Glass Blowing

I've been taking an 8 week glass blowing class at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, one of the best places in this country to learn. I plan on taking hot glass 2 and hot glass 3. After taking hot glass 2 I can apply to be a TA. I'm debating the time commitment  but it would be a good way to keep myself around hot glass a little less expensively. Why do I always like doing things that are expensive? In any case, here are some pictures.

A Tale of 2 Plates

I've been spending my time lately learning to blow glass. So i haven't taken as much time doing my fused pieces. Here are two pieces I've done recently. The first one I made was the red and white plate. The inspiration for this piece came from leftover pieces from my curling house bowl projects. I ended up with extra pieces of red that were cut into quarter circles. I thought it would look cool to make a piece where it looked like the pieces where spun around each other. It came out about how I would have liked, however I need to use a lighter red next time around. I'm not completely happy with the amount of light that comes through. I would like the red to be brighter with the white background.

The blue piece came from a picture I saw where someone used pattern bars to make a line down the plate. I tried to do that here with just a couple different types of glass. I plan on delving into pattern bars myself in 2013. I look forward to messing around with that. I have to get some equipment first. Dams, and a wet tile saw.

Until next time...

Curling "house" Bowl

 Concentric circles are extremely hard to hand cut, so I cheated. I managed to do the blue in two pieces but after ruining some glass attempting to take the inside circle out in one piece I settled on doing quarter circles. That lead to the idea of keeping the T line defined in the house.

I used Spectrum 96 for all my glass and the black stringers. A wispy clear was used over top of the whole design to give it an in ice look. I've used this technique before and I really have fallen in love with it.

 This piece got a lot of tickets (I was told the bag was half full) put in it at the Chinese auction for the Pittsburgh Curling Club, even though I didn't get it finished until Saturday morning and the auction was that night. All other auction items had been out for Tropicurl 2012 since Thursday night.

I love this bowl so much I am going to make another very soon just for myself.

Holiday Plate

 So, I just completed a simple holiday plate. I wanted to try out the Spectrum CutUps™ and got some adventurine green Christmas trees. I layered iridized cream glass, clear glass and then the trees, and some red beads for a holly look and did a full fuse.

Then I slumped it in my hexagonal plate mold. First time use, hehehe!

Simple project, but I hope it puts a smile on someones face. Next time around I think I need to add a little decoration around the edges.