A few weeks ago, a couple of friends and I attended a glass making workshop offered by Playing With Fire. We had an issue with the instructor double booking our time slot but it all worked out in the end. The workshop was 1.5 hour long but you really only work on glass for ten minutes. The rest of the time, you’re just standing around watching the 8 other people in your 1.5 hour time slot take turns making glass flowers.

When your turn comes, it happens really fast. The instructor gives you the hot glass on a long rod and you use these giant pinchers to pinch and pull the glass into a flower. The instructor cuts the flower and puts it in the fridge. Then with that short experience, you get another rod with more hot glass and you get te chance to roll it in these colour glass crystals.  I put my hot glass into the wrong colored crystals! I wanted purple not red… Next, you put the rod into a oven and  watch the crystals melt. Once they melt, you pinch it and form it into a larger flower with a stem. The instructor cuts it and puts it in the fridge.

That’s it! You pick it up a week later. It was really cool but also disappointing since it was so short and pricy ($80 regular price but luckily we paid $40 for the group buy voucher). I wish we actually got to play with the hot glass for the full 1 hour and get to practice pinching and pulling shapes more. Also, I felt there should have been more information about the art of glass. It would have been nice to be more hands on too by pulling the rod out of the furnace, cutting the flower and putting it into the fridge but I guess we need more experience to do that.

I picked up my flower about two week later and it turned out well. However, I still wanted purple instead of the red! Blah… Oh well it was artistic nonetheless. I wouldn’t do this specific workshop again but I would love to try working with glass and even try blowing it.