I love Groupon. As I'm sure anyone who has spent any time around me in the past year or so knows. I have gotten things ranging from food to car washes to cake to scenic train rides to photo books to teeth whitening from Groupon. All at huge discounts! I sound like an advertisement, but when a thing is great, it is great. So. Groupon. Much love.
Also a great thing was the experience Marc and I had with making our own wedding rings. (Not a Groupon purchase, unfortunately!) A few weeks later, Marc mentioned how much he liked "playing with fire" and that he'd like to do that again.
Aaaand. Voila! Groupon delivered!! In mid-November, Groupon had a deal for Elements Glass in Portland for glass blowing. The opportunity to blow your own glass float, to be more specific.
I don't know if anyone knows how obsessed I am with glass blowing. I have loved blown glass since high school, after I saw a special or article (I can't remember...) about Dale Chihuly, a renowned glass artist. Anyway. Groupon + Glass Blowing + Playing with Fire = The MOST PERFECT combination ever! All for $30.
So, later in November, Marc and I visited my family in Hillsboro, and took an afternoon to play with fire and molten glass.
Also a great thing was the experience Marc and I had with making our own wedding rings. (Not a Groupon purchase, unfortunately!) A few weeks later, Marc mentioned how much he liked "playing with fire" and that he'd like to do that again.
Aaaand. Voila! Groupon delivered!! In mid-November, Groupon had a deal for Elements Glass in Portland for glass blowing. The opportunity to blow your own glass float, to be more specific.
I don't know if anyone knows how obsessed I am with glass blowing. I have loved blown glass since high school, after I saw a special or article (I can't remember...) about Dale Chihuly, a renowned glass artist. Anyway. Groupon + Glass Blowing + Playing with Fire = The MOST PERFECT combination ever! All for $30.
So, later in November, Marc and I visited my family in Hillsboro, and took an afternoon to play with fire and molten glass.
Marc chose opaque blue and silver for his colors!
I chose translucent amber and opaque orange.
Our guide - getting the melted glass from the giant vat of melted glass (I can't remember what it was called, but it was HOT)
Turns out hot molten glass on the end of a hot pole is kinda scary.
But I managed to get it all the way across the room without the glass 'slumping' of the end of the pole! You had to keep the rod constantly rotating, or the liquid glass would have fallen to the floor.
Adding the orange spots to the HOT glass.
Into the "glory hole" - another really hot place. See how droopy the glass gets? I was constantly sure that it was just about to fall off. It never did, though.
I'm doing it all on my own!
And the actual blowing part!!! This was my favorite part, because I didn't have to be handling the hot glass.
Removing the float from the non-float part of the glass.
Still super-duper hot. From here, the float was put in an oven with other floats finished that day that were slowly cooled down so the glass wouldn't crack.
Marc's turn! He was a bit more confident with that whole hot, molten glass thing.
Into the glory hole! Marc looks even more Indiana Jones-ish here than normal.
He blew harder than I did, and ended up with a larger float. In the background is the next group that was waiting for us to finish. They sold over 1500 groupons, so they'll be making a LOT of floats!
So, the silver part of Marc's float needed to be super-heated to oxidize something or other. This little blowtorch didn't cut it...
Neither did sticking it back in the glory hole.
So they brought out the BIG blow torch! Marc was excited to really get the flame part of the experience!
Putting a flat bottom on the float.
Our finished floats! Pretty!!!
1 comment:
They look like planets!
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