A Lampworking 1:2:1 With Laura Quinn

 What do you do on the hottest day of the year so far?

Spend it with Laura Quinn doing a 1:2:1 lampworking session of course! 

We were due to start at 10:00 but moved it forward to try and miss some of the later heat.  I'm not sure how well that worked.  I was very sweaty - it's hard to do your best work with sweat rolling into your eyes and making your hands slippery.  By the time I left at 4pm it said 38c in the studio!

 

But it was a great day.  I'd asked for a 1:2:1 because I felt like I was really starting to get somewhere with blowing little vases but I really needed someone to just help me fine tune what I was doing.

We started by making 4 tiny vases.  You can see the improvement if you look at them in order.  So much better than what I'd been able to make by myself.  I'm really starting to see how hot I need to get the glass and the angles I need to hold things to get gravity to help me out.

 

After lunch we went up a tube size and I made a tiny glass.

I don't intent to make many glasses, but it was great for improving my technical skill.  Again how hot the glass needs to be.  The angle to hold the reamer.  How to use my diamond shears so I don't twist the glass.

I learnt so much I'm desperate to get into my studio to put it into practice and start to really memorise the different steps.  But it's still a little too hot.  Maybe later in the week. 

 

While a sweaty one, I was a great day.  Laura's a great teacher and so happy to share her knowledge.   

Note: I did manage to get into the studio and I made 5 more vases.  I still need to improve my necks but very happy with what I managed to create. 

But it's made me wonder if I need to upgrade my torch.  While I could work with this size tube, it was a little slow and I think I would struggle with anything bigger.  Something to think about. 

Casting Glass Half Sphere Paperweights

 

As you might have noticed I love playing with glass.  One of the techniques I've tried but not really mastered is casting.  So I was quite excited to see Warm Glass offering a casting class in their Glass School.

 

Casting glass half spheres with Silvia Levenson, took us through the whole process of making a mould, filling it with glass, adding designs and finishing it off. 

During 3 live calls over 3 weeks she shared her knowledge, inspiration and answered all our questions.  And with a week between each call we could, in theory, join in.

 

I did try, but work kept getting in the way.  But while I didn't keep up, I have now completed my first attempt and I really want to have another go as I have lots of ideas going forward.

 

I ended up making 6 half spheres as I had enough materials and a kiln big enough to take them.

Making the moulds and doing the first fire with glass billet was quite straight forward.  But then I had to cut some glass circles and it took me a little while to get the courage up to try that.  In the end it was pretty straight forward, helped by the fact I bought myself a circle cutter. 

Next step was to decorate some of the circles for each half sphere.  I would have loved to try a stencil, but I didn't have any and didn't have time to find any.

 

So in two I added one of my glass leaves.  In one I tried to make a landscape. In a couple I used decals.  I did add some gold stars but they burnt off which was disappointing.  (something to remember for next time).

 

I wasn't sure what to do with the last one, so I used some bubble powder.  I had no idea what it would do or how much to use (I think I over did it).  But I do love the result!

I have so many other ideas that I want to try now! 

 

I really enjoyed this project.  It stretched my but in a good way and I definitive want to have another go.  The only problem is how long you have to wait before being able to open the kiln.  With such large chunks of glass they have to cool very very slowly so they don't crack.  I hated waiting!