What item got you into glass

I wanted to sell pipes, found out about import v. homeblown and it all went down hill from there lol, couple grands later and some years lost to absolute pondering on glass here I lay to stay and play

Marble Collecting........

Got ahold of a large collection of old marbles about 9 years ago and started selling them on Ebay. After selling about 2000 marbles I found one that was soo kool that I couldn't sell it. Shortly thereafter I started collecting older marbles and not selling them anymore. Then I found out that there were also contemporary marbles being made today, and I really really liked them but I was too cheap to buy alot of them. Happened across a vid on youtube in jan this year and I was sold that I could make my own Marbles. Watched youtube vids for a month straight and decided to get my own torch. Now I make my own contemporary marbles because I am still too cheap to buy alot of contemporary marbles.

bout ten years ago I met this chick ,, and she had this glass wand.. she made me do crazy things to her with that wand.. and now I love glass .. hweeheh

hahahahaha

my brother bought me an i/o fumed chillum when i was a freshman in highschool..lol it blew my mind..8 years later i got setup

:bangHead:My ex-girl breaking all my bad ass pieces. So finally did a little research and here i am. Tired of buying, rather invest and start making my own:D I have always been fascinated and always ask "How do they do that" And know thanks mainly to this forum(everyone) it has shed a lot of light on the subject. But foremost this is a wonderful art form!!! My thinkn has changed and it has gone from wantin to make pipes to jus workin with glass.

PEACE:chilling:

I have been into crafts most my life , poems , painting , dried flowers, bead loom working ,etc. so just following my love of crafting . Now doing pendents ,animals , flowers and recently marbles . I am still growing into what God wants me to be so who knows from here . :)

my oil vape doohicky thingamajigger.

what about the spunglass that is still made today by some glassartis,it is called not so much carnival glass but what {bando} salsaglass he devoted {1} page to the {novelty} glass in his books,and the people i have spoke to say ..... i don't know how to do it . anyway it for me was watching someone do it .back in the day they didn't even have kilns for it we flame anealed the glass and hoped it wouldn't crack. some times i would put the hot peice under a cardboard box.

Well for me, even though I haven't touched a torch yet, it's definately pipes but after looking through a few issues of Flow and Glassline, I have an extreme fasination with marbles, pendants and sculpture...in that order.

Well, one day I was in Burlington Vermont with a traveling camp of fellow circus performers (no joke). After our show, I stumbled into the Bern Gallery and was looking at some pretty ridiculous pieces (20,000 dollar millenium falcoln bubbler). There were two guys standing behind this booth with raging fires in front of them and big ass pieces of tubing in hand. I was completely mesmerized. Didn't even know what they were making (could've guessed but...) but I knew I wanted to do whatever it is that they were doing. I think it was a pre-existing love for fire and interest in blown glass that made me all of the sudden realize what it was I wanted to do.

I signed up for a class in Boston once I got home, and was absolutely hooked. Think we made beads and marbles. Then I managed to substitute my final semester in high school for an internship at the studio. Everyday, I steamed the labels off of wine bottles for slumping, swept the whole building, cleaned tables, painted kiln shelves with release...general slave labor, and got to practice flameworking in the downtime.

As far as objects go, I really hit it big with pendants, cane striped and implosions. Very quickly, my interest turned to goblets and cupware, and that's where I'm at today.

So, there's my story!

pipes was my first goal,
now it is paying off the mortgage with glass ornaments .

My grandfather had a marble I loved (I have it now.) It has definitely been through several generations of kids (probably from the late 1800's.) I thought it would be really fun to learn how to make marbles, so I signed up for a lampworking class. I probably made beads for a couple of years before I ever made a marble but now I am doing more marbles than anything.

Peg

I was sitting at my campsite on the last day of a music festival. My friend who I met that weekend ( and who ultimately changed my life) was counting the money he had made from selling his wares. He ended up making more in that weekend than I was making in a month. That's all it took for me to get interested. I was unemployed a couple years later and that's when I bought all my equipment and never looked back.

It was a hellish combo of low sat scores and an aversion to picks and shovels. Plus it allows for a high accessment of skills without any pesky peer review by those damn high achievers.

wow...old thread bump.

Accident. yes, by accident.

After 7 years in the graphics/printing industry, switching like the hotness I was and climbing the money ladder between employers.....I got laid off.

So my hippy friends who travelled around the country in their big hot mess of an RV came back around the Philly way again. This was the third year they were stopping in PHilly to stay at my house.

First year they were doing hemp, got me to spend a week in OC MD doing hair wraps on the beach with them. Second year they were sewing stash pouches by hand.

So this time they were so excited because they "learned how to blow glass with some guy up on a mountain in Oregon".......

Well, I was getting unemployment, working under the table for my friends industrial pressure washing company (I am the man with a 5000psi 5gpm hot machine....I can clean anything, bulldozers, restaurants, trucks etc.), and here was a chance to learn something cool.

I was hooked right away. I thought that glass was the closest physical manifestation of an acid trip without the drugs. So I had an intensive 4 month pipe making class, and then I was on my own. 4 years later I quit Hydroman Powerwashing (he was Hydroman and I was The Soap) and went full time in the glass business.

I always loved working with my hands. In the graphics field I had learned to operate and maintain every piece of equipment we had. I also took on freelace design jobs for clients that the computer guys didn't want to touch and was allowed to print and finish these jobs and maintain my own quality control. The sales reps loved me for that.

So glass became my graphic design/photography/printing/finishing career all in one tight little basket. I'm surviving, slowly building my name up, slowly improving, and really enjoying my job. Plus I still do band flyers, cd covers, take photo's all the time with my D70, play in a band, and make art for a living.

early 90's dead tour these neat pipes kept showing up more and more often they changed color and were made of glass and holy shit they didnt always break every time you dropped them.

early 94' my sisters bf charlie had started blowing glass and i was selling his wares back here in michigan. i decided i was going to learn so i moved to yellowstone. saved up several thousand while working there.went to CO. for a visit with my sis and charlie to learn the basics. came back to michigan bought my first setup and 15yrs later im still here. :)

i love the versatility of the medium more then anything. i also love that it always keeps you on your toes. its been pretty amazing to watch this industry appear from no where and become what it has. cant wait to see where we go with the next 15 :)

my 70 years old mom wanted to do something with glass, so in 2006 my sister and I gave her a beginner workshop beadmaking. A bit scared she didn´t want to go alone so I went with her and this workshop got me hooked on working with torch, and hot glass! love the color of hot glass. at first I made beads but mostly sculptural work now and soon I will be moving up to working with tubing as well.

I saw some dudes making simple spoons in eugene back in '97 i think it was and had love for it from then on. i didnt start until breaking my ankle and kneecap in '02 though. Amazing the paths life leads you down.....

I've always had a love for glass work, and I just really enjoy making hand crafted items and glass is a wonderfully frustrating medium that I just happened to be lucky enough to work with...about a year ago, I met someone with a lot of talent and skill, that saw how fascinated I was with this line of work and was willing to teach me the basics...started out just watching for hours and asking questions every so often...then learned safety and gas line and ventilation and finally after a month or so was lucky enough to get behind a torch....life seemed to take a drastic change of direction after that day...and I've never even thought about glancing back