Glass Art

As part of my birthday celebrations we went to Garstang and stopped by John Ditchfield’s Glasform gallery and studio. This is always a lovely place to visit and you can watch them making their glass artworks too, which is amazing!

I started by selecting images from freebie leaflets that were supplied by the Gallery in the carrier containing a birthday present that I had selected, more on that later (grin!). I tore and glued the front of one of the leaflets to the left-hand side of the page using UHU Stic. I then selected some softly ink-stained recycled baby wipes that I thought would compliment the images. I have quite a few baby wipes to recycle that I have used to mop up inks and paints from other art journal pages; they are just too nice to through away. I cut the baby wipes to fit the remainder of the page and stuck them in place using Liquitex matte gel medium. I then backed all the remaining images with some recycled white card from some packaging, fussy cut them out and then stuck them all to the page using Liquitex matte gel medium again, which finished my 99.9% recycled page.

The studio is located in a barn and you can watch glass artworks being made, which is amazing!

It’s full of inspiring pieces like this glass ceiling hanging …

… or this beautiful wall of glass!

It’s mesmerising to watch the artists transforming the heated glass in front of your eyes! This is the glass artist John Ditchfield and he is heating the glass …

… then it’s time to blow it …

… heat and blow it some more and then roll it in coloured glass …

… put it in a mould and blow it again …

Wow, look at the shape of this piece, isn’t it stunning! Here it is still molten and while it’s cooling he is turning it on the pole to retain the shape and using large scissors to bevel the end where it is attached to the pole. When ready it’s removed from the pole and slowly cooled in a kiln for 16 hours or so …

… then with some work, hey presto you have a light shade!

Then there’s the gallery to look around too and this photo collage of neutral glass artworks is for Simple Neutrals Tuesday party over at Apple Apricot. There is so much to look at including beautiful vases, a green shimmery toadstool with the fairy on top, lamps, bowls, fish and the most adorable sheep (grin!).

With so many beautiful pieces to choose from …

… it was hard to choose one birthday treat!

Here’s my present, a very pretty glass robin, isn’t he the cutest (grin!).

As T Stands for Tuesday and we went to Garstang, I’m sharing a pint of Beer Baracus  from our lunch at The Royal Oak. I grew up watching B.A. Baracus on the A-Team television series and I had to laugh when I saw the hand pump as I can just imagine him saying “Drink it, fool!” (grin!). Cheers and wishing you a very Happy T Day!

Challenges

I’m glad I found out about Challenge Blogs as I enjoy taking part, they provide me with inspiration for my pages and are a wonderful way to meet like-minded arty people. So here are the challenges I’m joining today:

I’m pleased to join the lovely Alison/Craftytrog, who is hosting the Recycle and Collage challenge over at Art Journal Journey with my recycled and collaged art journal page!

As I reused the baby wipes and altered free leaflets, I’m pleased to join the fun over at Country View Challenges and their Pimp It Up! (reuse or alter something) challenge.

I’m joining in the fun over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge and their Sparkle and Shine challenge with the beautiful shine from the images that I used on my page.

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page (wow, I think this is the shortest materials list I have ever posted – grin!):

• Recycled free leaflets
• Recycled baby wipes stained with ink having been used to mop up ink and paints when creating journal pages
• Recycled card from packaging
• Liquitex Matte Gel Medium