PhantasmaGlass?

This is a really long post, so get comfy!

Even as a very little girl, I was fascinated by jewelry I saw people wearing and grew to love it with a passion. Like a magpie, I was drawn to whatever was bright and sparkly. By age ten, I had a white wooden jewelry box with a few inexpensive necklaces, bracelets, little adjustable rings and other bits and bobs. My treasure box!

My eight-years-older sister had a birthstone ring, a simple solitaire ruby set in yellow gold and a pretty little Linde' Star ring with a red star sapphire. The child me admired those rings so much! And they were so lovely on my sister's tiny, delicate hands. Hands that coaxed the most beautiful music from the piano and produced the most elegant handwriting you ever saw. There was something enchanting about those rings. I thought maybe if I had a 'real' ring on my hand, I would be able to produce beautiful things as well, as though the ring would be a magic talisman. I couldn't wait to be old enough to have my own 'real' ring.

Finally, at age 13, I was given a 'real' birthstone ring for my birthday. 'Real' meaning set in precious metal. My birthday is in October, so the stone was a pink rose zircon in a white gold setting. Having this ring made me feel as though I'd gone through some rite of passage, reached some level of adulthood.

My sister got married that November of 1966, about eight weeks after my birthday. In truth, I was not terribly happy about it; it meant she was leaving us for good and that broke my heart. But she was obviously happy about it, so I put as good a face on it as I could, got dressed in the 'harvest gold' polyester knit suit I'd been given for the wedding (gold was one of her wedding colors), and parked myself at the guest book in the church vestibule. That was my role, to make sure people signed in. Later, my Aunt Mary showed me a picture she'd taken of me behind that little table. She pointed out how my birthstone ring was winking bright as a star in the flash of the camera. Somehow it seemed an omen to me--of what I had no idea.

Many, many years later, in the early '90s, something happened that could have been what the twinkling of that birthstone in that photo portended! At the time, I was a unit supervisor for a large telemarketing company and a sweet girl named Jodi worked for me. At Christmas, Jodi brought me a present---it was the coolest, funkiest watch I'd ever seen! The stretchy band was a hodge-podge of all sorts of the wildest, craziest beads I'd ever seen. It was amazing! I'd never seen anything like it. I asked where she'd found such a wonderful watch and she told me she made it. She explained she'd gotten the supplies from a bead store in Mishawaka (IN) and told me where it was.

I'd never even heard of a store dedicated to just beads. I had to see for myself, so a few weeks later I made the trek to look for this bead store. What an eye-opener! I ended up getting a few beads, of course, but even better, they had a rack of books and magazines devoted to beading! I bought a few issues of Bead and Button magazine, including their first ever issue. Later, sitting at home, poring over these publications, I was blown away by the images of the most stunning seed-beaded jewelry! I'd never even imagined such an art existed. I had to try it!

Having always been a crafty (embroidery, cross-stitch, needlepoint, sewing and crochet) person my entire adult life, beading was a natural for me. Following instructions found in these magazines, I learned how to do peyote stitch. Later on, I tried herringbone, right-angle weave, and other bead stitches. Over the following years, beading exploded in popularity and many more types of beading magazines were published. While Bead & Button and Beadwork magazines focus on off-loom stitching or loom-work with tiny seed beads, their sister publications Bead Style and Stringing focus on simpler stringing designs of larger beads and semi-precious stones. Never a terrifically patient person, I eventually began to lean away from the labor-intensive off-loom stitchery and toward the more 'immediate gratification' designs of stringing.

Life grew rather tumultuous in the mid-nineties. I'd changed jobs and the pace at work was incredible. As a single mother, I was highly focused on my job, trying to better myself so I could be a better provider for my kids. As well, my son and daughter were becoming teens and getting hard to keep up with. Though I didn't lose my interest in beads and beading, I still bought the magazines and at least kept up on a cerebral level, if not physically doing any beading. There really was no time for actual creating. It left a real void in my life.

Around this time, I began to see incredibly fantastic glass beads in the magazines and learned that these were handmade by a process called lampwork. In 1997, Cindy Jenkins published a book called Making Glass Beads and I purchased it. I was smitten immediately by a deep and visceral longing to recreate what I was looking at. Intrigued and fascinated, I was also bummed. The equipment and supplies were extensive and expensive. One would need a special torch (scary!), fuel to fire the torch, a kiln or bead annealer, rods of glass, steel rods called mandrels, bead release--so you could get the finished bead off the mandrel, and various other tools and supplies. This was not just a casual hobby one just takes up, like crocheting or embroidery or scrapbooking. You had to really know what you were doing...you had to understand the physical and chemical properties of glass and what happens to it in the flame and in the kiln, how to safely work with a fueled torch, etc. I was daunted but wanted to do this so badly I vowed to myself that if I ever had enough money to invest in the supplies/equipment, I would do it! But it didn't seem too likely; I was a busy single mother raising 2 kids and money was very tight.

In 1998, at the age of 45 (!!) I met the man who would become my husband and life began to change. This guy treated me like a queen! It was such a change from every other guy I'd known, I had to hold on to him! We moved in together in 2000 and married in 2003. He's my very best friend and except for my children, my greatest love.

Unfortunately, I lost my mother to cancer in 2001, just 3 weeks after 9/11 and just one day after my 48th birthday. It was a such a horrific time and the grief load was nearly unbearable. I'd either have panic attacks or bouts of total introspection where I'd just sit, stare at the wall for hours. It hit me how short our time on earth really is. Was I going to go through life chasing the almighty dollar and never getting any real fulfillment? In my grief, I turned to creating again, experimenting with this and that, eventually returning to beading. I poured a lot of myself into it, and finally I began to heal.

