Last Night and Kiln Gate!!!!

Tonight was our last night at Uni, I had hoped to sign up again but unless you renew within a millisecond you are too late, so I think I will wait until the autumn now. We have some stuff to use in our own kilns but I will miss my Monday nights with all the odd strange people who were in attendance!!

You know how it is when you start a new course, you start as the new girl and have to get to know people. On the first week we were shown to our seats by the instructor, but what we hadn't realised was that the seats she had decided we could use were used by other people, so straight away we were treading on someone elses toes!! We managed to claim those seats for three weeks and then we went in and found that someone else had got them and we were relegated to the seats near the wash up. It was sitting in this position that the true characters in our class revealed themselves. Just about everyone had to wash something at some point in the evening so we were in their line of fire for everything. 

Just about everyone was working on their own projects, and they were all very different. There was Mr little bits, he sat in the same place every week, was reluctant to talk to anyone and all he did was tack fuse hundreds of tiny pieces of glass together. Tonight we found out he was turning all the elements into a huge hanging chandelier  construction which was lit by LED lights. Despite us trying he barely exchanged two words with us the whole course. Then there was Mrs Union Jack - who nicked our seats. The first week we arrived she was making a very intricate union jack out of glass, she worked on that for weeks. Then she spoke to another lady one night and accused her of breaking one of her moulds, that caused a few fireworks!!

There was Mr shiny frit, who made intricate symmetrical designs on the glass and was very proficient, he accused me of disturbing the frit on one of his pieces in the kiln (I hadn't). There was Mrs Cracked pieces who every week tried to make a second lampshade to match the first that she had already successfully created, it was not something that was going to happen, every week she came in to a variety of failures, she did manage one night to get one out of the kiln complete only to drop it while sand blasting it!!! Lastly there was a  lady who thought it was fine to walk around passing comments of the standard of everyone elses work!! including calling Debbie's very messy work and mine 'organic' (for organic read crap!!!) There were some nice people there including the lady we started with and a very nice primary teacher and her friend, but its the odd ones that make life interesting. 

Here is the outcome of last weeks experiments, I am pleased with the chickens and hearts but the coins were a step too far, they were too thick and caused the glass to crack, lesson learned!!

Last week I only put those few things in but this week it was kiln gate, seems that we all had the same idea last week, do as much as possible resulting in loads of stuff to go in the kiln. Deb and I did more than that we made some coasters at home, so I had a dozen coasters plus another 'organic' circular piece. There was a bit of a rush on to get stuff in the kiln, the teacher had to intervene after there was a lot of thinly disguised tutting about 'certain people' taking up more than their fair share of the space. I didn't feel bad, there was a woman doing panes of glass for her front door and they were huge!!!

So tonight along with all my coasters I made a circle and slung on it paint, some bubble powder and water, lets see how that comes out!!!!

Decorated thumb prints by Beth and me!!!

I made the one on the right and Beth the one on the left.

My messy circle waiting to be cooked, I am hoping that there will be little bubbles in there as well for an interesting effect. We can go back next week to recover them from the kiln!!!!

I will miss my Monday nights in the mad house.