This past weekend I enjoyed a "girlfriend getaway" to the Oregon coast. Besides lots of catching up, a highlight was trying my hand at glass blowing. One of the friends wanted to make glass floats as gifts and recruited me as an extra set of hands. What fun!
My "helper", reaching into an oven with temps over 2000 degrees...
...a rod was covered with molten glass...
...and rolled into broken shreds of colored glass.
The rod was then placed in another oven to reheat the glass and colored pieces, all the while rotating the rod so as to even out the glass surface and create "swirls" of color.
"Pinching" with tweezers to make more swirls of color.
And back to the oven...more heating!
Then finally, what on earth am I doing here?
Blowing air into the glass so it expands to create the hollow glass float.
{I listened closely to the instructions to NOT BREATH IN.}
And the result...kind of.
fyi: This is not the glass float I made. I liked this one made by my friend much better!
So...that is the one I'm showing you.
I'm looking forward to doing this again on a return trip to the beach.
Perhaps a paperweight, wouldn't that be fun?
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6 comments:
I have always wanted to blow some glass. Always in awe when I see it done!
I always wanted to try my hand at glass-blowing..amazing what one can do with all the colors. We visited the Simon Pearce store in VT last fall and saw up-close the skill required to create masterpieces.
Hey... this is so beautiful..isn't it soo much fun.. I tried my hand at glassblowing recently...for creating pumpkins.. i wrote about them here.http://nicksnacksbyme.blogspot.com/2011/10/glassblowing.html
I did this here in Boston and loved it!
That looks like so much fun...I've heard it's really hard! Your friend's creation turned out beautiful!
YOU have ALL the FUN!! NICE! franki
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