Glass Blowing in Salado, Texas

Hi there friends! I hope you're having a fine Tuesday. I think it would be wonderful if it we not for all of this election ruckus. Can we just get it over with already? But just a few hours to go. However it goes, it is what it is, and the world we keep right on spinning. Anyway, we aren't here to talk about that, we are here to discover & see the world! A couple of weekends ago, Lovely, my mother-in-love, and me headed to Salado, Texas, a little over an hour or so from home outside Waco. Our main goal? Relax, enjoy each others company, and create glass blown pumpkins at this sweet little studio, Salado Glassworks.

Though I have lots to share from Salado, I want to devote a whole post on the process of making our pumpkins. The idea of glass blown has intrigued us since our visit to Chihuly Glass Gardens in Seattle, Washington (which I'll be sharing next week), so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it ourselves! Creating the pumpkins only took about 10 minutes each, but we did have to wait for them to cool over night before we could take them home. The whole process was super neat & interesting. Starting out, an artist dipped a rod in liquefied glass, at around 2040 degrees! #woahbaby He then dipped the glass blob in shards of colored glass, reheating it all again at 2300 degrees. From there, he began shaping the glass blob with a thick piece of wet newspaper. Yes, all that was between his hand and the some 2000 degree glass was newspaper! Amazing! After that, the glass blob went into a mold to give it lines like a pumpkin would have. Then, we got to do our part, the glass blowing. While the artist spun the rod, we blew through a straw attached to the rod to create an air pocket to shape our pumpkin. He told us when and how hard to blow, and just like that we had a pumpkin! He reheated the pumpkin a few times in there, it's easy to lose track of when since he did that so many times.

But after our pumpkin was shaped, it was time to add the stem. With just a flick of a hammer against the long rod, the artist dropped our pumpkins onto fire retardant stands, and dropped a smaller shaped blog on top. He then twirled and worked the glass to create a fancy stem. The stem was topped off with a blow torch to make the glass turn silver, then it was off to the kiln over night. The kiln was at 900 degrees, then slowly cooled down through the night to prevent the glass from cooling too quickly. We were able to pick up our pumpkins the next morning, and they are beautiful! This was such a fun & fascinating process! It was amazing to me that an active volcano flows at around 1000 degrees, yet their glass ovens were over 2000 degrees! Amazing! We hope to go back, or to a studio in Waco, to do glass blown ornaments. Definitely a fun experience everyone should try, even the kids!

I hope you enjoyed this as much as we did! If you ever get the chance to try glass blowing, I highly recommend it! See you back tomorrow with the rest of our quick trip to Salado.