My Lampwork Studio

I have noticed many bloggers giving wonderful tours of their home studios.  I do not have a dedicated studio for my art/craft in my house yet, but I do have a lampwork studio in our detached garage.  Viv asked me about it, and I thought, why not? So, here is a tour of my garage studio.  It is more industrial than cute, but with melting glass, and sometimes exploding glass, it serves it’s purpose:

This is a view of our detached garage, and half of the fuel for my torch – a propane tank.  Dear hubby put in the exhaust vent above the tank:

And here is my studio in one corner of the garage.  In the middle is my work station with my torch, and all around are my tools, supplies, and equipment.  to the right is my kiln for annealing the beads, and below that is my oxygen concentrator (added with propane, fuels the torch).  And above is my air vent and fan. I use a Nortel Minor torch.  It has a graphite marver piggy backing on it so it looks kind of funny.  The little round white things are DH’s socks filled with beans that I use as arm rests 🙂

And here are a few of my beautiful glass rods.  I use mainly Moretti and Bullseye rods, but I also have CIM, Lauscha, and Vetrofond.  I just purchased some Devardi rods, which I am looking forward to trying out next session:

These are the tools of the trade.  Marvers, hemostats, molds, presses, scissors, knives, kitchen spoons, mandrels with bead release, and some stringers I pulled for decorating.  Starbucks coffee bottles make really good containers for glass storage:

Here I am.  I think these photos were taken a few years back.  You can see I used to drink a lot of starbucks coffee 🙂  I am wearing my didymium safety glasses, melting glass, and winding it on a mandrel.  When I’m done, it gets popped into the kiln for annealing.

Finally, here are some glass beads I have made in the past.  I tend to make florals and rounds in happy cheery colors:

Thank you for stopping by!

– Linda