Saturday Workshop

I only made one stripe bead yesterday and it came out a bit wonky. I guess I need to practice stripe beads too. *sigh* The good thing is that I was able to get some reduction going with the Double Helix. Yay! Now all I have to do is try it out on different base bead colors. That should be fun.

Today I took a beginners glass sculpting class at Flame Tree Glass. I’ll say this right off the bat – I suck at sculpting. I’m sure if I practice enough I’ll be able to do it, but early results are not promising. Still, it was a good day. How can a day filled with melting glass not be good?

I had to get up early – a little past 5:00 AM! My mother got up with me and made coffee for me. She’s been very supportive of my interest in glass and I really appreciate it – but that’s a whole other subject. The drive over was uneventful and I got to the store half an hour early. When I called my mother to tell her that I got there (I don’t know why I did that) she used Google to search for coffee nearby and found a Krispy Kreme just up the road a bit. So, I went and had a couple of doughnuts.

The workshop was really great. Lance had us do some warm up exercises – s bends, maria, proper weld, cold seal, flame cutting, and fire polishing to name a few. I think I did well on the warm up exercises but when it came to putting it all together, I sort of lost it. The animals that we made were: duck, swan, dolphin, turtle, and bunny. I didn’t make the bunny because the class ran long and I was tired.

When I showed my mother what I had made, she didn’t say much. There wasn’t much good to be said, so that’s allright. I’m not even going to bother with trying to photograph those sad little lumps of twisted glass.

The store rents torch time for $20 an hour and tutorials for $65 an hour. I have been thinking about this off and on all evening, but I think for now I need to concentrate on bead making and using what I have on hand. The point of taking this class was to learn the basics of sculpting and get over my fear. I think I did that. Maybe I can make a little yellow duck bead.