Tag: GlassOrchids

Time Flies

Time Flies

Posted on by Nancy Tang

Time Flies!

Where does the time go? I’ll tell you that the older I get, the faster time flies by.  I’m getting older and find I can do less in a day than I could 10 years ago. I’m trying to balance work life with home life, and spending time on my hobbies which are many!

I love to garden, make wine, bake bread, ferment things, can food, paint, read, play video games… never a reason to be bored!!

It seems like its been forever since I posted here. Honestly, I’ve let the website slip… but I’m hoping to do a makeover here over the next couple of months.  Check out my new GLOOT page! 

New work at Glass Orchids

Posted on by Nancy Tang
New work at Glass Orchids being fired in kiln.
New work at Glass Orchids being melted right before your eyes.

 

My goal for winter was to create new work at Glass Orchids, for the upcoming season.

I  have to say that I’ve failed miserably at that task this winter.  This winter I’ve been consumed by other tasks, after getting through the holidays I’ve spent my time working on websites for myself and the various arts organizations I’m a part of. I’m also the manager of two of the artisan cooperatives I’m in , and organizing for the upcoming season takes a lot of work.  I admit, I also enjoyed days of laziness which are greatly  needed to refuel for the coming year. 

I’ve got plans for new work at Glass Orchids, so many plans lol…… but first I’ve got to set up for the opening of the cooperatives, do my taxes (which no are not done yet), clean my studio, plant my garden, and then, yes then, create new works!!!

In addition to working getting this site ready for prime time, I also created a new website for one of my cooperatives: Belfast Harbor Artisans. 

 

The continuing saga of Google Jail

Posted on by Nancy Tang

Well apparently one of my ads for GlassOrchids.com has been released from Google Jail and  has made it through the gauntlet of Google ad approval. I have no idea why it’s different than the ones that have been denied. I’ll let you know if/when I figure it  out. This one seems to be targeting mostly mobile devices. I guess any new traffic is good but it sure isn’t transparent on how Google Ad approval actually works.

Anyway, I’m thinking about what to do next to get more traffic to this site given my striped pajamas. I’ve got two solutions that I’m going to try:

  1. Adding a few pages to my other site NancyDaviesTang.com , and pointing them to this site and then submitting the new pages to get crawled might work.
  2. Creating a mirror site (already  registered a name GlassOrchidz.com.. the Z for zombie version… raised from the dead and all that) and pointing it to this site too.

The second takes much longer to implement so I’ll work on the first one first. I have been known as being stubborn, and I’m not giving up.  If nothing else, my saga should serve as a warning and education to others…..

~Nan

Glass Art – Koi Pond using Glass Enamels

Posted on by Nancy Tang

This week I’ve been working on this glass art piece of a koi pond using enamels for glass. I’ve never worked with this material before but I am really enjoying it and like the effect.  The image shows the piece after the first firing, with the second layer of glass enamel applied. Just waiting to be fired again.

 

Glass Art piece - A 9" glass disc with koi pond
Glass Art – Koi Pond, 9″ disc.

The Process

First I create a drawing on the high fire paper (the paper that acts as a kiln separator to keep the glass from sticking to the kiln shelf), then I begin to add the details using the glass enamel mixed with a medium to make it paint-like. I also use the enamel as a powder as you may notice in this image (you can see the green ‘dust’ on the water.) I’ve fired this piece twice, with layers of enamel added each time, to get the desired effect. I might fire them anywhere from 2-5 times depending oh how they come out.

This is a great way to create glass art that has a more painterly feel. The possibilities seem endless when creating kiln fired glass art!

I will display the piece in a metal stand when completed.

Check out more of my art at NancyDaviesTang.com

I’ve also been working on a project for Habitat for Humanity that you might like to see HERE.

 

Nancy Davies Tang. Title:  Koi Pond. Medium: Kiln fired glass and glass enamels. Price: $450

 

The high price of ignorance – Google Jail

Posted on by Nancy Tang

Google Jail

Back in 2013 I used a free template to create a nice look on my website. The free template included stock clip art that was also listed on free clip art websites. I had fully intended to replace the clip art with my own photos but didn’t get around to replacing one of them. It was the photo of a woman’s face. Life got busy and I really let my website drift for about 5 years. Recently I’ve ported GlassOrchids over here to wordpress, whole new host, whole new website. In trying to gain placement in the search engines I discovered that way back in 2013 the owner of that photo reported dozens of web pages/sites, that also used that photo perhaps also in free templates, for copyright infringement.

In researching I’ve discovered that I’m now in Google jail and it’s a life sentence. There is no way to remove oneself from Google jail if, in fact, you actually did have the illegal image/content on your page at any time.

Some of my pages are indexed in Google but not my home page, which is where the photo was.  I’ve spent hours researching how to fix this. I can’t believe Google has no way of re-indexing a page, i.e. removing you from google jail, but they don’t. Apparently they used to, but creeps who intentionally use copyrighted material kept getting out of jail and then adding the copyrighted material right back to their pages. So once again, the jerks in the world are why we can’t have nice things.

