NO ONE WAS (PERMANENTLY) DAMAGED IN THE MAKING OF THIS YEAR'S BEAD AND BUTTON SHOW.

My giant, decoder ring made in sisters Cheri Lenart and Susan Kazmer's class.

Gail's pretty blue/violet/lavender pendant changes in different light.

Gail wearing a giant bead ring of Karen's and both my and Karen's ring from class.

Gail and I volunteered (ok, I volunteered us) to mix the silica/plaster goo.

My sea glass, pronged pendant.

Wow, that was a long unintentional break from the blog. Sorry about that. I got back from the show and it seemed like I've been going non-stop since. Not that I've gotten too much accomplished. The show was wonderful as always. I learn so much while I'm there. I learn new techniques that I can integrate into my own work, for sure, but I always come away with new ways of seeing the things that I already know how to do.

Paul came with me this year for the whole week. We had a lot of fun seeing so many of our wonderful friends (and meeting new ones) all in one place. I needed another week of rest when I came back from Milwaukee.

The first couple of days I took a class from Susan Lenart Kazmer and Cheri Lenart. Both of my friends Gail and Karen were also in the class with me, making it even more fun. The class was in glass casting. The first day we mixed up a silica and plaster mixture and made molds with it. This mixture was poured into small containers and when they were set up we carved into them. I carved a textured, oval shape that I hoped would make a good cabochon once filled with glass. The molds were filled with chunks of glass that we broke off of Bullseye Glass billets which is available in many beautiful colors. The pieces fired overnight and the next day we moved on to fabricating metal pieces to hold our glass pieces. We made a prong setting for the cast glass piece and a sort of tab/prong setting for a piece of sea glass that we altered with a Dremel and oil pastels. I made a crazy, giant ring with my piece of glass. It's so different from what I usually make, but I love it and it's really comfortable to wear. That's what Susan's classes do to you. They stretch your imagination and you end up making wild things. It was so rewarding. I can see that I'll be doing more casting. A few years ago I thought I wanted to get into glass fusing. I bought a ton of Bullseye glass. Soon, my enthusiasm for fusing petered out, leaving me with lots of pretty glass. I'm happy to have a use for all of the glass I have stored in my basement. More on the show and classes tomorrow.

ps. Thanks to my friends, some from whom I shamelessly ripped off photos from their blogs.