Member Benefits

Member Benefits: Getting what you want

Everyone I know well enough to have a discussion of this sort confesses to a need for some sort of creative outlet. It seems to be part of being human. For most of us in the Guild that creativity is expressed through glass. I invite you to take 5 minutes to share with us what would help you with your glass creativity and email it to me. I’ll compile the results and put them in the next newsletter anonymously (unless you specifically say I can quote you).

Joining together as the Guild we have more power to help each other in ways that would be difficult to do individually:

  • We get sponsors to give us discounts
  • We organize shows like Open Studios and Gathering of the Guilds to help you sell your work
  • Through the newsletter, website, email list, Facebook etc. we promote your events
  • Through General Meetings and Play Days we share glass techniques and business skills
  • Through picnics and parties we encourage you to get to know your glass neighbors so you can share molds, techniques, problem solving etc.

The “we” in the list above is a bunch of volunteers at all skill levels. We’ve found we get more out of the Guild when we put more into it. If you want the Guild to help you be more creative, you need to give us specifics. Write it down and email it as mentioned above. Attend a Board meeting (they’re on Zoom) and explain in person. Even better, volunteer along with us:

  • Help decide what the Guild does next year by being an officer: email the President for details
  • Help with the newsletter to connect with others: email the Editors
  • Join the team to fine tune the website so it is a better backbone of communication: email the Website Chair
  • Help with or organize a studio tour in your area to sell your work and talk glass: email Linda Gerrard or Karen Seymour
  • Get your favorite glass business to be a sponsor so you can save money: email the Sponsorship Chair
  • Organize a Play Day to explore new techniques: email the Event Coordinator
  • Come to one of the August Guild picnics: email the host in the event listing:
    -> August 6th in Battle Ground WA (near Portland)
    -> August 13th in Seattle

If you are not yet a member, please join today by clicking “Join” in the menu.

Website Tour: 5) “For Members” Menu

We’re pausing our member benefits series to cover the website in detail so you know better know how to use this tool to further your glass experience.

When you go to PNWGlassGuild.org and Log in “For Members” is added to the top menu. “Join” and “Login” disappear. You’ll see this drop-down:

I) Member Contacts List
When we invite you to reach out to new members in your area, or if you meet someone at a Play Day, Guild Picnic, or other event here’s where you can find their contact info.

2) Member News and Classifieds
This is an archive of recent Member News and Classified emails. You can quickly find that recent offer to sell a kiln or person looking for a repair.

3) My Profile: Set up what you display in the Members’ Gallery. Note that you need to turn it on in the privacy settings in “My account” for the public to see it.

4) My Account your account settings such as renewal date, list of payments, email preferences, turning on your Member’s Gallery display so the public can see your work etc.

5) Website Help: Here’s where “Welcome to the Guild” outlines how to take advantage of your benefits including guidance in setting up your Members Gallery display, how to access you Member Benefits, controlling what emails you get from the Guild and anything else that we find more than 1 person asking for help with. There are more detailed help posts here for volunteers who edit the website. If you have any suggestions for additions or corrections to the website help please contact Karen Seymour

6) Guild Documents: here’s where you find the Board Meeting minutes, the Policies and Procedures, and Officer Job Descriptions (the list of current officers is under About>The Guild as discussed in the January 2023 issue).

7) Log out: this is mostly used by volunteer editors who want to switch between what an editor sees and what the public sees. You should also use this after posting your profile to the Member’s Gallery to see if it shows up when you are not logged in. If not, you forgot to turn it on. Log in and see “Members’ Gallery: adding your work” under For Members>Website help for more info.

Tip: if you log-in first whenever you go to the website, you’ll be able to see more, especially in this case.

If you are not yet a member and therefore can’t Login we encourage you to join by pushing “Join” from the menu so you can take advantage of the many benefits (your dues help us pay for the software that runs the website).

Website Tour: 4) “About” Menu

We’re pausing our member benefits series to cover the website in detail so you know better know how to use this tool to further your glass experience.

