I made this on the first day of class this session, sort of as a warm up. I generally like to use the ‘hodgepodge’ frit, the frit that’s left over from other frits, or that’s been mixed in. I can’t say it’s my best paperweight. I like them to be rounder, not so pointed. Also, I would rather have more glass between the color and the outside.

You’d think paperweights were as useful as preschool ash trays, but I actually use my paperweights when photographing my pieces.  I have a  big roll of paper I use as a backdrop, and the paperweights keep it from slipping off the table.

Ironically, I made this one after I made the blue goblet. I say ironic, because it’s kind of mutant in comparison. I was shooting more towards a pilsner glass shape rather than a martini glass.  Somewhere along the way, it got out of shape and I never got it back on shape again.

I made this cup thinking it would be a good front-runner in the goal to create a birthday present for my friend. He likes to drink Manhattans, which are traditionally drunk out of a martini glass. I asked David Vogt  how to make one, and he demonstrated. this doesn’t quite have the martini shape, but I don’t think that’s terrible because the martini glass is really a terribly impractical shape. it tips too easily and is hard to drink out of without spilling, even for the sober.

These are more from the same set of bottlecaps I made in Februrary.

I think I bought the letter charm and the letter brad when the Paper Studio close its doors to the public (they are still mail order and open for classes) It was a sad day, but 40% off made it less sad. the typed paper behind the alder cone is a card from a card catalog, which I use to store glazes, and little ephemera like the polymer clay millefleur slice in the bottom center bottlecap.

I bought the key charm in the top middle from a vendor at a convention.  I think I had bottlecaps in mind when I bought it.

This bowl is called “suckbowl”  not because of its quality but because of how it’s made. David demonstrated it, and I knew I had to try it out.  You start by applying color around a bubble, then blow the bubble into as big a sphere as you can manage.  Getting it nice and hot, you pull it out of the gloryhole and suck, to collapse the sphere in on itself. This takes timing, because then you have to jack it off the pipe and use tongs to place it onto a still-soft cookie foot.

As you can see, mine got a little off center when I sucked the air out of it. I felt sad, but I wasn’t the only one who had problems.  The cool thing about making a bowl like this is that the lines criscross for a nice effect, and the cookie foot provides a smooth base with no need of grinding. The bad thing is that the rim is thicker than i’d like.

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.

I’ve had bad luck with little red cups. I had one that I made last year that I gave away to a friend, so I wanted to make a new one to replace it. I made one the first day, and it looked pretty good, but it fell off the punti because I pushed too hard with the jacks.  Then I made a second one that survived annealing, only to get broken while removing the bit of punti that remained. this is the third one and I think it turned out okay.

It does strike me as ironic that I still can’t make cups as good as the cheap Mexican ones you find in Tucson or at Macayos.

I mentioned in an earlier post how I make these bottlecaps. One of the hardest parts is finding enough amusing and visually interesting pieces to put in them. If the background is simple, like the bottom left and the bottom right, I need to have more interesting inserts. I do have a few watch insides. Watch bands tend to break after a year or two, and a new watch is cheaper than a new watch band. (Yes, I always wear a watch. Don’t tell me it’s easier to look at my phone. Unlike Dick Tracy, my phone doesn’t strap to my wrist.) the gear is from a package of gears from the Tim Holz line. I’ve seen people use them liberally to make steampunk jewelry, etc.

If the background paper is more interesting, such as the bird, upper right, I can get away with simpler findings. In that one, I used mylar confetti. I used to have quite the collection of mylar confetti. I still know where to get some, but my sister and I stopped the confetti-letter war back in the 90s.

I’d been having trouble remembering how to make nice flowers, and Josh stopped by and gave me a demo. He makes some really spectacular flowers, in multiple colors, and if you want one, I think he has some for sale at the Mesa Art Center museum.

He suggested snipping the disc of hot glass into six divisions, then heating it again,  which causes the snips to pull back in on themselves. Sure enough, the next flower I made with this technique was worlds better than the mutant flowers.

I did this flower after the mutant flower turned out so badly. As you can see, I used the same colors, but this one looks more like a morning glory and less like the tentacle of an alien whose parents were exposed to too much gamma radiation. I don’t actually like morning glories that much, but at least it’s symmetrical.