Deck the halls with Dragons and Trolls

After I used one of my sons old Christmas stockings to help display our welcome sign ~ I stood back and realized we have decorated our shop with Dragons and Trolls :-)

Aspen Hot Glass ~ Christmas Cards

When I was first studying art in Seattle I wanted to design for Greeting card companies. Now some 10+ years later I design cards for our glass company and give a free card with every gift. This has been a blast for me and I feel I can scratch off a line on my bucket list :-).

This year I created 3 new Christmas cards and hope to continue the trend with new designs every year.

Aspen Hot Glass ~ Santa’s Subcontractors

Christmas is upon us and Bill and I feel like we are subcontractors for Santa Claus. Our store has been like our “beach cabin” get away that allows us to dream big and in the process we have been developing new products. Bill has been getting back into making glass icicles and I have been making cork top bottle stoppers for long-term storage of wine and champagne that easy go into he refrigerator.

These are called “Wine Bottle Bling”

I also have expanded my wine accessories sections and added a “Wine Box Bling” for my friends that drink boxed wine. Bill has set up a small torch station at the store and has been doing torch demos on Saturdays. Last Saturday he made several of his little fish. As I was turning his fish into pendants I put one on top of one of my wine corks and now we have “Fish Bottle Bling” for wine bottles too. What does it mean when all things I do right now go into wine accessories?

New Pictures of our store “Aspen Hot Glass ~ Made in Montana ~ Gift and Gallery”

Images from our new store ~ Aspen Hot Glass ~ Gift and Gallery

Open sign with our dragon Harmony

The office

This is our Geek sign ~ in is a short story of Bill and Rae's live ~ before and after life as glass artists.

So far we only have our glass in the shop. After our Saturday market ends in October we hope to have Fire Creek's Glass, a guy who makes guitars out of cigar boxes and a metal working artist. All hand made in Montana art. I will post more pictures as we update our shop.

Aspen Hot Glass ~ Made in Montana Gifts and Gallery

This is the new home of

Aspen Hot Glass ~ Made in Montana Gifts and Gallery.

I feel like we have given birth to a new baby store :-).

This is our neighbor and landlord ~ “The Brooks”

We are located at 1072 Eastside Highway, Corvallis, Montana

Stay tuned of updates on the progress of this evolution :-).

The doors officially open on August 17.

Aspen Hot Glass T-shirts are here :-)

My nephew Colter Lease has a new company named HipJaw ~ he does custom apparel printing. I gave him a digital image of the dragon logo I designed for Aspen Hot Glass and he silk-screened t-shirts for us. I love how he was able to capture the depth of colors and textures in the silk screening process. This is not your grandpas silk screening process with squeegees, frames and pin alignment systems. This is a whole new gig. Our Aspen Hot Glass dragon shirts sell for $18.00 + shipping and can be purchased by e-mailing me at rae@aspenhotglass.com or soon Colter will have a web site with an order page. He will have this shirt and so much more to choose from.

Compassion For Enduring Carrots

This weekend I painted carrots and greens on our bunny hutch with 2 carrots in a loving embrace. Last year I pulled carrots out of the ground that were intertwined as if they were holding on to each other in a tender hug. When I find carrots like this I don’t put them in my basket with the other carrots that will eventually be eaten. I put carrots that are in an enduring embrace into the compost bin allowing them to grow old together.

Painting sunflowers on our goat house

There is something fun about spending the entire afternoon painting sunflowers on an old goat house. (I know Dale Chihuly has a boathouse but Montana glass artists have goat houses ~ Glass artist humor LOL.) Bill and I recently gave away our remaining 2 pigmy goats. This enables us to use the land for more garden space and possibly a flower cutting garden. And don’t feel too sorry of the goats ~ they went to a farm that breeds goats and had boyfriends already liked up. I hope to paint vegetables on our bunny’s hutch and maybe eggs and nests on our chicken house. What a great way to spend a sunny afternoon.

Hi my cyber friends, I apologize for the delay in up dating this blog.

I designed a new logo to kick off our 2009 Glass art season. Bill and I love dragons and being dueling pyromaniacs / glass artists ~ it was only appropriate to incorporate a dragon into our logo. In the design I used images of Bill’s marbles and my bottle stoppers along with our beads and pendants. This dragon was inspired by an Escher dragon I had as a black light poster in my room when I was a teenager. We hope to have T-shirts and canvas bags with this new design soon.