When you go to PNWGlassGuild.org and choose “About” from the top menu you’ll see this drop-down:

l) Contact us

There are currently 5 tabs/forms for ways to contact Guild volunteers of various sorts:

Submit a Classified tab: Anyone can fill this out to ask/tell the membership something glass-related via email. Sell a kiln, look for someone to do custom work or repairs etc. We reserve the right to reject your request if we don’t think it is of interest to the majority of members.

Submit Your Event tab: Members can log in and fill out the form to add your glass-related event to the calendar (if you don’t see the form you are not logged-in). A volunteer will add the event within a few days.

Get Zoom Link tab: If there’s a meeting you want to attend and you’d like us to email you the Zoom link because you can’t find it/can’t log-in to see it on the event’s page.

Report Tech Issue tab: Use this to contact the web-help volunteers about a website-related problem.

Anything Else tab: fill out the form and we’ll try our best to route your message to the correct person.

2) The Guild: Our Mission and Goals and 3 tabs leading to Guild History, a list of Current Board Members, and the Volunteer Teams without whose efforts there would be no Guild. Please contact a team lead if you can volunteer a bit of time to help in some way.

3) Member Benefits: a list of reasons to join the Guild

4) Our Sponsors: The list of businesses who have supported the Guild in some way. If you’re logged-in you can see the benefit, often a discount code, that a specific sponsor gives to our members.

5) Info for Sponsors: information about becoming a sponsor and why you might want to.

Tip: if you log-in first whenever you go to the website, you’ll be able to see more.

If you are not yet a member and therefore can’t Login we encourage you to join by pushing “Join” from the menu so you can take advantage of the many benefits (your dues help us pay for the software that runs the website).

Website Tour: 3) News & Events Menu

We’re pausing our member benefits series to cover the website in detail so you know better know how to use this tool to further your glass experience.

When you go to PNWGlassGuild.org and choose “News and Events” from the top menu you’ll see this drop-down:

I) Public News is the record of the Tuesday emails sent to the whole mailing list, both members and those who choose to subscribe to the Public emails when they subscribe to the newsletter.

If you can’t find that email you got last Tuesday about an art show or meeting or something, look here.

2) the Newsletter is the current issue. You’re probably reading it right now. On a large screen you can get the current issue from the top of the right hand column of most pages but getting it from the top menu is probably easier for those on a cell phone.

In the right-hand column there’s an index to articles by date and type. If you want to read all the Member benefits at once or look through the featured artists, here’s the place to click.

3) Events Calendar

Upcoming events are also listed on the bottom of most pages with a “view Calendar” to get to the calendar page you see here. The top of this page tells you what the color codes on the listings mean

The right side bar allows you to sort for specific event types in both past and future.

One of the member benefits is to add your events to the Guild Calendar: log in, go to About>Contact us, click the Submit Your Event tab and fill out the form (if you don’t see the form you are not logged-in). A volunteer will add the event within a few days.

Tip: if you log-in first whenever you go to the website, you’ll be able to see more.

If you are not yet a member and therefore can’t Login we encourage you to join by pushing “Join” from the menu so you can take advantage of the many benefits (your dues help us pay for the software that runs the website).

Website Tour: 2) The Glass Menu

We’re pausing our member benefits series to cover the website in detail so you know better know how to use this tool to further your glass experience.

When you go to PNWGlassGuild.org and choose “glass” from the top menu you’ll see this drop-down:

Tip: if you log-in first, you’ll be able to see the videos in “Education”. As you will see in future articles, being logged-in unlocks many things.

If you are not yet a member and therefore can’t Login we encourage you to join by pushing the “Join” tab so you can take advantage of the many benefits (your dues help us pay for the software that runs the website).

l) Members’ Gallery
Here’s where to see the amazing variety of Guild Member glasswork. Clicking on any member’s image will bring up their profile page. It’s mostly alphabetical but look a little before and after where you expect to find the name. We’re now up to 4 pages (the page choice is at the bottom). If you know the exact spelling of the artist’s name you can use the search at the top of every page.

