Sailorgirl now had an idea of how to make a seasonal living, craft shows!
In 2004 I dragged my laundry table out of my basement, covered it with a bright blue tablecloth and carefully placed my first pieces of jewelry on display. It was a beautiful sunny day, people loved my jewelry and I loved them and the whole experience. This was the very humble beginning of Sailorgirl Jewelry, (shameless self-promotion here) my company where I make and sell handmade glass jewelry.

My company is a little different in that it is a “lifestyle business”. 8 months a year I make glass beads and jewelry and sell at craft shows and online. The other 4 months I live on my sailboat in Florida/Bahamas. My online business is open year round. I’m a huge believer in creating the life you want and defining your own success.
In a previous life I worked at a software development start up that began as me and my boss in his living room, when I left it was at 80 employees. It was really fun at the beginning, and then it was not. Life is too short to spend time doing things that aren’t fun so I quit that job in 2001 to forge my own path.
With my background in the start up I thought that starting a jewelry business would be easy, after all, I knew about business. I was wrong. What I discovered is that selling work that you have made is far different than selling a product like software. Selling a product is just that, it’s a product. Selling handmade is about selling me, the artist, the creator, I am as much a part of the product as my jewelry is. Selling handmade is about selling a story. Fortunately I have a story, now I just had to communicate it to my people. Communicating what you do is marketing The beginning of Sailorgirl Jewelry was not without challenges. I was learning flamework. I was learning how to design and make jewelry. I was learning how to sail. I was learning how to live on a sailboat. I was learning how to sell my own work. I was learning how to run a microbusiness. There were a lot of sleepless nights and bad words said.
From the beginning I have opted to sell only at shows and online. I briefly flirted with wholesale however I couldn’t reconcile how that would work with my lifestyle. I refuse to do consignment for many reasons. The craft show season dovetails perfectly with my lifestyle. In a typical year I sell at 11 – 15 shows. Most of these are summer shows, outdoors in a tent. I take a bit of a break in the fall and then do a couple of large holiday shows. Then I pack it all up and hit the road.
As I was starting up the world around me was a changing landscape. When I began neither Facebook nor Etsy existed. People were only just beginning to sell online and blogs were few and far between. I coded my first website by learning HTML and using a notepad. People were leery of shopping online. For the first 5 or 6 years I simply hung a “Gone Sailing” sign on my website during the winter.
I have had a website from the beginning, as I already had a website called Sailorgirl where I published my writing about cruising. For the jewelry I added a small section with my craft show list and a few photos. Over the last decade being online has become a necessity for any business to survive. Every single person or business absolutely must have a website, even if it’s only a portfolio and contact information. I tried Etsy, it didn’t work for me, instead I have my own site on Shopify along with a WordPress blog and social media. I admit, I’m not the best at maintaining all of this but at least it’s there.
Technology has made my lifestyle a possibility in ways that I never could have predicted. I have an assistant in Canada who ships my work. I’m able to sit on my boat down south, read my email and forward orders to her. She ships them out, and the money is in my bank account! How awesome is that? I send a monthly newsletter to my list subscribers and do the social media from where ever I am.

While this sounds simple it is anything but. A business like mine requires a LOT of organization. I live by my planner and to do lists. When I finish my last huge craft show on December 1 (11 days, 12 hours a day) all my fellow exhibitors will be heading for their couch for a well deserved rest. I will be heading to the studio the next day to make enough inventory to cover 5 months of online sales. All of this has to be made, tagged and inventoried. There must be new items made and photo’d for next season so that the site remains fresh. Show applications for next season have to be sent in. My shipping process has to be documented so that I can hand it off to my assistant. She has to have enough shipping supplies for the winter, which must be bought. The list can sometimes seem endless.
Many of my non-crafty friends bemoan my lack of free time in the summer here in Canada. I can’t go to their cottage on the weekend because I’m at a show. I can’t go out for dinner during the week because I’m torching as I have a show coming up. I miss a lot of events due to my schedule (as does everyone on the show circuit). However I will be snorkeling for the entire month of March and during the summer I get to spend my days melting glass and making wearable art. How awesome is that?

For me, the best part of every day – after my morning latte – is firing up my torch and crafting dazzling, happy beads. But this is not a tiki-torch or the British for ‘flashlight’. It’s a small, stainless steel, adjustable blowtorch.

And it’s the glowing hot core of my business.

I use a Nortel Midrange Plus.

It looks like Luke Skywalker’s pistol, only with a flat base I’ve bolted to my table.

The torch can be fuelled by either natural gas and oxygen or propane and oxygen. I use propane. It heats my glass to ºC, literally melting it to molten in a matter of seconds, so I can spin, shape, streak, spot, swathe and so on – always using my mandrels so I keep my fingers from getting scorched.

The ‘Plus’ means it is actually 2 torches in one. The lower torch is a Nortel Midrange which is larger, the upper is a Nortel Mega Minor, a smaller torch. So I can swap between larger, structural work and more detailed finishing.

