What a Blast!

Tonight was the glass fusing class that I mentioned yesterday. If you're in the Sacramento area and want to try something fun, check out Gina Rossi and Rossi Sculptural Designs. She teaches classes in welding and glass fusing. Very cool! Let me tell you a little bit about it.

The class took place in the center of Gina's warehouse studio, and her sculptures surrounded us. Take a look at this metal and glass tree--

During class, we each made one large (i.e., tile sized) piece and two small jewelry pieces. There were samples of both to spark our imagination. Here are some of the larger pieces Gina showed us. As with these samples, we could chose to have our pieces formed into dish shapes.

Here are samples Gina showed us of a few pendants. (I'll tell you a little about the gal who owns the bandaged finger in this photo in a minute.)

All of the available glass supplies were arranged on tables so we could make our choices.

The plastic jars on the left side--the ones that look like they'd hold candy sprinkles--contained glass sprinkles. Some of the sprinkles were as fine as glitter and some jars contained chunkier pieces.

Here's my workspace--as defined by the Starbucks latte, right?! And the gal with the bandaged finger? She sat across from me and worked on a really stunning tropical floral piece. Unfortunately, she cut herself several times; hence, the bandaged appendages. For my larger piece, I made a stylized Christmas tree.

Once we were done with our pieces, they were carefully placed in the kiln. My Christmas tree will be formed into a square shallow bowl shape when it's fired.

When I showed the Wild Child the photo of all the pieces, she told me she could easily identify which were mine. Funny how she knows my style! Anyway, these are the "before" photos. I'll be able to pick up my pieces on Saturday after they've been fired and fused. I'll show you the "after" photos then. And yes, this is definitely something I'd love to do again someday!