Intro to Borosilicate Glass with Laura Quinn

 

Just before Christmas last year I spent a morning with Laura Quinn and my mate to have a go at making blown baubles.  It was a lovely morning, and as we were leaving Laura started telling us how she was going to offer an intro to borosilicate glass class in the spring.  So of course I signed up.

I have done a little with boroilicate before, but I'd been having a few issues at home (like the petals falling off my flowers) so I was keen to get a little more tuition on this.

 

Laura has transformed her garage into a lampworking studio with room for 4 students.  It's a really nice space and the group size was just right, enough people to talk to but not so many that you didn't get personal attention.

 

The class was over two days.  We started by learning how to make chains.  I made some rectangles and some circles.  I was surprised how easy it was to join them up!

Next up we started making components for flowers - petals and leaves.  We had several techniques to play with here, and I think this is something I want to practice more at home.  My petals were quite fat!

 

On day two we learnt how to put our flowers together.  This was in a slightly different way than I've learnt before, so I think I can now play and take the best from both.

After flowers we learnt how to blow little vases out of glass tube.  I think this was my favourite thing!  I only had time for 2 and I could see the improvement just in that time.

 

Laura also showed us how to make glass rings.  Different from how I make my soft glass rings!

 

And lastly some glass knitting.  Much harder than it looks, but I think I started to get the hang of it towards the end.  

 

So by the end of the weekend I had quite an impressive haul.  And I'd learnt so much!  It was a great environment for learning - very friendly.  I'll be keeping an eye out to see what other classes she offers in the future.

I haven't really been in my studio this year as it's been quite cold and I've not been feeling very inspired.  This was the shove I needed, and now I'm excited to get out there again.  Yay!