I made this blue because one of my goals in this class was to create a birthday present for a good friend of mine, and he said he likes the color blue. To make this, I rolled the bubble in frit, and after it was melted it in, I blew it into an optics mold. An optics mold is like a narrow pointy version of a bundt pan, but without the hole in the middle. It makes ridges on the edge of the glass, which is where the frit gets concentrated.
Using the marver table, I twisted the bubble to make the lines spiral around, then smoothed it out and finished the cup. I like the way the transparency makes the lines seem to cross one another.
Sometimes I feel like I ought to try something harder than tumblers, but I like tumblers. They’re functional, and the simple shape lets me experiment with coloring variations, like the optics mold or dragging lines or the mold that makes bubbles.