On each torch I can control the flow of oxygen and propane. Adjusting these changes the flame and allows me to create different effects for some of the glass. My fire opal series uses a special type of glass called silvered glass. To get that fabulous opalescent effect after the bead is made I turn the oxygen almost off and flash the bead into the reduced flame.

Like all tools, my torch needs regular cleaning and maintenance but these ‘tune ups’ are a breeze. I just floss the tubes with a fine needle tool. A 25lb tank of propane (the size of a bbq tank) lasts me between 6 and 12 weeks depending on how much I am making. For oxygen I have 2 oxygen concentrators, these are converted hospital respirators that pump out pure oxygen.

I love my torch.

Lampworking is a kind of hot glasswork where a torch is used to melt glass. Once the glass is molten, the worker forms it by blowing or shaping it with tools and movements.
Lampwork is used to create glass beads, figurines, marbles, vessels, ornaments and so on. It’s even used to craft scientific instruments and glass models for botany and zoology.

Although lack of a precise definition for lampworking makes it difficult to determine when this technique was first developed, the earliest verifiable lampworked glass is probably a collection of beads thought to date to the fifth century BC.

Lampworking as we know it today was born with the Italian Renaissance. Angelo Barovier, working on Murano (a small island near Venice Italy), created, “cristallo” — a clear soda glass — in 1450. As chemical science developed there arose a concurrent need for clear, durable vessels to contain, mix, and measure components. No material was better suited for the task than this new clear glass. With the development of this new glass came the need for a better way of creating small objects than the use of a full scale furnace. Early lampworking was done in the flame of an oil lamp, with the artist blowing air into the flame through a pipe. Since blowing into a pipe caused hyperventilation, workers began to use bellows which would produce a constant stream of air. This was the first “torch”.

The versatility of this new technology was quickly apparent and gave the lampworker several important advantages over the glassblower. One of which was that the energy demands of lampworking were just a tiny fraction of those of glassblowing. Lampworking was much more economical and lampworked creations could be afforded by common people.

By the beginning of the 18th century localized industries devoted to making small items for public consumption had sprung up all over Europe. The town of Nevers, France, was noted for tiny figurines of people and farm animals which were so popular that their production continued until the beginning of this century. The village of Lauscha, Germany, was entirely employed in the making of Christmas ornaments at the lamp. Venice itself employed lampworking techniques in making beads and millefiori, tiny murrines that looked like flowers.

Is lampwork like glassblowing? Not really. In glassblowing the glass is kept molten in a furnace, like a giant crockpot of glass (at 1150 degrees C). The glassblower dips into this as needed to shape the glass. But both types of glass work share tools and methods.

Today it’s also known as flameworking or torchworking because oil-lamps are obsolete – like commuting by gondola. Most artists use torches fuelled by propane or natural gas.

At Sailorgirl Headquarters, I use my ‘lamp’ to create the colourful cornerstones of my jewelry – my whimsical shiny happy glass beads. And I am mighty happy that I am not pumping bellows to create them!

I LOVE learning about how stuff is made. I find it fascinating to see how wool is spun, mugs are glazed and fired or letterpress cards printed. I love the fact that so many people make things with their hands. We dedicate hours and hours and hours to learn our craft and improve our skills. It is in the spirit of learning that I am writing this new series called Tech Talk Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I will pick one thing from my work and break it down into non-glassworker terms. This is my shiny happy life, welcome.

Let’s start by talking temperature. In the glass world there are 3 types of work, hot, warm or cold work.

cold glass – stained glass is cold glass. When making stained glass you cut the glass cold, then solder around it. You never change the temperature of the glass, you are always working cold.

warm glass – fused glass, slumped glass and cast glass. Warm glass work is when you design and shape your glass cold, then put it in the kiln and heat the glass. Cold + hot = warm. For fused or slumped glass you cut shapes out of glass and assemble them into a pattern. Fusing is the process of melting the glass together, think of glass plates or tiles. Slumping is drooping the glass over a mold, think of bowls.

hot glass – flameworking (lampworking), and glass blowing. In hot glass work you melt the glass and make your object when the glass is molten. Because you are working with a molten substance, hot glass can be shaped and spun and manipulated into 3D objects. When you have shaped your object it goes into a kiln to cool down slowly. The work is made hot, hence hot glass.

There’s one other type of “cold” work. All glass, whether made cold, warm or hot can be “cold worked”. Once the object is made, when it is room temperature it can be polished, ground or sandblasted. This is coldworking.

I am a hot glass worker. I make my beads by flameworking. What’s exactly is flamework? Tune in next Tuesday to find out.

Recently I had a couple of visitors into my studio and they were blown away by how much equipment I have to make beads. I forget sometimes that not everyone knows what the COE of my glass is or why I have a jar of mud on my work table. My world is full of super fun gadgets and tools and all of them make perfect sense to me. When you look at these:

you don’t realize that it takes all of this to make them.

Hm, time for me to share the fun. Starting today, every Tuesday I will pick a piece of equipment and explain what it is and why I use it. Tech Talks.

Done! Check! Finito!

