As part of my birthday trip, #4 Daughter, the amazing Sara Marian, took me to Hands-on Glass to make a paperweight.

The glassmakers (of course) gathered the molten glass and did the first shaping on the marver (cold surface), and turned it while we shaped it, but we pretty much did the rest.

After that first shaping into a cylinder, we picked up the crushed colored glass (frit) on the outside of the cylinder.

Then they heated it up again to make the colors fuse with the clear glass.

Then we rolled that back and forth to keep the glass from drooping and dripping until it was cool enough to hold.

They heated it again, and the glassmaker sat on the bench and we used pincers to pull the hot glass like taffy and fold it over, then they turned the glass and we folded it again.

They gathered more clear glass around the colored glass and we shaped it. They rolled the pipe for us while we used a water-soaked rosewood mold to press the glass into the round shape.

They had us score the neck (where the glass meets the pipe) with three tools, increasingly sharp.

They took it over to a finishing stand (I don’t know if that’s what they call it, but that’s what I call it) and had me whack the pipe to separate it from the glass.

It had to go into an annealer, which is an over that gradually cools down over 24 hours, so the glass doesn’t cool to quickly and crack.

The next day:

So guess what inspired my mani this week?

I used Baroness X’s 90s Blues fluid art polish for my base, then did ten big dots of the same on a plastic bag, topped those with dots of OPI’s Suzi Chases Portu-Geese and then dots of Maniology’s Monarch Dream. I got ten silicone stampers and smooshed each pile of dots with one, twisting a little as I smooshed. One by one, I painted a nail with Orly Bonder, waited 45 seconds, then pressed one of the stampers’ smooshed colors onto that nail.

If you’re ever in the Corning area, I highly recommend a visit to Hands-on Glass, for an activity or just to watch and/or buy.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Swirls of color.

MA