Friday, December 2, 2011

Orangeish Orb

This is the orb I made a few weeks ago at my glassblowing session.  Glassblowing has always been an obsession of mine and it was a dream come true to actually do it.  Hubby got me a groupon for a 1 on 1 session to make a paperweight.  I prefer to call it an orb, I like that it makes it sound less useful.   I got to pick the colors.  I chose 2 colors, yellow and red.  The yellow is opaque and the red is transparent, the hope was that if I put the red over the yellow I would get orange.  It doesn't exactly look orange, more pukey orange-brown, but I still like it!  This pic makes it look much better than it does in real life :)

Now when I say that I made this, I really only got to do a small part of it on my own and Dan helped me with the rest.  (I wish I could share pics of making it but there was no way to take pics while holding onto molten glass.)  Dan gathered the clear glass on the rod and then handed it over to me and I heated it in the glory hole and rolled it into powdered glass. Then the powered glass had to be melted so back into the glory hole it went.  I rolled it in powdered glass and heated it back up 4 times and then heated the whole thing up really good.  The tricky part is that you have to keep turning it so the glass doesn't fall off the rod.  Then Dan held onto the rod and kept it spinning and I got to take tweezers and change the shape of the color circle.  That is how I got the swirls and air bubbles in there.  I stuck the tweezers in and twisted and pulled.  Then Dan took the whole thing and covered it in clear glass and shaped it for me.  It has to cool down slowly in a kiln and then Dan grinds the bottom so it lays flat.  I went back a week later and picked it up.  
Photography tip:  This is how I took this pic.  I used my hubby's LED light and put a piece of white paper over it.  I made sure it wasn't too sunny because the glass is very reflective. You can see a little bit of the window in the reflection.  Here is what it would look like if I didn't use the light below:

Hopefully that little tip helps :) Happy Weekend!! 

4 comments:

Shanea said...

Beautiful! LOve it!!!

Sam W. said...

it's awesome! what a fun skill to practice. have a great weekend!

Gammie said...

Wow! The orb is beautiful!

KendasCrafts said...

I think it looks great! i took a glass-blowing class in college and have been meaning to try to get back into it again. SO much fun!

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