Optic Mold Pieces....

Here are my new creation here with the new optic mold. I have made these two bowls. This one is mandarin orange, canary yellow, and steel blue.

This bowl is garnet red, mandarin orange, canary yellow, and some kind of light blue. I like these group of colors it turned out well. Just needed more red on the bottom but still turned out great!

Ok this is an iris Orange so they say but it does not turn orange in anyway at all. It seems like it is a great piece due to everyone likes it and wants it for some reason.

More Pictures...

Ok here is a Vase that I made at some point in time not really sure when it was made. It has Silver Blue in the inside and a light purple frit on the outside of the piece.




Ok I bought a new optic mold to use at the shop. Of course I was so excited to get the mold I forgot to even take a picture of the mold. But it is a 12" high 8b I think it is called it looks like the one posted on Gnat's page. If very fun to use....I have been making a lot of pieces with it. As you can see from the following pictures.
Above is a Steam Stick I guess you would call it. It was made from a paper weight to form a a bubble inside the paperweight. I made this so that I could place scented oil inside the piece and put in the house as an air freshener unit.

OK some pictures.....

Ok here is a little catch up here with the pictures....... This is a piece that was made by either me or my brother don't really remember. But it is a really thin piece. It was great that he had a chance to come out to California and see the shop that I get to rent out and hopefully he really liked it.

Ok here is a few more pieces from the same day that I made some glass here at the shop with my brother. Was one of the best times that I have had making glass due to showing my brother I am not a total loser at making glass and I do have a little skill.

Pictures

Ok I got some more pictures just not the time to post them right now. I will get them up as soon as I get some more time.

"Gravity is your friend...."

Sloth

more pictures

Well this I would have to say the biggest thing I have made yet and the heaviest. It is about 8 inches across and about the same in height. I has become a pot of a plant due to the nice size of it. It has a piece of silver blue bar stock and white powder on the out side. This was one of my attempts on the crackle look that ...... well did not come out but still looks good.

More Pictures

Here are some bowls that was done a couple weeks ago and I am just now getting it posted up on the page. The first one is a fushcia bowl it was the first one of the day so nothing fancy. The second one is a piece of red bar with white frit and heating it to the point of floppy and putting it in the optic mold. The last one is a something I am not even sure what the bar stock was but I am sure that olive green was the frit and of course it has a white lip wrap.

Catch up on Post..

Ok here we go this is an apple that I made for the wife's teacher. When she was subbing in the class she knocked off a pottery apple off the desk and broke it so this was the replacement of the one she broke.

Here is a fluted bowl that was made out of a piece of white bar stock and turquoise frit. Using the optic mold to make the lines.

Slacker....

Ok I know that I have been slacking on writing in post. I just need to make some time to get some pictures up on the blog. I got all kinds of stuff to post just no time. Maybe this week or this weekend, I can get the pieces from the last 2 sessions at the shop in here. Till then remember "Gravity is your friend.."

Paperweight "How to Do"

Had a question about the paperweights in the Febuary section of my blog, so here is how it is done. The paper weight is really easy to make. The core is just a gather with some frit melted down to make it somewhat solid. At this point you can do anything you want with the core to make it the way you want it to look. The outside is beach sand actually! It is from Pensacola, FL where I am from... LOL the funny thing is that is illegal to take the sand from the beach now. This came all about from Gnat when the hurricane came through and blew the sand up 11 stories to our parents condo. I decided to take some home when Gnat started to make the paper weights there in Florida. The guy here said that most likely the paper weight would crack if I placed the sand in it but he said go ahead and try. So I did and they survived. The spin in the paperweight is just an optic mold that after applying color or sand you just heat it up really good and place it into the mold. There are a few different ways that you can get the spin into the piece. Can you a block, marver, or use the diamond shears to spin the piece. In my opinion the easiest way is on the marver but a lot of people like to do it with a block. A little more advanced is the shears. Thus here are the steps in short:

1. Gather glass
2. Add color and reheat
3. Do what ever you want with the color to make the core the way you would like.
4. Gather again.
5. Add color again and reheat.
6. Heat it rippin hot and place into optic mold.
7. Reheat
8. Marve low to cool the section close to you then marve the top but don't go across the maver....marve in one spot you will see it start to spin.
9. Let cool and gather.
10. Block to desired shape and set jack line.
11. Cool piece and break it off.
12. Put it away.

You can place it into the optic mold as many times as you want it will give you many different looks to the piece. So have fun with it and try new things.

Sloth

Past Weekend

First things first...

This past weekend started off well. Friday night I got to make two small pieces due to no one showing up for the demo and Patrick the shop owner let me just play around. Thus I made Bonnie the apple that she has been buggin me to make for the past two times at the shop. It turned out quite well I was surprised. I also made a glow snot ornament. Which broke like all the others that I have made for some reason. Will post some picture when I find the camera again. Saturday was good will go into what I made when posting pictures. Now for Sunday started off good but ended in disaster. I got to find out how to crackle a piece like I want. I tried it 1 time and it turned out somewhat like a wanted but for some reason the cracks only went vertically no horizontal. This was very strange to me and Patrick which had never seen it do that before. That piece got dropped due to everyone telling me that my jack line was not off the pipe and I insisted that it was but due to being somewhat new I heated the crap out of it and jacked it about an inch from where it was. Then next thing I know when I heated it up for about the 3rd time after that it snapped off right at the pipe. And of course it was right where my jack line used to be thus I was off the pipe. The piece was so big that I could not heat the neck enough to keep it hot and the weight of the piece just snapped it off in the glory hole. It then could not be saved due to having to grab it with the pipe and chunking it into the shop so that it did not weld itself to the wall of the glory hole. The next one that I tried was a crackle again and I guess that I placed too much of the white powder on the outside so when I put in the water it did not crackle very well. I blew it out and then gathered over it really quick and it all went away. So I decided that I had some good pieces this weekend so I was going thin really thin. I got it to about 1/16 of an inch and it was everywhere and I was having fun. Spun it out almost flat and then fluted it. I went to pop it off and bam the whole bottom came off in one piece. The funny thing about it was that the bottom was about 8 inches around and it broke in a complete circle. Well I still have not got pieces from the shop so when I get them and find the camera I will post again. Till the "gravity is your friend and keep it hot..."

Sloth