My sister was the executor of Mom's will and one day in 2002 she came and handed me a check; my half of what Mom had left. It wasn't a fortune, but it was a big help. After taking care of some domestic needs in the months that followed, my husband and I went off to Lansing, MI, where Delphi Glass was located. There I got my beginner's lampworking kit, which came with a single fuel torch and a few tools and supplies. I ordered a small supply of glass from Arrow Springs in California. Once the glass arrived, I parked myself in front of the TV and watched the how-to video that came with the beginner kit. I watched it over and over, committing every step to memory. The next day, my husband helped me create a work station, set up the simple mapp-gas torch and struck the first match. I confess I was scared of the torch and the fire in the beginning, but I clenched my teeth, sat down behind the flame and began. Life was never the same!

After those first wobbly, off-center beads, I could not stop making them! I'd pore over my Cindy Jenkins book for ideas and techniques to try. I'd try different color combinations and different shapes. I bought fine silver foil and dichroic glass, glass enamel and frits, cubic zirconias and goldstone stringer to add to my beads. I tried almost everything. I felt like some sort of alchemist!

I'd get up at 4 in the morning, have my coffee, then go light the torch. I'd lampwork for an hour or so, then go take a shower and get ready for work. I'd come home in the evening, make supper, and then get behind the torch. It was so cathartic, I'd completely lose the outside world while staring into the flame, watching the glass melt and manipulating it into little tiny 'works of art'. There were little fat, gleaming handmade beads here, there and everywhere. It felt as though it was what I was always meant to do.

A year or two later, on Christmas Day, my husband had three big boxes waiting for me. One was a chest-high appliance-size box. Inside was a tall tank of oxygen and a 30# propane tank. Another box held a bead annealing kiln and the third held a Nortel mid-range bench burner (a professional lampworking torch). Overwhelming! I couldn't believe it!

My poor, poor husband. He not only had spent a bunch of money on this fancy equipment, he laboriously set everything up for me as well. I gathered all the beads I'd made over the past two years and annealed batch after batch. He got the torch going and I made a bead. This fancy torch burned so hot, I had to readjust how I worked with the glass. I had to step up my game and work faster because it melted the glass so quickly.

This new torch scared the heck out of me, with its oxygen and propane mixture instead of the single can of mapp gas. The hissing sound it made terrified me. Eventually, he got tired of lighting the torch for me every single time I wanted to make a bead because I was too scared to light it myself. I thought the fuel tanks would blow up. Eventually, I just stopped altogether. The torch sat neglected. The glass rods gathered dust. My bead release dried out.

For a solid year, every single day, I'd look at my beloved lampworking set-up and feel sad, guilty and frustrated. The emotions mounted until one day I determined to fight it all off and master my fear of the torch. I made myself learn to light it and with practice, I overcame all the things that were holding me back from pursuing my love of beadmaking. Soon new beads appeared here, there and everywhere!

Well, something had to be done with all those beads, of course, so I started incorporating them into jewelry, some of which you can see in the right sidebar. My muse had returned and I wanted to make something more of it. I wanted a 'brand'; a studio with a name. I came up with various monikers like "The Garden of Beadin'", and other kitschy names in that vein. Garden of Beadin' and many of the other names I came up with were already being used for beads shops and studios across the country, so those were out. Besides, it didn't convey what I was trying to express. I wanted something that evoked fantasy and mystery and myth and magic.

It was during this period, I wrote my poem 'The Dream Hour' (see right sidebar). This poem perfectly evoked the mood I wanted for my studio. The line 'phantasm, chimera, mirage, shade or ghost...' echoed in my head. I loved the words phantasm, phantasmagoric, phantasmagoria... Aha! PhantasmaGlass!  So that's how the name was born.

I started a Facebook page and a website for my jewelry. The website failed miserably, though it was truly beautiful. I didn't have the money or the savvy to market it properly so few people ever really saw it. The Facebook page has its ups and downs, but does marginally better.

I also had this blog going but it was a dud, too. It originally started out as a place for me to write and had an entirely different name than what it does now. It mouldered away for a few years, then I decided to start all over with it. I wiped it all out, changed the name to PhantasmaGlass and wrote about jewelry making to link it to the website and to the Facebook page. Some posts still exist to mark that effort.

But seriously, how much can you keep writing about jewelry? Obviously some people can, but I could not. So I began writing about other stuff. I had few page views and few ever even saw it. I didn't push it. It didn't even make sense to me. A jewelry blog that had next to nothing about jewelry, except some pictures, a few posts and other posts totally unrelated to jewelry?? EPIC FAIL.

I eventually decided to give up the idea of making a business out of my jewelry, even though so many people have admired it and encouraged me to sell. And over the years, I have sold a good bit of my work. The bald truth is that I do not have the soul of an entrepreneur. I loath business and selling. It is just not me and it's foreign to my nature. Now I just make what and when I want for my own pleasure and if someone sees something they love and wants to purchase or asks me to make something for them, we strike a deal. I'm happy and they are happy!

So that is the story of PhantasmaGlass.

Thanks to some of the YouTube ladies I follow, my blog readership has grown remarkably! I've tweaked it a bit so that it's not just jewelry oriented and is hopefully less confusing despite the fact that it retains the PhantasmaGlass name. I deeply enjoy writing for you and hope that you enjoy as well, and return often.

Have a Wonderful, Happy and Prosperous 2016!

Till next time,

"And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke