Serendipity

Tonight, two of my fave people came together in the same room!  My bestie, Michele, and my church  and fellow blogging BFF, Beth Alongi, got to meet each other in Beth's Fused-Glass Class at SIUC, and it was just as precious as you'd imagine.  Beth is the most artistic and talented person I know--she's so gifted!!  She takes stunning photography, she designs web pages, she travels the world, she cooks like an ANGEL of culinary DELIGHT, she understands the importance of Downton Abbey, and she has lately been making gorgeous glass pieces of art.  If you haven't seen her work, you should definitely find her and demand to see samples.  You'll be amazed--unless you know her, and then you just expect to be amazed every time she shows you something.

So when I found a link to her Fused Glass Class in my Twitter feed, I knew I had to be there, and Michele needed to come with me!  And I was RIGHT.  It was so fun!!  Tonight, she taught us some basics about fusing glass--how the glass behaves in certain temps at certain thicknesses, what kinds of "brands" of glass there are and how they react differently, how to manipulate the glass to end up with the result she's after.  She passed around some of her projects, and I really wish everyone could see how creative Beth is.  She had a bride and groom piece (precious), a BASKET with woven strips of green, yellow, and white glass, and a bowl with fused mosaic-like pieces across the middle in the most beautiful colors of teal-y blue and gray and white, but with a little scoopy divot on one side.  She called it a "mistake," but all of us assumed it was a spoon rest!  Like she did it on purpose--because that is exactly like her, to think of a little accent like that.  The lady to my left called it "a happy accident," and the language teacher in me wanted to say there's a word for that!  It's serendipity!  It's actually one of my favorite words, and it's so perfect for tonight's adventure.  It pleases me to no end to be friends with beautiful and godly women like Beth and Michele, and I'm aware of how lucky I am to know them both--serendipity!

After our lesson in the basics, Beth led us to a cupboard to choose our three glass colors.  Every time I'm supposed to choose colors like this, I immediately experience a very specific amnesia that makes me forget everything I own, all my favorite colors, and what things are missing in my collection of accessories.  Blank.  Michele chose three gorgeous colors that looked very Tuscan to me--golden yellow, a bronze-y brown, and a light yellow that was nearly clear.  Perfect!  The ladies around me selected themes of reds, greens, yellows . . . .  Oy!  What to choose??  I found a lovely plum color, and then a sort of off-white with pink undertones, and what next??  Hmmm.  Then!  Then I found a clear piece with stripes of purple and mauve in it.  Yay!  Colors that spoke to me.  These are the ones:

 Back in the room, it was time to cut these sheets of glass--they were in various shapes, but mostly the size of a sheet of notebook paper, and Beth sliced us each pieces that were about two inches wide.  Beside her is the man that took our money and delivered our receipts and kept track of stuff like that.  Bless his heart.  He was patient with our group of very excited ladies!

Now, after the strips were cut, Beth distributed safety glasses, glass cutters that were sort of like X-acto knives, some nipper-type tools that had little circles that would cut glass, and these other tools that you squeeze on the line that you scored with the knives and they snap the glass into two pieces.  Yikes.  These supplies are sharp and meant to cut sharp pieces of glass, and in the practice cuts, I managed to shatter two pieces of glass--thank goodness not my "real" pieces--into millions of shards and glass dust--thank goodness also for safety glasses!  But I figured it out!  I wasn't pushing hard enough to score the glass all the way down the line, and the squeeze-y tool couldn't do its thing.  There's an art to this, and it doesn't do to be too timid.

Beth told us to stack up five layers of our glass into whatever shapes and designs we see fit!  Alrighty, then.  Michele and I and the other ladies set to work--everyone had different approaches:  some (not naming names) measured carefully, making geometric and symmetrical shapes, some cut random shapes, some stacked different colors on different layers, some stacked strategically for hopeful attempts at control of the stripes to be revealed next week.

My stack!  Hoping that the clear pieces on top are visible on the creamy pieces.

Michele's stacks!  Hers are going to be beautiful and thick with Tuscan golds and browns.

Everybody had different end products in mind, and the ladies to my left were really very artistic--arranging theirs into star shapes and organizing their glass into tiny works of art.  I'm just hoping mine isn't embarrassingly hideous, because I fully intend to plan outfits and so forth around it when I finish it up in class next week.  :-)  Our class is two nights--tonight and also next Thursday, when we'll polish up and finish these pieces and also make another project, which I am SUPER PUMPED about!  I'll show you next week--no hints now.

This lady--who was TREMENDOUS FUN--loved that all the tools, her glass, and her top coordinated.  Love it!!

These ladies seemed to be real artists?  Who knew what they were doing?  And used the tools like experts?  Arranging their glass into organized stacks of beauty?  Cannot WAIT to see what happens in the kiln.  Might steal theirs....

A good time had by all!  Got to meet some fun new ladies in this serendipitous gathering--wishing I'd brought some others with me!  But no worries--this class will be offered again, I think, and next time, I'm bringing a crew.  Jen will have to gas up her car, but the others, I can scoop up from Herrin and bring over.  ;-)  Stay tuned for next week's reveal!!