I went down to the studio over an hour early to try and get into the cold shop to polish the paperweights we had made the first night of class but there was already someone using the cold shop. I hung around talking to one of the instructors and watched him make a couple small vases and helped him where I could since he was alone in the shop at the time. He used an optic mold to form the vases which was cool to watch. I also got some tips along the way that will help in the future, I hope.
When class started we were picking up from where we were last week. There are 3 students to each instructor and when the three in my group were asked who wanted to go first neither of them wanted to so I did. I successfully made a starter bubble in my first gather and after a second gather managed to shape it into a thick, short, slightly lopsided tumbler. I am really looking forward to seeing how it turned out after next week's class. I then switched instructors and went again. Again another good bubble and second gather. I was getting a little to heavy with the blowing and blew the bottom a little thin. I ended up sticking the punty to the bottom a little too well and it shattered during the transfer. My fellow student who delivered the punty was shocked and started apologizing immediately. I laughed and told her not to worry about it. It's not going to be the last, and definitely not the nicest, thing I will make that hits the floor.
After class the coldworking room was going to be open for a while so I got to put a nice polish on my paperweights. Hopefully this weekend I can get a couple pictures of them to post.
In order to feed my new addiction I have been surfing the web looking for information and better yet videos on glass blowing. I came across this series on Expert Village by Jim McKelvey that is pretty good. Check them out if you are interested.
Let me know if you know of any other sources of cool videos, I can't get enough of this stuff.
Thanks for reading,
-drew-
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2 comments:
Drew,
Thanks for the kind words. Your glass fusing looks great. I'm sure you'll do great. It's kind've like you said in your blog about things hitting the floor. It's impossible to get good without alot of nice things hitting the floor over time.
Keep up the good work!
keep on going. my wife wrote an article on a glass blowing school in prescott az for glass craftsman magazine, and at the end of the day they let her blow a small cup. lopsided, not round, squatty, offset, but she's really proud of it.
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