I’ve had glassorchids.com for about 20 years or so. Now there is no way for me to have it re-indexed with Google so it will not come up in the search engines; most of my pages will but not the home page. That’s a high price to pay for ignorance.

I’m working on some workarounds and have registered GlassOrchidZ.com … well I do love zombies so I guess in a way this is the undead version of GlassOrchids.   It will take a lot of time as I’ll have to recreate the site from scratch…at least part of it, and figure out how to redirect a site/page. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Let this be a lesson to all of you out there – beware of any free graphics/templates etc… the real price can be very high.

Live and learn,

~Nan

UPDATE: I think I’ve got a workaround and have implemented it. You won’t notice any difference in the site but I’ve used a 301 redirect to point the home page to a different page (basically a duplicate) with a unique name. Hopefully this will fix the issue but it will take a few weeks to see if it does as it takes time for the site to get crawled and re-indexed. I may not need GlassOrchidZ.com after all.

Never enough time

Never enough time

Posted on by Nancy Tang

Sure I said I’d be posting my SnapDragons(tm) on the site in a week; that was two weeks ago. There isn’t enough time in a day is there?  I’ve launched my art site NancyDaviesTang.com ,  moved and mocked up my supply website at UGotGlass.com, which is inactive at the moment because again.. there is just NO time. I’ve also launched a sit for my lavender & market garden farm WinterRose.farm.  I’ve entered two shows one with the Bangor Arts Society and the other with river arts. The former won 2nd place and the latter saw one piece featured in the local paper. Ye ha… I am moving along,  just not getting everything on the list done! Ah well, we do what we can…..

~Nan

It’s not all cake and wine! Relaunch of Glass Orchids!

Posted on by Nancy Tang
Banner image for relaunch of Glass Orchids.
Relaunch of Glass Orchids – dichroic glass jewelry made by Maine Glass Artist, Nancy Tang

 

The Relaunch of Glass Orchids 

….has been and ongoing task for about a year now, and I’m getting closer to really having GlassOrchids.Art up and running smoothly.  Recently I’ve noticed a lot of new subscribers to my website. So many that it seemed suspicious. That’s the world we live in now isn’t it? But you know what? I was right. Checked out several of them and they were known spammers. So I’ve disabled subscriptions on the site, deleted them all and removed 100 spam comments that were waiting for me to review.

It is no small task to relaunch Glass Orchids, I’ve had to back up and migrate the entire site to a new host and then deal with all the little glitches that occur when plugins think it’s the old site.  Having run GlassOrchids.com for over 20 years, I now have to try and regain search engine placement, and that’s a whole job unto itself! Learning all the SEO changes and how to  make that work in WordPress vs. an HTML site is another whole ball of wax too. I’ve learned a whole lot though, and I do enjoy working on the site.  I highly recommend a plug in called Wordfence. (and no I don’t get paid to say that, I just find the plugin really helpful.) Watching the live feed of website activity is both fascinating and terrifying; so many bots trying to login and take over!!

Now I can get back to working in the studio creating dichroic glass jewelry and art pieces. I’ve got a Bangor Art Society show coming up in a few weeks and need to make a fused glass wave artwork for it. I’ll post images when it’s complete!

Stay warm folks!
~Nancy

If you’ve arrived  here from outside the site, please visit my home page at: GlassOrchids.Art

Sooooooo today....

Sooooooo today….

Posted on by Nancy Tang

I got the blog to show my posts : ) sure sure you think it’s easy…. no no it’s not lol. Anywho, the website she is up and running. Now I’m waiting for my host to add the SSL certificate so you can shop without worry.  That should take a day or so. In the meantime, I’ll be adding more items and trying to get some inventory on here for you to buy.

IDK how anyone gets anything done. Today I amended the soil in my garden beds, searched each leaf of cukes and squashes like the backs of a child’s ear for squash bug eggs and removed them all, killed cucumber bugs with my bare fingers (yes it’s war), sprayed all those plants with an organic insecticide. I dealt with some issues at the artist coop I am shop manager for,  drove my husband over a friends house to go fishing, took a friend to lunch for her bday and to the lake to go swimming, did some grocery shopping, worked on this site and purchased the SSL, did the dishes, fed the cats, fed the chickens,  and am going to fry up the fish my husband caught today, after which I must do laundry for the week.  It doesn’t seem like that should take all the hours in a day but, believe me, it does.  How the time flies…..

It was a glorious day, the weather was perfect and I spent it doing great things with people I love.  It goes fast folks, enjoy every minute…..

~Nan

It’s not all fun and games that’s for sure….

Posted on by Nancy Tang

I’ve been trying to find the time to port my website over from it’s existing host to this  new one for about a year. People think, oh you’re an artist, that must be so much fun! Well, yeah it is.. but honestly, it’s about 1/5th creating art and 4/5’s doing paperwork, marketing, ordering supplies, and trying to sell our work via FB, Etsy, Ebay, Shows, Shops and yes…. having a functioning website. So folks, bear with me. I’m hoping to have this puppy  up and running  over the next few months…. and now I have to figure out how to make the DNS point to this new place instead of my old site… sheesh.

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyy,

~Nan