Clicking the “about” tab in the black bar usually gives the artist’s contact info. Clicking an individual image may give you more info about that piece.

Logged-in Members can find the instructions for adding their own profile under For Members” > Website Help > Members’ Gallery.

2) The Glass Arts

This long essay is to give the casual website visitor an idea of what is involved in some of the various types of glass: Cold (stained, mosaic, applique, gilding, sandblasting, and other cold-work), Hot (blown, torch-worked) and Warm (fusing, slumping, draping, kiln casting…)

This was written before the website was functional so all the appropriate links to the artists have not been created (most of these artists are in the Members’ Gallery). We also now have a much wider range of artists to choose examples from. We’d love to have a team of volunteers to help update the essay and add subsidiary pages.

3) Education (only members can see the videos)
This is where the videos of our Play Days and the informational parts of our General Meeting are posted. The Education page will give you the list of topics but only members can see most of these meeting videos you must log-in to see the videos.

4) Play Days (only members can come to Play Days)
If you’re wondering “what’s a Play Day”, it’s a casual, fun shared exploration of a particular technique where members get together in someone’s studio or on Zoom. You’ll find Play Days in the calendar as soon as someone decides to offer one. How about you?

5) Find a Teacher (only members can add themselves to this list)
If you’re looking for someone to help you learn, here’s the list of members in your area who want you to know they teach. If you’re a member you can log-in and fill out the form at the bottom of the page to have your name added to the list. If you’re looking for supplies, some of the teachers sell them. You’ll also find suppliers under About> Our Sponsors

Website Tour: 1) Home, Side Bars, Login, Join

We’re pausing our member benefits series to cover the website in detail. It has a whole lot of resources for you if you learn where to look.

When you go to PNWGlassGuild.org you’ll see several short articles of things the editors consider timely and this menu bar:

If you are a member and click Login, after logging in you’ll see this menu (do you see the differences?):

As you’ll see in future articles in this series, being logged-in unlocks many things.

If you are not yet a member and therefore can’t Login we encourage you to join by pushing the “Join” tab so you can take advantage of the many benefits (your dues help us pay for the software that runs the website).

The bottom of each page

has links to upcoming events, links to the Guild’s public page on Facebook and to the members’ group. There is also a scrolling display of our sponsors logos to remind you to thank the community glass businesses which support the Guild and help make working in glass so much fun.

The Events are color coded. Push the “view calendar” to see the full description of the bar and left side colors plus the whole list of the year’s events. Colored bars are Guild events and white bars are member-submitted events. The colors on the left side indicate what kind of event: red are meetings, blue are Play Days and classes, green are shows, yellow are other.

The sidebars differ from page to page

Here’s the sidebar from the Home page if you are logged-in.

Subscribe: When you join the Guild you are automatically subscribed to the newsletter (and to the Tuesday Public News email announcements) so you don’t need to do it again. Having already subscribed before joining doesn’t mess things up.

Read the current issue is a quick way to get to to where you probably are now.

Search looks through all of the site’s pages and posts. It has the benefits and limitations you encounter on all those other websites: if you know exactly what you’re looking for you can usually find it.

If you lost a recent Tuesday Public News email, you can access the list from the side bar (and from the News and Events menu).

The Member News section is only visible if you are logged-in. It is the list of Classified, Guild News, and Guild Business (Board) emails that were sent out recently (these are also available from the For Members menu). You can change which of these 3 types of emails you receive by going to the For Members menu> My Account and choosing the Email Prefs tab (more info is in For Members>Website Help>Email: controlling what you get).

Events allows you to go looking through recent and upcoming events by type.

