With a shiny new blog for 2018 as part of the new website, I thought it might be fun to look back at all things glassy from 2017 by way of an introduction; this is actually a bit of a cheat as I wrote about some of this stuff on my old blog, but hey, it’s my website and I’ll repeat if I want to (sung to the tune of “It’s My Party” – well in my head that’s how I hear it).
I started 2017 back at college in January – part-time studying glass and ceramics, but having switched my morning from Wednesday to Friday, partly to help college out, and partly to help me out; I found that this wasn’t really ideal and I decided not to return for the Summer term.
I did however attend a glass lampworking course in all things sparkly with Trudi from the Glittering Prize to fill the gap, followed by a festival, well technically 3 festivals in a week… brilliant but oh so tiring!
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| First time glamping at a Festival after 30 years of tents and buses! |
The second festival was Flame Off where I blew glass with Josh and Ann from Hen Ogledd Glass, made some amazing class beads with the lovely Jenny from Raspberry Rings, had my first go at Metal Clay with Tracey at Craftworx, caught up with glassy friends and immersed myself in glass generally down in Uttoexeter. (That first link by the way is to the 2018 Flame Off and if you fancy a nice day out I thoroughly recommend it).
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| Photos of things I made over the 2017 Flame Off Event |
The next course I attended, Working with Images in Glass, kicked off quite a spurt of making fused glass using these techniques.
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| Work in Progress Photos from the course |
For the rest of 2017 I’ve been working on several commissions and playing around with the techniques I learnt on the course, here are a few of my makes!
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| Finished pieces inspired by, or made on my course |
It meant I neglected lampworking a bit, well quite a bit, so no beads, pendants or rings were made in the latter half of the year, until I finally carved myself a bit of torch time in a Glass Course with the lovely Gay from Gaysie May.
Somehow during the year I managed to fit in 2 days at another Festival, The International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge – my first time attending and I was really blown away by the whole experience and next time, which will be 2019 as it’s every two years, I’m definitely doing all 4 days!
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| 2017 International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge |
So that was a brief tour of my glassy 2017!
Say hi if you’re here, and tell me how you found me?
Born of Fire 
Enjoyable read, great insight into your ‘journey ‘.
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Thanks Kay, great to see you on the new site! Excuse the tardy reply, it’s taking me a while to get to grips with the new layout and make sure there’s enough content in these early days.
I thought it would be a good introduction for the new website and the visitors to it, to look back at the last 12 months to see why, where and how Born of Fire has developed this last year.
Normally I’m known equally for beads as well as fused glass, but I’ve made less beads to sell this year than previous, so I it was good to explain where my glass journey took me last year – you know me, I love to play with glass!
Mars xx
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