Glass Blowing

Way back in February, Bryce sent me a link for a grupon deal for glass blowing for two. I thought it would be really fun, so I sent it to our friends Cris and Jason as well so we could go together. Wellll, we all forgot about it until two weeks before the deal expired... in June. Apparently almost 4 months is still too short to find time haha So, hastily Cris and I scheduled it for the last Saturday it was available because was the only time we could all go because of work and everything else... or so we thought. Turns out, Cris and Jason had to be at a family thing and they were not able to go with us! Procrastination is definitely not our friend!
We walked around for a while as we waited for our turn and looked at all the things they had hanging up on their walls that they made there

They do a lot of the stained glass windows in temples all over. There was a picture of some stained glass from the Twin Falls Temple in their shop! 

When we were looking at the flowers people did before us I noticed "Jurgensmeier" written on one and apparently Bryce and Mckenna did their flowers right before us! 

Anyway, deal was to make glass flowers. We got to choose our colors and they helped us pull the glass and roll it to make it just right. The colors were just tiny pieces of colored broken glass. They heated up the glass then dipped it in the colors and heated it up again.

Here's a video of Josh rolling the glass after its been heated so that it could fall a little from gravity and then it was ready to be fired again. 

This video is the guy dipping it into colored glass to get the color Josh wanted and then heating it up again to melt it in. 

And this video is the actual pulling of the glass to make it into a flower! 

So I guess we didn't actually blow glass, it was more like glass pulling. But it was so fun! The room we were in was like a sauna, obviously, because the ovens were so so hot. The one they use in the video they said that they never turn it off. It goes year round and when they clean it out, it takes a week to get it back to the right temperature. When they opened the oven, it shot out a blast of really hot air and even the 5'x5' fan blowing at you from behind didn't help with the sweltering heat.  

waiting anxiously to get started! The fan was right behind me and was blowing my hair around like crazy! 

We couldn't take our flowers home right away because they were still really hot and they needed to be placed in an oven for 24 hours or else they would cool too fast and shatter. Now we have them home and they look awesome!