Not very long into my glassy career, just after I had got over ‘The Fear’ of melted glass burns, explosions and spontaneous combustion, I had what can only be described as an epiphany. I was happily melting the glass onto the mandrel when I was drawn in to the experience. The smoothness, shininess, the serpentine movement had me mesmerised! It was like what I imagine a spiritual experience to be – else Mowgli when he is being hypnotised by Kaa! That will always stay with me. It doesn’t happen every time I melt glass, but sometimes I can feel the pull…
My second ‘revelation’ occurred yesterday. I am a pretty down to earth person. A scientist for most of my working life (I don’t regard what I do now as working – I have too much fun!), I have never been one for what I regarded as arty farty nonsense. Then yesterday afternoon, during one of my mammoth glass melting sessions it happened. I started to make a bead. It was going to be pink heart – clear, clockwork orange, clear, Clio, reduce, clear, done. The glass had other ideas! It started off ok. Clear wound on and melted in. Check. Next clockwork Clio…with Didy’s on (lilac lens glass melting safety glasses), I had picked up the wrong one and only noticed when the tell-tale sheen of silver glass appeared. Doh! Anyway, a couple of bubbles had appeared, so I got them out and picked up..yup, the orange and filled in the gaps. Those in the know, understand that when orange meets Clio, the reaction is a bit bleugh, so as I didn’t want to waste the Clio, I started shaping, thinking I could salvage it by turning it into a rock bead! And then she began to emerge…I had only ever made one Godess bead, just to see if I could, back in the day when I didn’t realise that white was probably the worst colour to try sculptural stuff with (she came out lovely, sexy boobies and everything and she now resides with a dear friend of mine)! Clio almost made herself! Her bum is lovely and she has a nice little nipped in waist, in the scheme of Godess beads…take a look!
And then I was going to do a set of Amber beads with silver glass scrollwork for a bracelet and bugger me if another Godess wasn’t hiding in the glass!
The final surprise lying in wait in the glass was a mermaid – started off as a pale grey transparent spacer and ended up a 3″ gorgeous watery red headed mermaid!
None of it was planned, apart from a pile of beads for my interior design project and a couple of Dragon’s Eyes to add to my collection and the funny thing is, that I hardly ever use transparents, being an opaque girl myself! Lots of other goodies came out of the kiln this morning – the kiln faeries were most kind! Warning. The next installment will contain Dragons! Thanks for reading. Look after yourselves – Life is too short and your’re a long time dead, so live like you mean it!
turnerroweglassart 
I love it when this happens. I was recently making food beads for our hot glass club’s beads of courage challenge. I started making a kernel of popcorn. That didn’t work out so well and somehow took a different direction that resulted in a pizza pie. Missed my photo opp but will get pics next time. Beautiful work! A goddess with a bodice worth envying.
Brilliant! Would have loved to see glassy pizza! You have just reminded me to make a few more Beads of Courage – will be taking a pile to ‘Fame-Off’ in April.
Have been looking more closely at the human form just in case more Goddess or mermaids (or Gods) are lying in wait – I want to be prepared next time!