Next issue: What’s under “Glass”

Exploring Your Member Benefits, Part 5

Hosting A Play Day

Part of belonging to a Guild is getting together with others who share your interests. A Play Day is a free, informal gathering of Guild members to explore some facet of glass work, usually held at a member’s house. This isn’t the host being a teacher, it’s a chance to get together and play with glass. There are some videos of Play Days on the Guild website under Glass>Education.
Log-in before going to any of these links: Enamel, done as before and after sessions in 3 videos, Fossil Vitria done as a Zoom, Vitrograph pulling, edited to show process rather than beginner’s learning experiences.

Scraffito Play Day

How to set up a Play Day

  1. Think of some glass technique that can be done in about 3 hours or broken into 2 to 3 hour chunks. Figure out how much space it needs and how many people you feel comfortable hosting in person.
  2. Put together a materials list. It’s OK to put out a donations bucket to defray your costs if it isn’t a project that has members bringing all their own materials.
  3. Invite members over to play. Guild Play Days are member only events so please ask folks to join the Guild before they attend.
  4. If you want the publicity of making it a Guild event, notify the Play Days coordinator and they’ll see that it gets on the calendar and sent out in the Guild news. If there’s enough lead time we can also publicize it through the Newsletter.

Making it a Zoom meeting allows all members to join in and helps promote the broader reach of the Guild. Doing this successfully requires getting a volunteer who acts as Zoom intermediary for the on-line participants rather than taking an active part in the Play Day projects.

We encourage you to record it, edit it, and put a link to it in the education section of the website for members to watch later (give links to the websites of instructors you’ve taken classes from rather than sharing their secrets). Contact Karen Seymour for help uploading your video to the Guild’s website or send her a link to it on your own Youtube channel.

We also welcome a short article with photos about your Play Day. Send it to the newsletter editors.

Check the Guild calendar and watch your email for a Play Day near you!

Exploring Your Member Benefits, Part 4

Networking

Part of joining the Guild is your opportunity to talk about all aspects of working with glass with others who share our mutual glass interest. Each month we publish a list of our newest members in the current newsletter. We ask that you to reach out to welcome them, and especially if you are from the same general area.

How can you do that? Log in, go to “For Members” which now appears in the top menu and choose Member Contacts List. Type their name in the search and their contact info will pop up. Or if you want to hold a Play Day at your studio, you can sort the list by Zip or City and see who lives nearby (you may need to scroll sideways and show more than 10 records).

How do you find a member or teacher who shares your particular interest? In the Member Gallery and the Find a teacher page (both under “Glass” on the top menu) you can find contacts who teach a particular technique or who are perhaps willing to engage in individual coaching/teaching/delivering a special group workshop.

You can also network during Guild events. In addition to our monthly general meetings you’ll have two or three in-person events at which to talk glass with Guild members this spring: In Seattle there are 5 members on the ArtinBloomSeattle.com garden art studio tour and sale April 23-24. In Portland May 6-8 you can take part in one of the Guild’s biggest annual events The Gathering Of The Guilds, otherwise known as GotG (see related article). Even if you don’t currently sell your work you can volunteer or offer an extra bed to an out of town member. There will also be Play Day March 26th via Zoom and in-person south of Portland

One of the best ways to get to know each other is to attend the Board Meetings via Zoom to learn about the Guild and to express your ideas. You can volunteer to join a team or help with an event or even attend a Play Day. You can attend a General Meeting which focuses on a particular theme or topic and learn from the other members who attend and contribute. And don’t forget, if you know someone who is like minded but not a member, invite them to a General Meeting or even to join the Guild.

If you have other ideas on how to promote networking, please send them to Terry Thomas, our PNWGG President.

Exploring Your Member Benefits, Part 3:

You Have a Voice

What do you want out of the Guild to further your glass-artistry growth? Speak up.

There’s reciprocity in any organization: the more energy you contribute, the more you get out of it.

“I’ve been a member for almost 2 years. But these have been Covid years. I joined because there was a discount for members in the on-line contest. Then I started attending the Guild’s General Meetings via Zoom and volunteered to help with the new website and newsletter. Then I started going to Board meetings to see how the decisions were being made.

