Glass Virtuoso: We’re All About The Glass

Beunos Diaz.

As it turns out, I lied again about showing u guys pictures of flameworked beads. But I do have a good excuse and other pictures of previously glass blown pieces (finally…) to calm the raging torrents of icy-hot purple fountains of rage inside u.

Ok, so u all know that I was going to go flame work some stuff, right? U also know that I promised pictures of stuff from last week that I picked up. However, some devilish sprite stole my pieces away before I could claim them.

Since I’m a fairly civilized dood, I didn’t hurl down lightning bolts at the guilty thief in question, nor did I challenge the unknown devil to a mortal-combat-2-the-death winner-takes-all showdown. Tho I feel confident I’da won…

After quenching the fires of my pernicious (thats an excellent word) rage, I eventually made some pendants. Unfortunately, only 2. They take longer than the beads that were stolen from me.

U start with a 12 mm wide tube of boro (borosilicate) and stick it onto ur punty and melt it into a sphere-ish shape. Then u flatten 1 side on the marver. Then u lay ur dezines on the flat plane of the glass. After which, u can lay a back color over it or clear and add more color and patterns. Then thers alot of transferring between punties, to allow fine fire-polishing and bail/loop adding. Just a bunch of necessary, yet boring details. After all that, u stick into the annealer and wait, and wait, and wait, and…

The first started with a promise. The boro melted perfectly and flattened well. The design sucked, and there began the downfall. I originally tried 4 a flower pattern, with graduated leaves and petals cuz I thought I could do it. Ha ha. Yeah right. I’ma newbz at this still. Nothing remotely flower-like appeared on that glass. Then, later after several botched transfers, I took too much glass off the top of the piece, horribly transmorphing into a hideous, cylindric… thing. How the colored design came out, I have no vague wisp of an idea.

The second one had no time to complete, whatsoever. In which case, I made a lowly mushroom pendant (with 3 mushrooms inside it). That could have been cool, except for I ran out of time and made the bulb too big, and/or the mushrooms too small, and I made the mushrooms in a line from front to back, which means that only 1 mushroom is totally visible…

Sheesh. If they wernt stolen from me, I’ll post some pics in a later update.

Anyway, to leave u, here (finally) are some pictures of real-live hand-blown glass. I think ther pretty kewl. I know that they may not b visible. I’m experimenting w/ new pic software. Don’t comment on lack of visibility. I will consider u a spammer. U know what happens to spammers… Super-bad things involving boiling pitch, helicopters, ninjas and monkeys w/ rocket launchers.

Feast ur little eyeballs.

See, I told u they wer kewl.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 4:25 am and is filed under Blowing, Flame Working. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.