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.

Hot glass - the results!

We got our pieces back from the hot glass day - very exciting! Here is my paperweight - it is purple, honestly... and so smooth and shiny!

One thing I have realised today is that if I am going to make more glass I need to learn how to photograph it properly - all you can see is reflections in these!

And here is the piece made from the sandcast mould of my indian printing block - also pretty difficult to photograph. The glass is tinted where the sand sticks to it, the darker spots are a few little bits of red glass frit I threw in to see what would happen.

It is just a lovely piece of pure texture!

Working with hot glass

I was really really lucky today and had the chance to have a go at working with hot glass at World of Glass in St Helens.  We had the chance to each make a paperweight and also make a sandcast of an object.  I was pretty nervous about it at first, but we were quite a large group and I was one of the last to have a go, so by the time it was my turn I was just impatient to get going and had forgotten all about the nerves!

The tutor gathered some hot glass from the furnace for me and I had to keep it moving, turning it all the time.

 

Then I dipped it in coloured powdered glass...

Heating it in between each step, and remembering to keep it turning steadily all the time. You do get very very hot doing this!

I shaped the paperweight using a very sophisticated piece of equipment - 6 sheets of folded soaked newspaper!

The finished paperweight is now in the kiln cooling down very very slowly.  I can't wait to see it!