There are always lots of interesting things going in the world of Sawdust & Glass. You can read about the latest happenings here in our news section. Each post has a form for you to add your thoughts that if you have the time to share your thoughts, we’d love to hear. If there are things you would like to see us to share in upcoming posts, you can contact us. Thanks for taking the time to visit our site!
That’s Why They Call It The Blues
I have just finished a new piece for a Charity Fundraiser for the Kingston Children’s Aid Society. The piece will be silent auctioned at a Blues Night held at St. Lawrence College April 24th. All Music passes are sold but dinner tickets are still available. See www.nightinblue.ca for more information. You can see a picture and information about the piece in our Custom Work - Framed Pieces entitled That’s Why They Call It The Blues. I made a somewhat similar piece for the Sweet Adelines Fundraiser to take place in early June.
The Cancer Society in Kingston is also having an art show and silent auction at their offices on Day’s Road throughout the month of April. Stop by there to see “ Ribbons of Hope ” a stained glass panel and Journey of Hope , a Bargello Quilt by my sister Mary Waugh and I. We are also getting ready for the May 1 and May 2 Kingston Interconnected Studio Tour at our home and have added a couple of new pieces to Delvalle’s Art Corner in the loft in Vandervoort’s General Store on Princess Street.
Happy New Year
Happy New Year to all. We hope 2010 brings good health and lots of happiness. January and February are not big Craft Sales months so we spend our time developing new products and replenishing stock. It is the best time to run the kiln so we will be making some new wire and pot melts sandcastings as well as experimenting. Ron is busy starting some new trays, Trees of Life and of course Woodturning. We have decided to stop making the boxes with glass inserts and Quilt Block Inserts. You can’t keep adding new things and continue with all the old. It makes too much to store and transport! If you have any ideas for us to consider making please let us know.
South Grenville Distrcit High School Craft show
Due to the H1N1 flu going around the South Grenville District High School Craft show ahs been cancelled. The school board has cancelled all after school programs for the next while and this would not leave organizers enough time to adverize etc and let vendors coming from farther away time to make plan changes. Hopefully everyone will be healthy and safe and look for the show next year.
Taking a woodturning course
While Ann is off to the big quilt show in Houston, I am going to take a 2 day woodturning course. I will be in Bloomfield (near Belleville Ontario) learning from Paul Ross of Woodchalet Inc. Paul has moved to this area from the Hamilton area and has a very nice shop, studio and teaching setup. I am looking forward to learning a great deal and having my many bad habits corrected. I am very interested in his hollowing setup and with good sales of my woodturnings at Park Dale Public School at the beginning of Oct I may purchase one from him. I will let you know how it goes and post a few pictures of my new creations so check back a little later this week.
The Women’s Art Festival is Sunday
We have recovered from the busy week end at the Cloyne Showcase. It was Cloyne’s 150 th birthday so there was lots going on in town- beef barbecues, pancake breakfast, old time fiddling etc. so we had good crowds all week end. Now we are getting ready for Sunday and keeping our fingers crossed hoping for good weather. It is always a great day at City Park with lots of entertainment and fun.
We have also finalized the October an November Show dates. This year we will be attending a new Fall Sale in Belleville and a late November Sale in Prescott. Prescott is very close to Coalescent Farms ( owned and operated by our son Jamie, his fiance Mel and their son Alex. ) . Now all we have to do is get busy making some new things. Remember we don’t bring everything to every sale so if you have a specific request, email us a week or two ahead.
We’re Going to Cloyne Showcase of Crafts
New Retail Location
If you are in downtown Brockville, stop by Picket Fence Fabrics our newest retail location. As well as great fabrics, a variety of craft items are for sale , now including selected items by Sawdust and Glass.
Interconnected Art Studio Tour
The Studio and Showroom ( aka Family Room) are all cleaned and set up for the Studio Tour. It is absolutely amazing how many pieces we have once we start unpacking the boxes from the fall and incorporating all the new work from January to now. Ron has made 50 bowls since January 2009! He has a really beautiful new black walnut bowl that is 18 1/2 inches across. The new jewellry is also worth a look as is the new style of hummingbird tray. Pictures will be posted on the website soon.
It’s Spring
It is Spring so we are busy planning our spring and summer shows. Ann has been doing some travelling this winter as usual so Ron has had lots of time to turn beautiful new bowls. A new lathe also appeared while Ann was away so look for many new pens, smaller bowls and winestoppers soon. Ann’s trip to Egypt was amazing so look for some new ” Egyptian inspired pieces shortly.
Delvalle’s Art Corner in the Loft at Vandervoort’s hardware is quickly becoming the prime location to shop for local art in Kingston so we’ve been busy keeping the store stocked with woodturnings and glass. “California Poppies” was a great eye catching piece in the window for Valentine’s and now a large “LoneStar ” Quilt block is stopping traffic on Princess Street. Please drop in to see some of our work and the work of 14 other local artists.
The brochures have arrived for The Interconnected Studio Tour. A picture of one of Ron’s bowls and a piece of fused glass is on the cover. We will be stop number 13 and brochures will be available at Delvalle’s, The Glass House and area libraries . The website for the tour is www.kingstonartists.com .
The Limestone Quilters Guild is having a Sewing Room Sale Wed. April 1 in the Gym at the Senior’s Centre 56 Francis Street. Ann will be there with a display of mainly quilt related glass, jewellry and boxes ( with a few other items) Admission is free.
