Vases

Working on a new color design last night. I am really liking the way these turned out.

Gather and color drop. Gather and drop a bit of white, not too much. Must be below halfway point too. Melt it in and shape. Melt down some stringer and touch on and pull off on the white.
Melt that in, shape and gather over for the vase. Watch the stretch. Transfer and open the vase.

We have black with white and red

and red with white and red

Hopefully more to come.

Iris Blue Shard Vase

Last night I picked up some #44 Iris Blue shards and made a little vase to check color. 
Pick up a bar of color on a clean blowpipe so no clear is on the bubble. Blow it out fairly thin. Break up the bubble into shards. 
I got two gathers of clear and about four dips into white (61) powder. Third gather I picked up the shards. After the transfer and shape I turned up the gas on the glory hole to get the #44 to reduce. It made for a nice gleam. The shards did pick up some small bubbles and inclusions but it is pretty nifty. 

 Here are the shards on the gather after melting them in and getting a little shape on the gather.

Will's Vase

This summer a friend of our's was taken from the earth too soon. Watching someone grow up from a distance is interesting. Lives cross and intersect and time often to brief is shared. So William's girlfriend asked me to make a urn. A memorial for William.

Started with a gather and dropped a bar of white, then dropped a bar of Gold Topaz. Gathered and we wrapped the body. The wraps were two gathers and then 3 coats of white a strip gather and three coats of lime green, the other wrap was in amber. The white undercoat really made the body wraps interesting. I rolled over some fuchsia frit for some little spots. Then one more gather. A dropped foot. The topper for the vase is gold topaz, in the optic mold.