Cold Fusing Glass

La and I went on a little artistic adventure last week to the Bay Area Glass Institute.She signed us up for a cold fusion glass workshop. We could make hanging ornaments or coasters.  Basically, you get a pane of clear glass and then cut smaller pieces in a design and place them on top.  They fire it in a kiln and it all melts together.

The cutting of the glass takes a lot of hand strength, so I ended up just grabbing a ton of broken shards and arranging them on the glass.  Not as satisfying as it could have been, but I still had a lot of fun.  La did a really nice job with fashioning a "K" for her son.  Our fellow class member was a whole different level beyond us.  Check out her pieces on the far left and top.  I'm in the middle column, bottom two. La is in the right column, bottom two:

Here's what they looked like after they were fired:

If you look in the lower left corner of my pink/red square, you can see that the glass is nearly transparent before heat and it's hot pink afterwards. We got to peek in on the glass blowing class next door which was awesome. BAGI teaches students how to blow floats (round balls) and you also can use tongs to pull flower petals (yellow piece in the front):

Of course, there was a visit to the gift shop.  I think they sandblasted the pumpkin to get this texture, just guessing:

Jellyfish:

Spheres: