Clare Gaylard Glass 

FOUR bees rescued today using a glass and card, (freed bee centre base of the photo) and realised the reverse of the card already had a bee on it. The creator of these glorious, detailed mezzotints is Louise Bird, also taking part in the 'Bee Inspired' touring exhibition.

The unauspicious little chunks of glass to the right (with the right treatment) bloom into the subtle floral elements on these beads. Milliefiori means a thousand flowers in Italian, and the process involves creating a chunk of cane where the pattern runs down the cross section. When the cane is pulled thin and cut into chips, one has the capacity to make multiple tiny flowers.

Glass beads and glass bees for 'Bee Inspired', which runs until the end of June. Looking very like amber. Having been into the lovely room full art and items relating to the bee, I can confirm that at least three bees came in during my visit. Possibly drawn by the wax combs on display. Wonderful textile prints and lampshades by Annette Rolston.

I have added more glass to 'Bee Inspired', at Magpie and Me, for the month of June. Workbench photo.

A tribute to The Bee is taking place at Magpie and Me until July 4th. With my new studio opening this weekend I have only had time to do one session at the torch and have not pulled anything together yet, but I'm liking an excuse for gold and amber.

Telling the bees: 'Marriage, birth or burying. News across the seas, All your sad or marrying' was supposed to be a basic form of respect that would bind bees to a place. 

We went for a walk on my birthday, a glorious day at Snape Maltings. I leaned in to look at the exhibition list and saw my name, I hadn't realised we were in print yet! 'Short Stories' October 9th-16th, Clare Gaylard and Jayne Stansfeld. One for the diary.

At 'Magpie and Me', Hagstones are known by many different names (Druids Glass in Scottish Gaelic) but they are stones with a natural hole. They were considered to have magical powers to cure ills and see through witch and fairy disguises. I'm afraid I make no such claims or promises for these.

So a slight hour between chores and drop-offs so we raced to Aldeburgh to beat the sunset and see the Gormley installed on the top of a Martello Tower (small defensive forts built during the Napoleonic wars). The sunset obliged.

SO we think variously this so-much-better-than Cubist or Futurist person: Is thinking, is planning, is militaristic but at ease, is bored, is watchful, is defensive. Well I went to see 'Field' by Gormley at the Southbank Centre some two or three decades ago with peers and siblings and responded happily to its immensity, partially-formed- focus and mild madness. Aside from The Angel of the North its good to check in again at first hand. Will mine for links to said art and add later.

The poppy details on 'Hedgerows' are my own handmade millefiori. For Art About Town at 'Magpie and Me' in Framlingham.

My 'Suffolk Treasures' are partly inspired by Aldeburgh. work in progress.

At The Quay Gallery: Clare Gaylard and Jayne Stansfeld; Short Stories

Work in progress, should have been for Valentine's Day but keeps evolving. Lilac Wine: Nina Simone or Jeff Buckley for choice. My youngest has a pig obsession at the moment and so of course they have become Lilac Swine.

From a decade or so ago tend to lapse into toddler drawings due to seemingly endless long haul flights and immense traffic jams in Bangkok. It bothered me at the time but I'm liking looking back at them.

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Some of Mr Turner's sketchbooks.. from the Turner Bequest. We went to see the 'Late Turner' at the Tate late last year. What I didn't know (not having seen the Mike Leigh film yet) was how prolific he was, that a sketchbook and any mark-making implement were like extensions of his hands. Apparently other artists reported meeting him on holiday and being put to shame by his passionate, constant creating and recording.

A long time ago I read a Jungian essay exploring the significance of animals in folk tales and the common development of both within cultures. The suggestion was that the animal moved from main protagonist in initial oral traditions, (and children's stories) to companion/pet as society became more complex and regulated, then eventually to foe, when the animal side of human nature became regarded as somehow bestial, or something to be subdued or overcome. That's a fair bit of paraphrasing, I had better read it again.

I love Moreau's paintings, I discovered him as an inspiration for Oscar Wilde's 'Salome' and this second remarkably 'out there' painting of Jupiter and Semele (1895), consensus was that his unfinished sketches were streets ahead of the overworked complete ones. He was an inspired teacher and Matisse his most famous student. In Paris his elegant home/studio is still open and a wonderful place to explore.

 So artist Jill Hedges contacted me with an inspired plan for a scaled 5km 'Space Walk', to take place at night. Having an astrophysicist and other artists on the project already and having fixed on the largest object, the 'sun' (at 1.18 metres) Jill was looking for a minute and somewhat mysterious planet earth, to be lit from within, coming in at 11mm.

This was my first batch of test pieces, hollows with space for a tiny LED light. She settled on one of the test batch, an etched turquoise sphere with cloud trails rolling beneath the surface.

The Blue Mosque, awe-inspiring beauty and calm, I'm beyond pleased to have been. 

For a friend.

Really looking forward to Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A, I got the book a couple of years ago and can still immerse myself in it. Sometimes the overt drama of his work eclipsed the astonishing detail, texture and sculptural elements for me, but this book put me right.

My first exhibition that combined glass and paintings, some African influenced pieces, an early caryatid and a lachryotomy (tear jar) in the form of a female torso.