Blowing Glass

Saturday we went and made our own blown glass ornaments, which was a blast! The hardest part I think was picking from the hundreds of color choices! It was hard to narrow it down, but we did. Bryan picked a red, green and white mixture and the kids and I picked a turquoise, lime green and pink mix for the 2nd one. I got to make one of the ornaments while Gabi took pictures, and Nick did the other one.

The temperature in the fire where the melted glass is was somewhere around 12oo degrees I think he said.

Here he is showing me how to mix the colors into the hot glass.

Then you stick it back into the fire to melt the glass pieces together into the base.

After the colors are mixed in you blow gently to make the ball. You blow really really lightly, like blowing out a candle. I thought you would have had to blow harder, but nope. Barely at all.

Here is the finished product when he puts the curly top on it to hang it from. It's still extremely hot so you can't see the final colors much at all. I'll post the finished products once we get them home.

Then it was Nick's turn.

Spinning, spinning, spinning

Adding some color

Mixing the colors together

And blowing to make it round.

I saw a blurb about making these on the news one morning, and called that day to make an appointment. The guy told us that was the first time they had ever opened it up to the public before, and the received 300 calls the first day! It was crowded there, but not too much. The wait wasn't too bad and once you were making your ornaments it seemed to go really fast. It was really a great experience and we've already decided we want to go back next year and do it again!