Hot Mess Part Fifty-Four: Shards

 

New Things from Smashed Things

7 April 2026

Every time I go to start blogging about glass, I realize there are more photos to upload, and then I'm off to do something else.

So let's start back in January, when it wouldn't stop snowing. In the winter, the Saints and the giant ornaments are the only color in the back yard.

With shelf space at a premium, if I don't like something I've made enough to keep or give away, I take a hammer to it. Laying the shards on a hot plate and turning them into something else has become a pattern this year.

One evening with Iron Maiden, I tried my hand at long-neck vases again. The first one's neck snapped when we transferred to the punty, so it became a short-neck vase. This one is good enough to give away.

I got the neck to stay intact on my second try. This one became the base for a LED cork lamp, where the neck is mostly hidden.

I tried mixing colors that might react with each other. They sort of did, but this cup ended up under the business side of a hammer.

I used some shards to make a bowl that got away from me at the end. The bottom had a crack in it. This, too, got hammered.

One night at the studio, Heddy texted me to announce the dusting-related shattering of the glass cat I'd recently given her.

I made a couple of cats from some rod slices, but I didn't like how they came out. I'd used rod and hadn't blown the glass out nearly enough.

From the front, the blue one was okay, but the side profile was all wrong. 

The gold amethyst one was only a little better.

The studio can be buzzing with glassblowers in the evening. There are classes and rentals and general chaos. I managed to snap a picture at 4:50 p.m., before things got wild.

That night, I put the blue cat in the pickup oven and attempted to melt it down into another cat. It did not go well. This one went into the waste bucket.

Meanwhile, the failed shard bowl got a second life as a long-neck vase,

and as a tall, swung vase.

I attempted to melt a middling aventurine cat, the first one I'd made at this studio, by putting it in the pickup oven after the oven was already warm. The glass shattered. I picked up the pieces and made a new, awkward cat that, because of trapped air bubbles, sparkles intriguingly under the display case lights.

I posed it with one of the first shard pieces.

I think I finally hit my stride on a cold Wednesday morning with GGP. I'd smashed the ugly pink thing I'd made with Iron Maiden. With those shards, I made a swung vase, a long-neck vase, and three cats, one of which was destined for Heddy. I'd only planned on two cats, but GGP goaded me into picking up the scraps of the shards that were left on the hotplate.

I was the carpool passenger that day. The Schuylkill River was frozen. I took photos as we passed by on our way home.

Heddy adopted one of the larger cats, plus the gold amethyst one that I had considered melting down.

I took stock of my recent work. With no student sale box to chuck rejects into, I was all about smashing and reusing.

We skipped a week. With GGP off on a trip to Singapore and then called away for a long family emergency, I started blowing on weeknights. 

I worked an evening with Sometimes. I was trying to keep things simple and my success streak going. I made a little Hyacinth Blue bowl.

I swirled together two colors and mixed in a third that ought to have reacted with a least one of them. It was hard to tell what was going on. The cup was small and thick. I thought about smashing it. When I put it on the Window Sill of Judgment, though, the way the light shone through it made me keep it.

I picked up more shards and tried to make a larger, thinner bowl with it. I lost control and attempted to flop it. The bottom cracked when I broke it off the punty. I took it home, but it wasn't worth saving.

When I tried again with more frit, I ended up with something I could put in a kitchen cabinet for cereal or salads.

Sometimes was my Sunday morning workshop partner for most of the semester last year. We got back into our rhythm. The more we work together, the more our work starts to look like each other's, except that her pieces are generally taller and mine more symmetrical.

When I picked up the shards from the cracked floppy bowl, I did it on a base of Enamel White. This vase was a keeper.

I decided to mess with the reactive colors again. I wound up with a thinner drinking glass. The top was wavy, but I was too timid to trim it. In the end, the cup made it into the kitchen cabinet, where it is in regular rotation.

I decided to try another bowl with the cracked floppy shards. This one was bigger than the last. I decided it belonged on display. 

Bowls take up a lot of space, so I went for a skinny drinking glass next. This one looked like it wanted to hold lemonade. Unfortunately, I found a small crack running up one side and I'm afraid to use it. The glass is on display next to the shard bowl.

The next week I worked with Sometimes again, picking up shards from more work that had been rejected. This one was from a cup I'd made with Low Key. The vase is hella heavy. There was enough glass to blow this to twice the size, but I'm terrible at judging thickness when I'm on the pipe, especially when there's an opaque color underneath.

I'd been watching Sometimes make her tall vases. She's very good at swirling colors together in a tight pattern. I decided to try to copy her technique. My first attempt, with saffron and gold ruby frit, ended up in a lazy spiral. In a small victory, I didn't have to sand the bottom down on this one. That made it worth putting on the gift shelf. Someone will get this as one of the prizes for correctly guessing my retirement date; there was a tie.

