Glass Blown -

If you can’t handle the heat, stay outta the workshop!

I went to my very first glass blowing class in Hollywood and made some fantastic glass globes aka Christmas ornaments! The instructor, Kathy Reimer has been doing this for over 10 years and loves glass as a medium for so many possibilities. If you are in LA and intersted in doing some ‘grounding exercises’ – I highly suggest this class! I signed up through the LA City College’s extension courses but I am sure you can sign up directly with Kathy too.

We learned 3 techniques, the basic blowing a sphere, heat it up while turning it like a mini rotisserie chicken. When it gets ‘red hot’ you remove from flame, blow while turning it – not too big! Cuz the glass is super thin, it will break for sure. This is one of my faves that I made but it was way too big, and so it broke 🙁

and then sometimes it looks perfect but then it ‘pops’ because it wasn’t heated all the way around the bulb.

The key to doing this is to concentrate, get the right timing and be precise. Here are some of the other ones I made.

There were 8 people who came to do this, one couple, three random girls and one random guy and me. So… it wasn’t really a ‘Hey! Let’s take pics for my blog!’ kind of class O_O… So I discretely filmed some footage cuz I really wanted to share with you! The loud sound is the gas flame thing.. so turn off the sound.. I don’t actually say anything.

Safety first 🙂

Here is how it’s done!

Glass Blowing from heydoyou on Vimeo.

Here I am adding the line of glass onto the tube before heating it up, and then blowing it. They are then put under the blankets to cool so it will not experience ‘thermal shock’ and break.

Glass Blowing Pt 2 from heydoyou on Vimeo.

More pics here

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