Playing with glass

This past Thursday, Judy Apol (on the right) and I went to "play with glass" at our friend Susan Molnar's (on the left) shop and studio, Glass House Designs on Main Street in Lowell Michigan. The project was to make fused glass wineglasses. Okay, I've never tried working with glass before but Judy's a pro, having made her living doing stained glass for years. She was kind enough to help with the beginning cutting and showing me how to cut and trim the glass. Boy, I only wish metal cut as easily. I'm always cutting myself when I'm working with metal and ended up without any cuts or punctures from the glass. Plus I stayed clean which never happens in my studio! As I'm cutting up the little pieces I just kept commenting on how much easier it was to cut! Plus it's so cheap compared to metal. And it comes in great colors and textures. I think it's obvious that I really enjoyed this...

This is my "work station". At this point I have one 2.5" square in the kiln, one is waiting and am working on my third one. Next time I'll bring my tweezers because I'm so used to working really small that I started using really tiny pieces of glass. I need tweezers! I absolutely loved doing this. All those colors! Susan gave us free rein of the glass she had in the studio and every color was available. For some reason, I was using "water" colors with the addition of a tiny bit of yellow in the first two and red in the third. Don't know why.

This is Kendra Postma and 4 examples of her glass work, before it's fired. Turns out that Kendra is one of those people who is talented in a variety of mediums so she had her watercolors and her clay showing in Susan's gallery as well as other items. Beautiful work!

This is Judy at her work area with the pile of scrap glass that Susan has in the center of the table for us to use. Talk about good recycling. Susan said that all the scraps we make from cutting down the larger pieces just go into the pile in the center which will then be used by someone else. I loved poking through the pile and I ended up finding most of my glass there. Again, all those lovely colors!

Now I want to make a window! Totally different technique but I really liked fitting all those little pieces together. But I'll need to work with bigger pieces of glass if I want to make something over 3" square or it will be a lifetime project!

So what exactly is it that we made? When we left they were still in the kiln so I haven't seen the end result but the glass melts and drops forming the stem and base of a wine glass. The samples were really fun so I can't wait to see the end results! I'll post the pictures when I get them done.

For someone who has been working in metal for so many years, this was such a fun break to try something new and so different than what I do. This was definitely a play day! Something we all need more of...