New Addition To The Family Clan

My baby brother became a dad for the first time on Thursday 30th September 2010. His is now a proud daddy to Jasmine Olivia Griffiths who was born at 3.24pm weighing in at 6lb 14oz. Congratulations to you and Donna.

Tax Return

Play suspended today to complete my tax return on-line!!!!!

Portfolio

After a recent meeting with my mentor Rachel O'Neill, appointed to me by the "Creative Thirst" programme I was recently involved with she has been giving me a lot of advise especially about my portfolio. So over the last week I have been busy revisiting it and making some major changes. I still need to get a photographer to take some images of my work, but it's going in the right direction.

Design for Antrim Hospital

I have been busy over the last week putting together a proposal for a commission at Antrim Hospital. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get everything done in the time I had but here are some of the designs I was working on.

Back to Work

Time to pull up my socks and get back to work after the summer break with the kids, family and friends. The To Do List is already running away with me! Lots of ideas, projects and proposals to work on. Watch this space!

The Summers Over

The summers finally over. The Kids are finally back at school and college after what has to be the longest summer holidays ever. Maybe I will finally get some time to get back in my studio to start designing and making.

When It Goes Wrong it Goes Really Wrong

When things go wrong the the studio they can go really wrong. I was attempting to make a few fused glass bowl, which involves a two stage process. Nothing really hard about that and a process I have done quite a few times before. So glass was cut and cleaned and placed on the kiln shelves and placed in the kiln to fire.

On opening the kiln the following morning all seemed well but when I removed the 1st kiln shelf I was greeted with two fused circles that had totally cracked. The only explanation to this was, there could not have been enough kiln separator on the shelves and the glass had stuck to the shelves. A very costly mistake to make and one that shouldn't have happened. I know I prepared the shelves really well and had also pre-fired them.

I just wish I had gone with my gut instinct and lined them with thin fire fibre paper. My gut instinct has been letting me down a lot recently. Needless to say I have also changed my brand of kiln separator too!