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Turbo Top – Fun with Vitrigraph…Fast!!

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Here’s the first of many products that need to be talked about from my Las Vegas adventure. It’s the Turbo Top and the Turbo Lift by Innovative Glass Solutions. Have you tried vitrigraph? You pull hot glass from the bottom of a suspended kiln to make swirly shapes and canes and twists that are amazing additions to fufsed pieces but also make great jewelry items on their own. Larr Cunningham of Innovative Glass Solutions has created both the Turbo Top and the Turbo Lift to help make the vitrigraph experience that much better.

The Turbo Lift allows you to mount your kiln and be able to adjust the height of it to 5 vertical positions. So cool. It allows a vertical range of 28″ in 5 pre-set increments. And it comes preassembled so you can easily attach it to your kiln. The Turbo Top heats your kiln in half the time. This makes getting to your vitrigraph good times that much faster. And it fits most table top kilns. So if you’re ready to try it out, play with vitrigraph, you need these fabulous tools. And as a bit of a disclaimer, I’ve worked with Larr and Leigh Adams teaching Extreme Vitrigraph, which adds torchwork to the party, and these are essential add ons to your vitrigraph experience! Pull some hot glass!! You can currently find these at Pacific Art Glass…

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Designer Spotlight: Bella Rose Craft

The designs from Bella Rose Craft look like they would be good for beginner cross stitchers and others who like relatively simple and small designs that are quick to finish for gifts or decor.

I’ll mention up front that this Etsy shop based in Indiana has no organization whatsoever. There are two categories: kits and patterns. So it’s a bit of a treasure hunt to find what you might be interested in.

As mentioned there are lots of minis and small looking projects with simple lines and minimal colors. There are holiday projects, animals, summer motifs like palm trees and beach umbrellas, a bathtub with a rubber duck, some text based designs (like hoppy spring and merry and bright), some biblical and religious designs, flowers, bunting and more.

On a site like this its difficult to pick something representative of the whole page, but I liked this bees and beehive design, so it’s the one I picked to share. This one illustrates a lot of my general points about the patterns from this shop. It’s small (2.79 by 2.57 inches, or about 7 by 6.5 cm on 14 count fabric), it looks like it’s all whole cross stitches and probably uses only six colors, and a couple of colors are only used for a handful of stitches.

Of the 300 plus cross stitch patterns available as of this writing, 140 are also available as cross stitch kits. These would be great to give as gifts if you’re trying to get someone interested in cross stitching. The kits include the pattern, fabric and floss, and you can choose to have it include a needle or not. The hoop is not included but the patterns explain what kind of hoop is shown if you want to get one to match.

So if you’re looking for cute, beginner friendly patterns for yourself or you’re trying to be a crafty enabler for someone else, check out Bella Rose Craft on Etsy.

[Photo: Bella Rose Craft]