Oh boy, that was a LOT of work! And I enjoyed every minute of it! (I lie, there were a few minutes that I didn’t enjoy as much, and those were coming up with names towards the end).

Seriously, sitting in my studio with a good audio book on and a hand full of hot glass is just the best way of spending time. It’s true about creativity, the more you do the more you think of. Coming up with ideas was no problem at all. I still have lots of half finished projects that will appear at some point.

I did this project for a few different reasons. One reason was to come up with new work for you! When you make the effort to visit my craft show tent, or look at my website, I want there to be lots for you to look at. My goal is always to have something new for you to discover.

The main reason I do this is to give myself time to play with my medium of choice. Sometimes I get so caught up in living my crazy busy amazing life that there just isn’t time to sit down and play. As much as my life looks like it’s all play the reality is that I run a business in order to fund my life. Running a business, even a creative one, takes a lot of boring paperwork and business work.

For every hour I spend creating I spend 4 hours running a business. Yes, you heard that right. 20% of my time is making work, 80% of my time is running a business.

With that in mind, when I do get a chance to sit down and make, most of the time I have to make the things that sell and pays the bills. Slipping in time to make a bunch of work that may not work out, or might not be popular, or might be seriously ugly doesn’t always happen.

I think it’s really important to give myself this time. Without it, making beads and jewelry could become just another run of the mill job. When it’s just a job and you’re pumping out the same stuff over and over it shows. This is not a job where you can fake it. As an artist if you are bored with what you are doing, it shows.

I love my work, I love glass and jewelry. I love making. I want to keep that love alive. I want to wake up everyday and be so excited about coming to work. I want everyday to be an adventure where I get to discover something new.

Playtime is important, it keeps life exciting and new. Everyone of us should play.

What are you playing with today?

To check out what I came up with in the 2015 30 New Pieces of Jewelry in 30 Days, go here.

All righty now, it’s official, I am in my Christmas production mode. I haven’t reached the screaming panic stage yet but it’s close. Every day I have a quota of beads to make. Once the quota is done then I get to play with new ideas. I am a bead making machine. Bead making begins with this jar of “mud” which is bead release. 

Bead release is a clay substance that you apply to the mandrel. It prevents the glass from being one forever with the mandrel. (The mandrel is the thin steel rod that you wind your glass around to make a bead – when you pull the bead off, voila! there’s a hole in the bead.) It also acts as a heat insulator so I can hold the mandrel without gloves.

This is called “dipping your mandrels”. Wow, such a technical term. Open the jar, dip the mandrel, hold it upright for a few seconds and then place the mandrel in the mandrel holder. The mandrel holder is a piece of scrap wood with holes drilled in it. Then let the bead release dry. Make beads. 

IT’S UP! IT’S UP! IT’S UP!

Of course you already know that because you’re here reading this.

Well, what do you think of my new virtual home? Send comments please!

I’ve been meaning to get around to this for ages and ages and ages. It takes a long time to revamp 12 years of stories and photos and other stuff. I still have oodles of photos to add, stories to write and details to be fine tune. All in good time.

When I first began Sailorgirl the site was sailing only as at the time I had never made a glass bead or even a single piece of jewelry. In 2001 I quit my job to sail away to Cuba for 4 months and had ideas that maybe I could make a living somehow from this website. It was one of those “jumping into the unknown” moments in my life, I had no idea where it would lead but I trusted that it would be somewhere fun. For someone who had never thought of herself as a creative person, this is not where I imagined I would end up. And now I can’t imagine doing anything else!

I LOVE what I do!!!

Who knew you could make a life and a living from sailing and making glass beads? Ha!

Until now I’ve kept the sailing side and the jewelry side of this website quite separate. If those 2 sides can mix into my crazy life then they can mix on my website too. If you’re looking for a recipe for key lime pie, or a pair of earrings in a delicious lime colour, you can get both here. And learn how to trim a spinnaker at the same time. How’s that for fun?

I get asked a lot, “where do you get your inspiration?” 
You’d be surprised where inspiration can strike. I think the trick is to always have your eyes open. One of my favourite places for inspiration is the veggie section of a grocery store. Chinese eggplant! Mangoes! Broccoli! Tomatoes! You might look at lunch and see a salad, I see a necklace. 
Recently inspiration struck as I was avoiding some paperwork and doing a clean up. I was sweeping up bits of glass that had flown all over my glass table. As I looked at the dustbin, I saw it. The most perfect, awesome, best colour combo!!! Isn’t this fabulous? 

Did you know the Euro Cup is on? And did you know that today Greece is playing Poland? No? Well I guess your studio isn’t smack dab in the middle of Greektown, above the largest sports bar that is home to the official Greek fan club 
As I cycled up to the studio this morning I was wondering about all the horn honking as I got closer. Hmmm… usually there’s not much life in the mornings here. The cars where driving up and down waving flags out the windows, the drums were banging. And this was at 9:30 a.m. The game began at noon. The patios are now filled, faces are painted, beers are open and hearts are leaping. I went to the bank and got free baklava and a paper flag. What I really wanted was change for my float. But I’ll take the baklava. 

I admit, I love all the celebrations.