the Sea. This is the image I posted as my feature photo, but I think it may be too "hot." It was the first time I had used this method of photographing the pendants.

Here is another image that I took my old fashioned way.............
What do you think? Don't you think the calmer version on the left is better?

I haven't been as successful at selling as I need to be, so I thought that my photographs had gotten a bit stale. But, now that I really take a good look at them both, I'm thinking that I'll stick with the lessons I learned first!

Colores del Mar

"All art is but imitation of nature." --Seneca



I am at the beach, even as I type. I have swept, and vacuumed, and mopped, and cleaned shrimp, and prepared shrimp boil, and washed linens...WHEW! In the midst of all the cleaning and preparation for our guests who are due down this morning, I think it is about time to take a break and go for a walk. A walk along the beach always revitalizes and inspires. The colors, the sounds, the texture of the sand, the movement of the water all come together and give me a sense of my place in the world. It is a wonder to me that people can look at God's handiwork and have any doubt of His existence. No where is it more evident than at the beach. Because we spend so much time here, it has inspired much of my fused glass. In fact, at times it is hard to branch off and allow other sources of inspiration. Here is a recent piece that was inspired by the beautiful colors of the beach...
Colores del Mar

Middle-Aged Groupie

As a freshman in college, I met and fell in love with, a drummer in a rock and roll band. Much to my mother's dismay, this long-haired guy in wire-rimmed glasses who sported an army green trench coat and bell-bottoms became the focus of my life, and I became a groupie! It was a rare college dance that allowed me to actually dance. I usually just sat beside the stage and waited for the break so I could spend time with him. After 35 years of marriage, we recently began taking ballroom dance lessons, and it has opened up a whole new world for us. It has been such a pleasure, that I even looked forward to his 40 year high school reunion as a chance to enjoy the dance. That is, until I discovered that his old high school band is getting back together for it, and they will be the sole entertainment. It is great to see him so excited about it, but I can see myself again...sitting by the band waiting for a break.

Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news." -- Chuck Berry...

The Guv'nors are makin' a comeback!

It's Been SOOOOO Long

Thanks to Lora Leigh, a fellow fuser who happened to comment on my last entry, I was drawn back to the blog. I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last wrote...I guess it's been a busy one! I finished the summer sushi set by adding 2 small plates to make it a that would make it great for a picnic for 2!

And I have been busy practicing some of the techniques I learned in my class in San Antonio last month. The way the teacher, Nicole, taught us to layer the dichroic glasses makes these pendants so rich with color, and ever one turns out so different. They look like rainbows and stars rolled into one, so I have used them as a launching point for a new line of pendants... Rainbowfire. I have only gotten one listed in my Etsy store so far...Go take a look.

Chaos:

"The true harvest of my life is intangible--a little stardust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched."--Thoreau

Starry Night:

Patience and Summer Sushi

After many mistakes and ruined glass, I finally got a glass piece larger than pendant size to fuse without a bubble, dome, or crater! For an impatient person, fusing is a tad frustrating...especially if the project takes more than one firing like this one did. I fired the flat piece really slowly to avoid the dreaded crater I got in my crab plate, beveled the edges on my grinder, fire polished, and finally slumped. That's 3 long firings... But, I love the results! Doesn't it remind you of a window awning on an old vacation home? Can't you just taste the lemonade and hear the crickets? At the risk of giving away how old I am, I'll admit that I think I can even hear creaky screen doors slamming!



"We would never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world" --Helen Keller

Into Each Life a Little Rain Must Fall

It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote on my blog. I have been busy with so many things. I did get to go with some friends to San Antonio and Fredericksburg last weekend. What fun we had. I took a fused glass class for the 2 days that we were in San Antonio, and learned quite a bit to keep me going for a while in this newfound passion. In Fredericksburg, we stayed at a beautiful Bed and Breakfast, and went on a rainy winery tour. (I should have seen it coming. It was the first of 14 straight days of rain around here!) We were supposed to have the Big Chill Weekend this weekend, so I have been gearing up for that, but God had other plans. It has rained like cats and dogs for days. At last count it has rained about 13 inches this week. Needless to say, a weekend at the beach with 13 inches of rainwater standing around does not sound pleasant, so we have had to cancel and reschedule.

The rain is depressing! I have been housebound for 3 straight days. Today, I finally got out of my funk and remembered one of my collected quotes:

“Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear.”

So I put on my "happy pants" and decided to get something done! I finally got pictures of the pendants I made to match the sundresses I bought at the thrift store.


Plus, I managed to fuse a blank for an upcoming sushi plate...without a bubble! It appears that the rain may have finally stopped for a while, so maybe there will be a rainbow. Whether there is, or isn't I can at least look back on today as a productive one!

Design Inspiration

My husband and I recently took up ballroom dancing. It has opened up a whole new world for us. So much so, that I have had to invest in quite a few new frocks for all of the various dances we have attended. (You know, you can't wear the same thing twice...right?!) The strain on my budget has strengthened my bargain shopping abilities.


