OOPS - we're in the middle of renovations and the crew left the doors and windows wide open when they went to lunch. What you see here is my beloved's chair. Obviously, we had visitors. Everywhere. This was just a tad more irksome than when the guys left the lid off the sugar canister on the kitchen counter top, after making themselves coffee. Smaller visitors then, but lots more.
the new bathroom door (this was a solid wall, before.... )
Installing spotlights around the room to provide strong light when working....
And just so you don't think it's all fun and games, here is some of what I get to clean up!
Next set of photos should show my new studio FINISHED!! Watch this space for inspiration :-)
2. This used to be the extra-narrow entrance to a dark, unused bedroom. The door, which we ripped out along with a lot of the wall, used to face the door to the guest bathroom that we demolished. Inside this room is yet another door which leads to the new guest bathroom. The old door will be turned into a display niche. (I realize this might be getting confusing.) This bedroom was never slept in - we stored all our junk in it. You've guessed it - this house had too many bedrooms, too. How lucky that I need more studio space!
I am waltzing around my kitchen with my new beads clutched close to my heart. Sure, I've got too much haze. Sure, the colors are over-struck in some and under-struck in others (which is kind of cool in itself), but HEY, I finally started working in boro!!
I must say that the photos don't really do justice to the colors and certainly don't show off the glittery silver deposits deep in the beads (silver is the main secret ingredient that makes these colors flip out like they do).
I know that in a couple of months I'll look back at these beads and cringe but at the moment I am delighted. Working with boro felt like I was pulling toffee (or maybe tar), with a new rhythm and rules to learn. 
This is a NER TAMID, or Eternal Flame, which will "burn" (with the help of a small light bulb) in their temple in memory of family and friends who have passed away. The finished lamp is 20 cms tall by 15 cms wide and square. The back and sides are made with mirror, slightly angled to increase the light shining through the stained glass flame, which will face the worshipers.
(from our garden)
This got me thinking about how many strange things people - people who should know better - tell us glass artists. I don't think they deliberately mislead us, I think they are passing on to us what they heard, and didn't question. Kinda like the average internet myth. My first instructor told me that to apply patina, I should leave my piece soaking in a bucket of patina over night. (Correct use: wipe it on with a cotton ball, let it sit for 10-20 minutes, and then wash it off.) My neighbor's teacher forgot to tell her that when planning her window insert, she should include a margin for the lead border. When her insert didn't fit, she was told that there was no way to repair it without completely dismantling it. She took it apart, and lost heart in her project. 2 years later, she still has no window insert. (Correct info: even after you have soldered it together, you can remove the lead border on one side, carefully measure and cut the piece, and reapply the lead border.)
My first commission was for a family who wanted matching, but not identical, panels to commemorate 2 family members who had fallen in the wars. (One panel is shown above). I'm not sure there was any aspect of this project that wasn't challenging! They were - and remain - the largest pieces I have ever made, each about 2 meters across. Designing them was tricky - the client had a very definite idea of what he wanted - and changed his mind 4 times. In the middle of the project he changed the size, which required that I recut some of the pieces. I didn't have any place to easily store the larger pieces, and once accidentally stabbed myself in the leg with a particularly pointy piece. (I still have a scar). I didn't have a work table large enough so pieced and soldered the panels on the floor of my display room, with the door locked so that no one could enter and trip over me or step on my work-in-progress. Transporting them was the worst - we had to find a vehicle with a long cab and I prayed all the way to the framer that we wouldn't hit a pothole. Prayer was probably appropriate since they were eventually hung on a synagogue wall.
The second synagogue commission couldn't have been more different. The clients wanted windows depicting the Jewish holidays and holy days, gave me bare bones of design requirements and left the rest up to me. They ordered the windows in sets, as they gathered donations, and over the course of 2 years ordered 12 windows. The biggest challenge was creating so many windows over such a long period that looked as if they belonged together. 
Curiosity - that was my main feeling when I opened up one of my emails today. I wasn't even sure it was a real email but it didn't look suspicious, just odd.
The Customs lawyer sent me a longish manual for using RM's (it's not enough just to have an RM, you have to apply other notifications to it, depending on what you are sending) and encouraged me to apply for a permit or face having all future "shipments" rejected if they contain a chain. I don't know if it's hard, or expensive, to receive an RM, but I can tell you that fulfilling the requirements for marking up the items is very complicated. I know, because I read the manual.
Ammonites were sea creatures that floated in our world's oceans about 75 million years ago, give or take 25 million years. They were mostly around during the Jurassic period, along with good ol' T-Rex.
Tips for glass artistsIf you're planning on edging your fossil with copper foil, use raw or polished ammonites. All the opalescent ammonites I purchased cracked when I applied solder.
Specialists who create dichro ramble on about reflected light and absorbed light. That's more technical than I can understand. I do know that when I fuse the glass, the metal melts and cools at a different rate than the glass, so the metal spreads out a bit and stands up, giving my piece the amazing illusion of 3D depth. It also heightens the color shifts.
Dichro can also be used "as-is"in stained glass, as in the panel on the right, Leaves in Her Hair. In this case there is no melting so no depth, but the color shifts are still very dramatic (as you can see) and there is an interesting metallic sheen on the glass pieces.
Tips for glass artists:
Hair clips - can you really ever have enough? Well, I suppose if you are as bald as Yule Brenner, even one is too much.
So today I'm bringing you one of my new window panels. These are installed in my house, in the entrance. Unfortunately it's not a place that gets a lot of light but they are colorful and I love them. Like all my glass art, these are OOAK (that's one-of-a-kind for you non-eBAY folks) and eventually there will be 6. Currently, top panel is a Star of David and the second panel is our house number (no, I'm not dsylexic - you're seeing it from the inside).
Since it's only about 1/2 inch in diameter, and I'm over 5 feet tall and don't have the eyes of an eagle, I didn't actually see it the way you're seeing it now. But I did see that it didn't look natural. I spend a lot of time picking at things that don't look natural but are natural, as you might guess. I once even picked up some squished deer poo, which is pretty natural from close up. And the first thing I noticed about this is that it wasn't glass. But I was only dissapointed for a second - I think the entire region must have heard my screech. I think David may have feared for a moment that I'd stepped on a snake....
I've sent photos of this for identification but my best guess at the moment is Roman. A lot of those guys and gals posed for their portrait coins with decorative hair pieces and togas, while facing to the right. Although I've searched, I haven't found anything like the back of the coin (not posted here), so I'm not sure exactly what I've got but, by golly, I AM EXCITED!!
While we do need the rain - desperately - we're having glorious sunny days here in Israel and I'm enjoying them. To help you all enjoy your sun (and I hope you have a least some sun every day) I'm posting a new suncatcher or two in my Etsy store - and a photo here in my blog.
Have you noticed? It seems like most wine bottles come in different colors. The beads in the photo that I'm adding to the blog are from a very dark bottle and decorated with a bit of paladium leaf. From now on, when you buy wine, don't just look at the price or the wine, take a look at the color of the bottle, too!
