Today is My Birthday!

 I've been busy busy busy, preparing for the Sawdust Festival!

http://sawdustartfestival.org/winter-fantasy-2/

I have a ready-made booth this year, but we will be doing some construction on it to create display space for all of my glass pieces! Right now there are 3 tall walls and a roof, a small counter space with built-in seat, and a pretty decent sized storage area.

We will add a partial wall in the front right corner, shelves on one or two walls, and more storage up above for my bubble wrap and other packaging, as well as more glass. I simply won't have space to display everything at once, as I am also going to be showing my oils this year and need a good amount of wall space for those.

Check back for photos of the process!

Aqua, Sky Blue, Turquoise, Smoky Blue!

I have just completed 2 brand new candle holders today and want to share them. I'm planning on listing one, and will give one as a gift (I can't say why as it's a secret and that person may see them and know it's for them!).

I haven't yet decided which to give as a gift so please feel free to give me your opinion.

They look quite similar but actually have a few different features. Look closely and you will see!

Thanks for checking in, more tomorrow! I am getting very sleepy, did a 5.9 mile run this morning followed by cooking, laundry, working on glass, a trip to the zoo with my husband and grandson, more laundry, and then had to package up some items, and get them to the Post Office so they'll go out first thing in the morning. I use the after hours drop quite often! Alrighty, nighty now!

Post by Diane Winiecki.

Sawdust Festival Winter Fantasy 2013-1 "I'm In!!!"

Hi All, I'm back and I'm determined to be a consistent and interesting blogger here from this day forward! :)

Thanks to you who are reading my blog, and I know you are out there! I will have a lot of news and interesting stories to report in the coming days, weeks and months as I was just officially accepted to exhibit in the Sawdust Festival Winter Fantasy this coming Holiday Season! 

Here is a link to the Winter Fantasy, I hope that if you visit you will stop by my booth and introduce yourself so I can meet you in person! 

http://sawdustartfestival.org/winter-fantasy-2/

There are so many things there to keep you occupied, and the Winter Fantasy is so fun for kids and adults alike! I'll be talking about some if the fun times we have had in the past. Keep on checking back as I also will be posting about the items I'm working on to show in my booth, and will post about the progress of getting ready for the show. Did you know that the booths are torn down each year after the show ends? This year I was lucky enough to be using a booth built by a summer exhibitor, so there will be so much less to do. In the past my husband and I built my booth from the ground up, and it's literally like building a room in a home, as it has to pass city inspection and all, to be safe enough for all of the visitors who come! 

One more item: I participated each winter 2006-2010, and always sold plenty of stained glass items. Ornaments, candle holders, you name it! This year I will have my oil paintings as well! I'm so excited because I have never exhibited my oils! Nervous but excited as well. I have a lot of work to do between now and then so keep checking. I will make posts at least twice each week. Some posts will be informative, such as basics of creating a stained glass piece. 

I hope you enjoy!
This business card holder is my latest to go out to a customer. It's made using a very unique 'Kokomo' glass which is made in the beautiful USA. I love the deep shades of blue with greens, all swirled together within the glass. I always use good quality, true stained glass for all of my pieces. Here I added 3 glass 'globs' to embellish the front of the holder.

I'm hoping to hear from the new owner of this piece soon as I believe they received the delivery today! I'll let you know when I do get feedback. 

Thanks for stopping by and keep on coming back. Have a wonderful day!

Leaving Las Vegas

Another set of my rainbow color chimes sent out this week!

Finishing up a bird and flower mobile today. This one was purchased as a gift!

Well here I am working on my glass in Las Vegas, while Dan has business meetings all day long. Jake and I tagged along on this trip to keep Dan company and get out for a few days, change of scenery and all.

I brought a lot of work along to stay busy and pass the time as it's really too hot and ugly out to do much outside. When I say ugly, I'm referring to warnings about poor air quality due to several fires burning, both here in Nevada, and from huge fires all the way out near L.A.

I've been keeping pretty busy with orders from my Etsy shop! Happy to say I just received another order from a happy customer, this time in Oklahoma.

Working on a new website, complete with shopping cart!

http://dianewinieckiart.myshopify.com/
I did some research, not only on which sites offered the best ecommerce, but which shopping carts are best too. I came up with this shopify site that seems to be fairly easy to set up. I'm going to try the 14 day free trial as I move over some of my products and see if I actually like the way it works and looks with my artwork.
I will keep you posted on a launch date but I'm hoping I can find the time to open in the next 2 weeks!

Step One, after agreeing on colors and size, draw up 2 exact copies of the pattern. One copy remains whole, and the other copy is cut very carefully on all lines with special scissors that trim away the areas of the marker lines. This allows you to cut the pattern, while leaving room for what will be filled in with either copper foil and solder, or lead came, depending on which route you take.

More to come!

A Stained Glass Window

I have made many many sizes and shapes of stained glass Peace Signs suncatchers over the years. Well, recently I was commissioned to create a Peace Sign Window! This is a 17 inch diameter window that will hang inside a 19 inch opening, and in front of a 17 inch round window in a 2nd story bathroom. It's cold and another snowstorm is headed toward the midwest, so I don't know how this will effect the delivery of said window, which seems to be in no-man's land according to the tracking system of USPS. I'm hoping to hear some word from its new owners that it has arrived! And better yet, that is looks fabulous in the room, the colors match and go great with the decor, and with the morning sun shining in it casts beautiful splashes of color throughout the room.