Our new logo was introduced Saturday, May 2, 2009 at the first day of our Missoula Artist Market. It was one of those days people dream of where the sky is incredibly blue and the air is filled with laughter from a diverse group of cheerful people.

The place was like a carnival and Bill and I were Carnies. Not the kind that shout step right up ~ we were more like the ones that stand behind the rides and pull the levers and let the fun begin. In our case the fun is looking into Vortex marbles with optical elusions making the viewer feel they may fall in and find Alice’s rabbit hole. Our Bottle stoppers can be held in the air like swards with glass that takes the viewer on a incredible journey turning and twisting to see the encased treasures buried like hidden treasures.

Some days we receive payment in 2 forms ~ currency and smiles :-) It is such a cool feeling to watch faces light up as people enjoy the eye candy we have created.

A furry and feathery conversation

This morning I caught one of our free-range chickens conversing with our Bunny Boots. I am not sure but it could be a conversation about the up and coming Easter ~ the “hopping down the bunny trail thing”. Or Boots might be planning an escape and asking the chicken if he could just reach up and pull the lever to unlatch the door. I am not sure what furry and feathery were up to but it looked pretty serious. I may need to install a bunny cam LOL

A Marble and Glass Rose

I was a single mom raising my son Steven who was a wonderful young person that became a fantastically successful man. Proud momma here :-) I was the difficult one to raise ~ Steven would tell me what music would rot my brain and when to turn off the computer and go to bed. He also would tell me ~ in an affectionate way ~ I needed to get a life. It’s a good thing I met Bill shortly before Steven moved out to attend college in Portland Oregon ~ the empty nest syndrome sucks when you are the only bird in the house. I met Bill in 2002 ~ he showed up on my doorstep and instead of a box of candy and flowers he gave me a marble and glass rose. That was it ~ he won me over on the first date. I lived 250 miles away from Bill but would drive to see him on the weekends. In the summer he would sell his beads and marbles at the “Missoula Saturday Market” in Missoula Montana ~ I loved working the booth with him and getting to know all the wonderful people. The place was like a carnival and we were the Carnies. In April of 2003 I gave up the weekly 250-mile drive and moved to the Bitterroot Mountains to be with Bill and his daughter. Bill and I still attend the Missoula Saturday Market together and have a permanent booth location. This open-air, artist only market runs from May through October and people come from all over the United States either vacationing in Montana or they have children attending the University of Missoula. Bill and I will be starting our market season soon and I am so excited about seeing old friends ~ the first day is always like a family reunion with my Carnie friends :-).

Baby Chickies

Baby chicks are a sure sign of spring. Bill and I became the proud owners of 6 baby chickies on March 30. Since our chickens are free-range they are exposed to the brutal circle of life around our farm. Regardless of the circle of life turnover free-range chickens offer great bug control and fun in the form of what surprising places they will lay their eggs. We have set up a nice hen house with soft wood shavings in little hen nesting areas ~ in spite of this our chickens sometimes prefer to lay eggs in a box in Bills shop or under one of the rose bushes This random act of egg laying can become adventurous in itself in the form of a off season Easter egg hunt. I am really thankful for the Magpies around here ~ who knows were eggs have been laid that we would never find until the sun comes out and warms things up to a stench. The Magpies are little maid of our farm.

When glass does not melt into submission and dies in the Kiln ~ going to glass heaven.

I am not very happy with what was pulled out of the Kiln this morning ~ as I look at the glass I said to myself ~ hey that’s not what was in my head yesterday when I was melting that Italian glass into such cool designs. Where is are the cool glass designs that had been in my head…… have my designs from yesterday gone to glass heaven and these pieces that lay before me be just empty shells of what would have been cool pieces of glass. These un-cool pieces of glass are destined to be tossed into my garden path ~ hopefully they will make the garden gods happy. Some day ~~~~ years from now ~~~~ when this place is excavated by some future civilization they will wonder how all the Italian glass ended up in Montana soil.

This is our garden ~ I emend the soil with Italian glass LOL