Yesterday, while scouring the local resale shops for fancy duds, I came across 3 wonderful sundresses that just screamed for some of my fused glass jewelry. I could immediately see the possibilities, and couldn't wait to get up this morning to begin working on the designs. I just love the graphic designs and vibrant colors. These definitely have potential.

My pieces are in the kiln right now. I hope to have them out and ready for a photo-op by tomorrow!

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."--Jack London

Or in my case...a credit card!

Big Chill Weekend Coming Up!

It's almost here! The Second Annual Big Chill Weekend in Crystal Beach, Texas! Last year I renewed two dear childhood friendships, and the First Annual was born. I must admit that I was stressed over the entertaining aspect of the weekend, but thanks to my friends and their spouses, it was smooth sailing, so we are headed for the second one on July 7-8. Last year we did sandcasting, and it was kind of like Vacation Bible School. Since last summer I have started working with warmglass, and we have all taken ballroom dancing lessons together. This year, I can just see us all dancing to CD's on the cement "dance floor" under the house. Our first annual get together inspired this mosaic picture frame. I am looking forward to getting some inspiration for a warmglass project to commemorate our visit in 2007.

A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. ~Lois Wyse

Christmas in June!

Whenever I put new pieces in the kiln, one of the hardest things is for me to wait until everything is cooked and cool before opening it up to see what is happening in there! So now I've decided that I must start the cycle about 7:00pm and let it run while I am asleep. (It is not so appealing to troupe out to the garage in my jammies in the middle of the night, so I am forced to leave it alone.) The next morning is like Christmas...usually!

I recently discovered a cool glass shop near here in Pasadena, Texas called Harmony Stained Glass. Until then I had had to buy all of my glass over the Internet, sight-unseen. That's a real problem for me when working with something as visual as glass. (I like to fondle it and drool over it a bit while I decide what to do with it.) While there, I discovered the coolest glass, so I immediately came home to experiment. What a great surprise to open my kiln and see these delicious pieces. This time Santa left goodies...not lumps of coal!

"...creativity is not just about succeeding. It is about experimenting and discovering."--Gordon Mackenzie

Not So Crabby After All

As a novice warmglass artist, I have quickly learned that glass sometimes just becomes what it wants to be! A case in point:

I recently had this inspiration to create a set of small sushi plates using a beach theme. My inspiration came from a mosaic countertop I did at our beach house last summer.

The plan was to fuse the blue crabs (and, red shrimp on other plates in the set) and slump them into a sushi mold to make a set of salad plates. The first step in a project like this is to fuse a layer of the base glass (in this case, white) to a layer of clear. That takes several hours, so while waiting for it to "cook", I meticulously cut all of the small glass pieces to form the crab. Imagine my displeasure when I opened the kiln to discover a gigantic crater in the base. I was thinking that food wouldn't stay too well in a plate with a 2 inch hole in it, so I had to go to Plan B...I just didn't know what Plan B was yet! Now was when I would have to use that creativity I was always hounding my students about. After several days of pondering, I decided that it obviously didn't want to be a plate, so I cleaned up the hole, fused the adorable crab on it, crossed my fingers and put it back in the kiln. My crab sushi plate is now a votive holder. It's not exactly what I wanted, but, hey! It grew up to be what it wanted to be. It turned out to be a happy accident, and now I'm not so crabby anymore!

Quotation + Potential = Quotentials

Welcome to Quotentials, my first attempt at blogging. My name is Sheryl Lambert.

As a 5 year old, I should have seen my destiny as a visual artist when I took my neighbor's driveway shells, decorated them with crayons, and sold them back to her as "handpainted" home decor. It took nearly 50 years to come to that realization.

After 30 years of encouraging my gifted and talented students to face their fears of failure and meet creativity head-on, I retired. It was time to practice what I had preached for all of those years.

I have always been one to see potential when others may overlook it. For all those years as a teacher, it was in my students. Outside of school, it might have been in a piece of junk I saw beside the road or in a thrift store, or even a house that had seen its better days. "It has potential" became my slogan. At times, that slogan was a little scary to my husband, especially when it was referring to a run down beach "shack" that we have since purchased! That project may have been the turning point for him...He now has a lot of confidence in my ability to see what things can become rather than what they are.

Combining my love of inspirational quotations and my ability to see potential with a desire to paint, Quotentials was born as a decorative painting adventure. As a decorative painter, I have painted murals and quotations to my hearts content. In fact, I just got home from my latest job. I painted the nursery of a friend who is adopting a baby girl from China. What a great time I had doing it. She has been a little stymied over a quotation to add to the mural. She wants to put a Bible verse over the door. Here is a picture of the doorway she wants to embellish. Maybe someone out there can help her with an idea?

Recently I have become enamored with warmglass arts, so more and more of my time is spent in my glass studio (aka my garage). While still enjoying painting and creating unique environments, this rather old "budding artist" is now applying her knowledge of color and design to a new passion, fused glass.