Delvalles Grand Opening
Join us at the Grand Opening of Delvalle’s Art Corner at its new location (in the heart of Vandervoorts Hardware Store) at 77 Princess Street. We have added many new larger art pieces and woodturnings to the display of our work. This friendly and open creative gallery displays the work of 10 very talented local artists. Pottery lessons are available from Delvalle.
The Grand Opening will be Thursday Nov. 13th 2008, from 6 pm to 9pm. If you are unable to make it the gallery is open for business Tuesdays to Saturdays 10 until 5:30.
Fun at the wood auction
This past Saturday there was a wood auction, that raises money for several charities. This auction has been held for many years. There are two parts to it one for logs and the other for lumber. This year there was a lot of black cherry logs some butternut and maple, but only 1 burl. The prices for the purchaser were very very good, not so good for the auctioneer.
The burl sitting on the garbage can is about 2′ long 2′ thick and 62″ in circumference and is white ash. They also have a couple of sawers there and most people want wood for furniture etc, but there are a few wood turners there as well. I managed to get a 8′ by 12″ diametre black cherry for $30 and a 8′ by 18″ sugar maple as well as the neat burl. I had the sawer cut the cherry and maple so I would have 2 slabs for platters or shallow plates and the rest for lareg bowls. I then cut those up into the lenght I wanted and loaded my trailer and van. The large maple ones I will core out.
So all in all it was a great day, met some old friends and made some new ones. I just have to find a bigger chain saw so I can cut the burl in to two large platter pieces and 2 very large bowls. Will post pictures once done. The photo here shows the front of my garage, the back 2/3 have been coverted into my wifes cozy warm studio for her stained and fused glass work.
Introducing Sawdust & Glass Website 3.0
We are overjoyed to formally announce the launch of our completely re-designed website! For those who had visited our site in the past you will remember that it was very blue and the product information was not updated on a very frequent schedule due to a complex process to add content to the site. Approximately six-months ago, we procured the services of an enthusiastic web design firm and together began looking at ways to improve the process and style of the site. The administration process is much easier to use, and visually the site has a distinct style consistent with our Sawdust & Glass brand. More importantly, there are several new or significantly improved features that we hope you - our clients - will find useful:
- News
This section will be dedicated to recent Sawdust & Glass activities. We expect to post here regularly about new products added to the site, summaries of shows we attend, fund raisers we support and so much more. There is even a commenting system built into the site, so if a particular news post inspires, you can add your own thoughts / questions at the bottom of each post. - Shows & Tours
Any events we will be attending will be announced on our Shows & Tours page. We are able to include directions via Google Maps as well as website links provided by the particular events, so you can see what other artisans will be attending. - You can print or email product pages
Every product page has these two buttons in the upper right corner. If you think a friend, co-worker or family member would be interested in a product, you can click the email button, fill in a small form and our site will email them the product details along with your comments. Or you can click print and show them the printer-friendly version. - Get Sawdust & Glass delivered direct to your inbox!
The form to the right is always available on our contact page. If you would like to receive information on what’s new with Sawdust & Glass, fill in your email address - and reply to the confirmation email which is sent to the address you provide - you will receive updates from our site anytime we post something to this news section.
- More great looking photos to come!
Ron has built a photo booth in the basement so that the photos we take will look almost as good on the new website as they do in person. It seems that 2008 is starting out as a great year for Sawdust & Glass.
Perhaps the the biggest benefit of the new site might be that it will be able to grow with our future needs. It has an easy to understand statistics package built in, so we can better understand who (and how often) people are visiting our site. If you have any suggestions about things you think would be worthwhile for us to do with the site, please contact us through our simple contact form or add a comment to the this post by clicking on the ‘comments’ button.
If you are an interested in having a custom designed website for your own business, let us know, or visit Jamie’s website - Oastler.ca and contact him directly.
Confirmed for the Cloyne Showcase!
We will be in the same location at the 36th Annual Cloyne Showcase just off the main hall in the lower gym. We are very excited as this will be our second year at this show. The local cottagers and tourists support the show as proceeds from the show support Arts Programs at The North Addington Education Centre.
We tend to run the kiln in the winter months to make new products for summer shows. Lately, we are experimenting with smaller sized wiremelts that will be able to hang in a window and working on new wood glass combinations. Ron has been rough turning ash, apple and butternut bowls which will be ready for final turning in the summer. He also received some amazing tigermaple burls for Christmas which will make some beautiful pieces when he starts them.
Are you ready? It’s almost time!
I’m not sure why every year at this time Macy gets her own parade, do you? Personally, I’m just excited that all the leaves are off the trees and I won’t have to rake any of them.
If you have bought something from Sawdust & Glass in the past and gave us your mailing address, you can look forward to a different sort of seasonal reminder coming your way. A short letter that covers where and when we’ll be where in case you want to come and see what new products we have this year. We’ll also have some of last years’ top sellers in case you missed the opportunity to buy one of them before.
Not on our mailing list?
You can either download the Seasonal Promo Letter (.pdf) or check out Shows & Tours page. If you subscribe by email via the form on our Contact page, you’ll always be in the know about where Sawdust & Glass are on the go.
Our new website is almost ready!
We are just ironing out the last few details (or as Jamie says minor display bugs) of the new website and then we will be changing the web addresses so that when anyone visits sawdustandglass.com they will be directed to the new site.
The most impressive feature of the site is behind the scenes, in a complete content management system that makes adding new content easy. With the old site, it was a major hassle to add new product categories, now it is as easy as adding the category in one page and selecting it in the new post page. You can look forward to more of our products being online very soon.