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.