Glass was the word!

My April sale was the first one post-GR Press article. It was a great success and I was very pleased with the turnout, the feedback, and the sales. But now I had to do it all again for
the May sale -- I really want to make sure I'm offering fresh products at each sale to keep em coming back for more. I was so busy making, that I didn't take a lot of time to blog, so this is catch up time.



The week following the sale, one of my customers brought me these adorable "spring" flower candleholders. She made them using some bed springs I had given her at the sale and said she'd be willing to make some for May. Since time is finite and I wanted lots of items, I thought that was a great idea. And it fit in perfectly with my focus for May's sale: smaller items centered around gardens and Mother's Day.

She even let me keep one for myself. This one was my favorite. But now I had to get busy making things, too. As it turned out, I seemed to have a glass theme going on last month. I started by pulling out all my picnic baskets filled with plates, saucers, cups, and glass in general.

I made quite a few cup and saucer bird feeders. Then it was time to try something new...

I'd seen a few of these posted around some sites. These garden totems are just a fun way of dressing up a garden space. They aren't very hard to make. The hardest part for me is.....

decisions, decisions, decisions. I'm terrible at making a decision anyway, but with a room full of glass pieces everywhere and trying to guess what people will like, well let's just say it was a bit overwhelming. That was true all month since most of my projects were combinations of glass pieces. I felt that I didn't make much progress, but I was so happy with the finished products.

Once I determined what pieces to use, it was just a matter of epoxying them together. I used a LOT of epoxy last month. It's great for gluing glass-to-glass, metal-to-metal, or glass-to-metal.

I get the kind that kind of looks like a syringe. This tube was $2.44 from Walmart.

Then you just push down, goop comes out of each tube, and you mix the 2 together for about 30 seconds. You don't usually need much and it needs to be used pretty quickly, so squirt in small batches just what you need.

I wasn't quite done yet. I also put together several cake/dessert stands using vintage plates and glasses, candlesticks, or misc. metal pieces. Of course, it had to come complete with a batch of "mom"ster cookies.

And I also HAD to have some cloches. I've been seeing these everywhere. They must be very "in" so... you KNOW what a trendsetter I am (and if you DON'T know me, you should know how facetious I can be). I'd never even heard of them up until 2 months ago. And by the way, it's pronounced Closh (long "o"), not Cloe-shay -- I had to do a little research for that one, apparently no one in West Michigan was familiar with the word either.

It's basically a glorified glass dome for showing off interesting things or collections. Mine are quite small, but each has a top knob of some sort and rests on a pedestal of some sort (more epoxying), but I've seen them done in a variety of ways.

Anyway, my glass stuff has been put away for hopefully quite a while. My May sale was last weekend, and it certainly was nowhere near the level of April's, but now I have to concentrate on June's upcoming sale. I'm anxious to pull out my power tools and get back to some bigger and more creative things for that. I'll keep you posted and I'll get back to my Tuesday Tool Schools while I'm at it. Maybe we can get the whole world junking! (Oh, and did I mention I'm also a bit of a dreamer).

Midge