After a 17-inch snowfall and an ice storm, we had a thaw. Under the weight of the winter, the Ultramarine splat fail that had been wedged into a flower bed had broken into several pieces. I pulled them out of the ground, washed them off, and introduced them to the hammer.

The result was a vase far prettier than the sum of its parts.

During a search for dichroic sheets for Sometimes, I'd unearthed some blue and green aventurine stringers from All The Glass' basement stash. I cut them into half-inch rods and laid them on the hot plate. They kept wanting to roll off. I did manage to glom most of them to a hot gather over Enamel White.

I wanted to play with the Saffron-Gold Ruby combination again. I wanted to get better at making Spirals. With Sometimes, I tried again.

The first one's lip was too thick and was sent to the reject shelf.

The second one, which I dared trim, with Sometimes' help, came out better. I've been drinking out of this one since it came home. (It's on my desk as I type this.)

The tight swirls are at the bottom, a treat for emptying the glass.

When I texted Sometimes this picture of the Saffron reacting with the Gold Ruby, we ended up in a long conversation about colors we've used that have given us unexpected results.

I decided that what I needed to do was to ask Alchemy. He wrote back the next day with this:

"The saffron probably has CdS and or CdSe. The S and or Se anions are reacting with the Au cations still in the gold ruby as cations (as opposed to the gold nanoparticles that make it red). The Au-S/Se complex is probably what is giving the additional color."

Chemistry! Gak!

While I'd been creating three colors from two, Sometimes had been banging out mushrooms for a customer. Again, I wanted to copy her and asked if I could try.

I used some of her color first, a light blue with larger white chunks of frit. I had to watch her some more before I got the hang of it. I made a wonky dark blue one with white speckles, and then a better one. It was 9:00. The class at the middle bench was still going, and the instructor said it was okay for me to go over my alloted time. Mushrooms only take a couple of minutes anyway. I failed at one, then made a decent solid blue one. None are as good as the ones Sometimes makes. I wanted these to give to a couple of my colleagues because we work with the main ingredient in magic mushrooms.

Sometimes liked the wonky one. In the end, I kept it for myself. Like most pieces of my glass, it has a good side...

...and a bad side.

I met Low Key at the Yardley Park and Ride for a Thursday evening session. I'd always seen her work with rods, which she's good at. This time, she was playing with frit and I was playing with rods.

I have a box of semicircular slivers that I had cut to use for threading, back when that was all I did. Now I paired some of the slivers together to see what would happen if I twisted them.

During my second semester, I made two pieces with Canary Yellow and Cherry Red. I'd picked them up sequentially, reversing the order. The yellow always stretched more. 

What would happen if I swirled them together instead? I expected chaos. I got a cup with a thick top but a nifty pattern. I put the piece on the same shelf as the other two, separated by a bunch of other red things and 7 more years of experience.

Low Key helped me trim using the "jack and crack" method. We saved the trimmed bit.

My next attempt, with blue aventurine and blue jade, was a structural mess. The top was thick. The piece was off-kilter. But the colors did weird things with each other.

I sanded down the bottom and took it home. The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. The cup was too thick to smash for shards. I wondered what would happen if I put it in the pickup oven, stuck it on a punty, and heated it up all over again. I brought it back to the studio and asked H what would happen if I tried that. She shook her head. It wasn't worth the time for what would inevitably be ugly. 

"It's so thick though," I said.

"There's nothing wrong with a thick cup," she replied. This from the manager of a studio whose employees make cups so thin and perfect that they look manufactured. 

"As Our Instructor used to say," I told her, because she knew him, "Someone will love it."

I put it back in my bag and returned it to the reject shelf at home, to be given away or sold.

The third attempt, with blue aventurine and Lime Green, was so small and muddy that it met the hammer right away.

Low Key and I had been working quickly enough that we each had time for four pieces. I made my last one with Lime Green shards from a discard I'd found at the studio, plus more of the cut rods of aventurine. The vase wasn't one of my favorites, but it was good enough to go on the gift shelf.

I'd also had time for two mushrooms. I was hoping for more of the gold reaction, but the gold didn't seem to care about the sulfur or selenium this time.

I made the stem too long and thin on the first one. Perhaps it could fit in the aventurine trim scrap as a base?

How about the other way?

H showed me how to use the studio's electric Dremel. I spent way too much time trying to get the two parts to fit together and overshot with the drill, but it was a fun idea to play with.

Meanwhile, I had a better musrhoom to take home.

In the end, it was poster putty to the rescue.

Meanwhile, I've been slowly emptying my office of the glass that's accumulated since I started all this madness. I made a list of the pieces I wanted to keep, with the restriction that there had to be a place for them at home. A couple of times, something had to leave the permanent collection. I wanted to reserve free shelf space for my remaining time at East Falls.

I swapped out a few giant ornaments that had survived for years on the screened patio. I put little price tags on everything. Tomorrow I'll carry in some of the rejects. 

Sometimes and I are working together every Monday this month. I'll save that for another post.