Groupon Fun

Over a year ago we purchased two Groupons for a Glass Workshop.  Adam has always wanted to do glass blowing so he was very excited about this and even convinced me to get one too, despite the hefty $50 a person cost.

Well fast forward to a few weeks ago and I realized his prized groupon was about to expire, so I quickly found us some time and on a hot Saturday we went to Zen Glass studio for our workshop.

The workshop was to create a wine glass, we’d actually be creating the stem by fusing and manipulating glass.  I wish I had pictures of us doing it…but when you’re working with 3000 degrees you don’t really want to stop and snap pictures.

We selected our our goblet and our base then we were told to select colors form a basket of glass rods. (think long filled straws) I chose blues & Green and Adam chose red & black (big surprises).  After a demonstration from our teacher, who made it look so easy, we jumped in and began heating up our clear rod (think 1/4” dowel). 

Once that got nice and hot (aka an orange ball of molten glass) we could introduce our colors. Now when the instructor was doing this it looked like he was just writing with a pen…he put perfect strips and dots and even drew the letter S.  I was so excited to try it…then I when I actually did it it was like cleaning gum off your shoe. I just couldn’t get that smooth application and ended up wrapping color after color around my ball.

(I’m assuming Adam did just fine, but I wasn’t about to take my eyes off my flame to check him out. I was too worried about keeping my rod moving, the sweat dropping into my eyes and not burning myself.)

Once our colors were on then you began creating your shape and stretching the stem.  For some reason I thought all their samples looked way to short for a wine glass so I made sure mine was nice and long…as did Adam.  I went for a square stem, which ended up like a twisted rectangle and Adam stretched his to thin so his swirl ended up with a knot in the middle (which looked really good)

Then the instructor attached the goblet and base. That was when I realized that maybe I made mine a little too tall.  Like 3” too tall. And Adam’s wasn’t too far behind mine.  We had created GIANT wine glasses.  Also keep in mind that we both picked the biggest goblets they had!

When we were all done they had to go into a kiln over night so we left empty handed but very anxious to see our creations.  Adam picked them up on Monday and that night we christened them and laughed at how large they actually were.  Those wine glasses on the left are normal size!

Adam’s:

Stephanie's:

The colors turned out really cool and we both enjoyed the whole process.  We’d like to do this again and Adam may even take there 9 hour workshop to learn more ins and outs, so that he’ll have access to the shop whenever he’d like.  I’m so glad that we finally used our Groupon and if you’re ever in town, stop by for a glass of wine…and plan on staying over!