Warm Glass

I know I have absolutely failed in my aim to keep people up to date with what I am doing at Uni via this blog - I am sorry!  My only excuse is that I have been madly busy... of course... what did I expect?

Anyway, today I have finally managed to take the all important photographs of what I've been up to so I can bring you up to date. 

We have been divided into groups and each group has spent 2 weeks in each of the 3 departments; glass, ceramics and jewellery/metalwork.  My first 2 weeks were spent in the glass department.  We mainly looked at casting glass and the various ways of making moulds for this - it's a pretty slow process!  Here are my cast pieces... they are still a bit rough around the edges and need a bit more smoothing and polishing up.  They don't have the lovely shiny surface you get with hot glass, the effect is more like sea glass - which of course is a favourite of mine!

This piece was made from recycled broken pieces of blown glass - I carefully selected mostly clear pieces and just a few pieces with the odd flash of colour, and I'm really pleased with the effect I got.  I was worried that the colours might all mix together and give me a lump of brown glass...

This next piece was made by layering purple and then clear casting glass into the mould.

These last pieces were made from smashed up window glass - a different effect entirely.

I also got to have a go at sandblasting - that was great fun and the results much more immediate.