29. Try Glass Blowing

Try Glass blowing

After watching Netflix's Blown Away Programme (both seasons). I became really interested in this process and just watching how they managed to create such amazing pieces through various techniques made me want to try and give this a go.

On the 17th of June 2023 I was enrolled in the at beginners class at Elin Isaksson Glass. The glass overall was excellent and I would highly recommend it. We stated off picking our colours for the day.

Purple, blue, green and yellow were those selected.

The first task was creating a paperweight. Sounded easy as a starter - sadly that's where my confidence gained from hours of watching Blown Away evaporated quickly and the reality of the skill and speed required to actually do this properly set in. After almost losing one of the tools in the soon to be paperweight due to not taking it out so quickly I felt my three creations would be of the 'one of a kind' nature. Luckily under the expert guidance of Elin any mistakes or tardiness was corrected quickly so I wouldn't end up with quasimodoesque glass pieces.

We then moved on to the vessel (cant call it a glass or tumbler in case it doesn't quite work). I had been told that the yellow may not come out or may come out as brown. The stubbornness in me went lets stull go for the yellow and just hope it plays out and doesn't come out looking like a well fired turd. This one seemed to go better for me in terms of my speed and skill.

Finally a bauble, apparently the easiest of the three to do. I guess this is where the confidence once again took a battering. It was another case of two slow on the manoeuvres and more reheating. I thought an attempt at doing an 'earth' bauble would look reasonably good, but as is evident from the finished product different coloured glass has different temperatures of engagement and seems to have disappeared.

Overall a really good day and I really enjoyed it and it gave a superb insight into which is a difficult and highly skilled trade plus alluded to the years required to get to a proficient and competent level.

My finished pieces (which clearly would have been far more bespoke had Elin not jumped in a few times).

Paperweight