I decided to photograph each step of the creative process so that I can share this with you.

Artist Quote for the Day

Happy Saturday!
I am so excited as always to see that there are many people who are viewing my shop on Etsy, and also who are "favoriting" my items too! What, you say favoriting isn't a word? They are 'Liking' my page on Facebook and 'favoriting' my shop/items on Etsy! ;)

I'm still new on Etsy and am learning as I go. I have been adding new items as often as possible, to keep my shop on the 'new items feed'. Last week I added several of my wind chimes and then later wondered if I should have waited until it's closer to Spring since much of the country is freezing cold!

Well, it just so happens that someone in Virginia purchased one of my wind chimes tonight! They can always be hung inside in front of a window until the weather warms up. It never hurts to have some pretty colored glass hanging in front of a sunny window so that when the light shines through it warms up your home with rays of colors.

So sorry I didn't continue with my earlier post, but that will have to wait another day! I am considering starting up classes with private or semi-private lessons. Contact me or leave me a comment if interested and in the area.

Thanks for spending a little time here again!

Good evening everyone! I thought it was time to share some new information. If you have any questions on private or semi-private classes please leave a comment in the box below this post. I am always happy to share my knowledge with others.

I learned about making stained glass pieces in a college class at California State U, Fullerton. I'd wanted to learn about this for a very long time and finally found the opportunity to do so. We actually only learned the lead came process in class and I later taught myself the copper foil method (commonly known as the Tiffany method, as in Tiffany lamps) by reading a few very good books on the subject. I learned by trial and error that there are different solders that work better for this copper foil method.

Please return tomorrow for more on this lesson and detailed photos to assist in my explanation!

Today was a 'day off' and I enjoyed spending time with family. We three girls all contributed a lunch item, and hung out here at our house eating while the babies played or napped. Our dog Jake lazed in the warm southern California sunshine (in late January, yes), and we brought the food outside to eat on the back patio. 

Menu: 
~~salad of kale, avocado, tomato, Gorgonzola, and a home made vinegrette; 
~~fruit salad with bananas, apples, blueberries, raspberries, oranges, and Myer lemon juice
~~pasta of elbow mac and creamy cheesy goodness

We should open a restaurant!

All of the above were splendid and delicious and we are going to add this to our schedule, so if you are interested in a few hours hanging out with the girls, join us!

Back to my Blog! 
I've been spending way too much time creating my online presence. Well I digress; I knew from the beginning that this was a commitment of my time when I set out to do this, so, I will continue to enjoy what I can online, but I have created a schedule for myself so I can be more committed to making art and advancing my skills in the creative arena too.

Wonder what it means that I am still up this late after adding items to my Etsy shop, answering emails, working on my Mom's "photo book birthday gift" (I am creating a Snapfish hard cover photo book for her, and have requested all siblings, spouses, and offspring to send me a letter to her that I will copy and paste and add into the book), and now writing in my blog. Going to be quite difficult to stick to my new schedule. Can I ask, what does it take to change your internal clock to a whole new schedule? I have been a night owl my entire life, and now want to flip the switch!

Back to the Blog I was writing prior to my latest tangent: :)

I am taking advantage of all opportunities in networking and making new acquaintances who will grow to be friends. I'm joining groups and clubs; am volunteering on Meetup to help others less fortunate; have been building my online presence in many shapes and forms; have added an Etsy shop app to my facebook page; am helping out one of my LinkedIn groups, by offering my time to approve members and submissions for posts; am adding comments on LinkedIn whenever relevant; am on Pinterest watching the boards for trends, and after someone repinned my stained glass vase to her wedding board, offered my services (for a price) to create centerpieces for her reception; tonight after reading an Etsy blog and watching a video about Kat Von D 's purchases from Etsy shops, wrote a comment to Kat Von D offering to swap a butterfly tattoo for a custom hand made piece for her home. 
Hmmmm...............
...........................
Wonder what the kids will think of that one?....
 
All I can think is that my poor doggie has some gas that is clogging my thinking right at the moment and that I haven't posted any photos!

Just because I love this photo of our awesome lovable, gassy dog

You absolutely should buy one of these business card holders to make your life better

You can choose a color that you love

Yes, your cards will sit partially in front of the decorative glass, but, you will see that from the rear so you will love this one!

Pretty in Blue

Turquoise retreat

Ocean Blues

 Thanks for sticking around tonight! Don't hesitate to comment, or join my ever growing list of followers on:

DianeMarieArt on Etsy
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New Year New Me?

It has been a little while since my previous post. I'm getting over a bad virus, one that's been making the rounds here. I spent this time when I had no energy for anything else in bed with my laptop building up my Etsy shop. I was expecting to wait weeks before seeing any activity in my shop. The Etsy community is huge and offers a ton of options, so I have spent every spare waking moment for weeks researching and building my audience online (pinterest, wix, linkedin, facebook page, twitter), and linking them all together.
Well I'm thrilled to say I've not only had tons of 'window shoppers', but have made a few sales as well!

It's a start! Eventually I will add original paintings, prints, and notecards created using my original oils, but for now I shall concentrate on my glass.

Click here to visit my Etsy shop

I'd like to share the photos of items I have sold:

Thanks for checking in and I will look forward to hearing from you. Comments and inquiries are always welcome!