Valentine's suprise

was fantastic.... he didn't give me too many clues (although by the time I got the "don't wear open-toed shoes or hairspray" I was pretty sure it was something sort of "industrial" in nature -- metalwork, woodwork... Beth had guess glass blowing)... we got there at 6pm (after a nice lil dinner at Jimmy John's a sub place nearby) and once we got to the right part of the building we were shown a demonstration...

We were going to make heart-shaped paperweights!! The gal (I think her name was Kami?) was super sweet and a very good teacher and obviously loved what she does -- she walked us through the steps of taking a long-handled pipe and getting some molten glass (called doing the first "gather") then rolling it in shards of broken colored glass -- tiny tiny pieces of it -- some of the colors were more of a powder... then melting that in the "glory hole" (kid u not -- that's what it was called!!) then doing the second "gather" -- getting another coat of clear molten glass -- rolling it in another color -- melting that all down, then getting the final "gather" and sitting at a special bench with a bucket of water beside us -- with what looked like an old fashioned drinking cup -- it had a long handle and was made of wood -- it was a big slimy because they keep it 100% of the time in the water bucket and they mix a tiny bit of bleach into the water, so it stays sanitary but it also breaks down the wood (hence the slimy). Once we rounded the end, we had to use a tool that looked like a spatula (metal) to make a dent in the glass (the top part of the heart) and then she would turn it slowly and then we would take a large pair of metal tweezer-type things and "pull" the top of the glass to make the pointed bottom part of the heart... then she would use the spatula to flatten our heart a bit on the front and then we put it back into the "glory hole" (called "flashing") to heat it up for the next task... which we used a pair of metal tongs to kind of slide the glass heart further away from the pipe -- until it was about an inch off the pipe (held on by a kind of tail -- still attached to the pipe) and then we flashed it a few more times because your outer layers cool faster than the inner ones and if they cool too much faster than the inner ones, there is a high chance of the glass cracking as it cools -- then we took the pipe over to another section where she tapped on the pipe and the heart dropped off into some sand or silicone or something (it didn't stick to the heart at all) and she used a blow torch to heat the back of the heart and kind of file off any remains of the tail. That part was cool!!! Then she used these special tongs to put the hearts in this big kiln where they would spend the night and part of the next day cooling down from 875degrees to room temp.

We took bunches of pics -- so soon as Andy has these on flickr or whatever -- I'll pop some of them in here!!

We get to pick up our hearts any time after 4pm today -- can't wait to see how they turn out!!

Well done love!! Great idea!!

Posted by kristen at February 15, 2008 2:51 PM