Instead of feeling isolated by Covid restrictions, I have lots of new glass friends: I know who to call if I want help exploring new areas like dichro or cane pulling or lots of other things. Someday I’ll even get to meet these inspiring new friends in person.” (Karen Seymour, Seattle)

Things YOU can do to get more out of your membership:

1) You don’t even need to be a member to attend the General Meetings. “Studio tips” (members showing how they solved their organizing and other studio issues) is coming up January 23rd. Since meetings are Zoom you don’t even have to leave home. This year they will be from 3:30pm to 5pm on the 4th Sunday of most months.

These are NOT business meetings, they are discussions of various topics of interest to glass artists. Sometimes it’s a very narrow topic like “How Fusing Temperature Affects Texture”, sometimes of much wider interest like “Pricing Your Work” or “Lighting”. Meeting videos are posted in Glass>Education on the website for logged in members to view if they missed a meeting or want to review a topic.

2) Send meeting ideas or volunteer to share your insights to our VP Rachel Dollar. She’s currently looking for “Studio Tips” for January 23rd and “What I learned From My Students” (tips on teaching glass classes) for February 27th. Watch some of the meeting videos and you’ll see it’s not scary, just talking for a few minutes to a group of friends.

3) Share any ideas with our President, Terry Thomas by email or just by typing them in the survey form.

4) Go a step further and attend a Board meeting to participate in the discussion of how we implement your idea. The next Board meeting is Monday Feb. 7th at 7pm via Zoom. Members can go to email prefs in their account settings to sign up for the “Guild Business” emails to get the agenda and Zoom links for Board meetings

5) Volunteer: you can start small by helping with or hosting a Play Day or helping Rachel with a General Meeting. If you’re in the Portland area Gathering Of the Guilds in May will need lots of volunteers. Or join one of the teams with on-going projects.

6) Host an event: The Guild has an established presence in the Portland OR area for historic reasons but wants to help glass events throughout the Pacific NW. Doing so in your city requires a member in your city to lead the effort. If not you, then who?

When you ask the Guild to sponsor your event you’ll get website, newsletter, email, and Facebook publicity plus you can usually find a member who has done a similar event to give you some tips and answer questions.

Guild Picnic in Seattle, August 2021

You have a voice: use it and you’ll get much more value from your membership.

Exploring Your Member Benefits, Part 2:

The Members’ Gallery


There are 3 pages of Members in our Gallery already. On the top menu it’s Glass>Members’ Gallery

The Members’ Gallery serves several purposes, among them are:

  • Introducing members to each other.
  • Showing off the range of member work to potential new members.
  • Showing member websites to people looking for art, custom work, mentors, or instructors in their area.


To be listed in the Gallery you need to do 3 things:

1) upload a background image, which can be anything from a closeup to a montage of your work. (Please save any text or logos for your profile page)

2) Add a small headshot (200 px) to help us link your appearance to your name and work: we will eventually get back to in-person events.

3) Click yes on the “Show My Profile in the Members’ Gallery” in your account settings

Optionally (and we strongly encourage you to do it) you can a few sentences and up to 9 images on your profile page. This is the page you go to if you click on the member’s image in the Gallery. You can see/add info about each image on your profile page by clicking on it. PLEASE size these images properly or your page will take forever to load.

For more detailed instructions log on and see the website help page Members Gallery: adding your work.

Exploring Your Member Benefits, Part 1:

We’re going to start a series explaining how to take advantage of some of the benefits you get when you join.
The first is

How to get your glass event posted on the Guild’s public calendar:

  1. Log-on to the Guild website
  2. In the top menu go to About>Contacts and click the second tab “Submit Calendar Event”
  3. Fill out the form
  4. Our volunteer will transfer your information from the form to the calendar. Please make it easy on us by filling the form in clearly, with details and correct spelling. Be sure to include a way to get more info.

Log-in to see the complete list of member benefits and how to exercise them under For Members>Website Help>1-Welcome To The Guild