After a month of doing my best to reorganize things, the studio is finally in shape for classes. The tables are mostly cleared off (although, from day to day, that changes!) and moved, so there is now room enough to move around and actually work at the tables. The 2 larger kilns are set up and ready, the torch station is now accessible and even, dare I say this, organized. (That also seems to change on a daily basis, but I'm doing my best to keep things where they belong.) I even set up an area for all the glass painting supplies, so if anyone is interested in a class please let me know. I still keep finding things I didn't know we had upstairs.
I've been having fun experimenting on the torch with scraps of broken blown glass vessels, and stained glass. I've given or sold most of them, but if I can manage a photo or 2, I'll post them here. Most of the glass is working fine and turning into really nice beads. The biggest advantage to all this is that these beads are unlike any made with the traditional rods. Second advantage is that most of this glass was destined for the recycling bin, so the cost is zero. We had many broken pieces of glass up on the loft that we'll never use for beveling or stained glass...and I refuse to throw it all away, so all that isn't suitable for beads has gone home for recycling. I want to try fusing some of the thicker pieces to make cabachons for mosaics or jewelry - so I'll let you know if that works out. I'm also trying to come up with a creative use for some of the bent glass pieces we have. One idea is to make sconces - I just have to figure out the engineering.