In between all the excitement of water pebbles I took some time (with my son's girlfriend and her mum) to go back to the local glass-making workshop in Knaresborough.
This time to make some soap dishes!
In my endeavours to reduce the amount of plastic we use in the house we have stopped buying liquid soap dispensers and instead reverted to organic bars of soap. This is fine, and they were sitting in lovely blue dishes, but the soap got all soggy as there was nowhere for the water to run away.
So I decided to have a go at making some soap dishes with holes in, to let the water drain.
Having researched a bit, I discovered the way I wanted to try would be strips of glass to make a grid, so they retain the holes in between.
This was new to Jane so it took some thinking about as to how it would work.
These were the first two, following a similar pattern or glass strips laid in a grid. We had the idea of putting small squares at the end of each strip to create a knobble. This was more successful with the green than blue, as you'll see later.
This was one gorgeous piece of glass with clear squares of glass on top and fibre squares underneath so the squares would emboss. We ended up doing this twice to make the raised squares more prominent.
Having made the first three (these are all pre being cooked in the kiln) and taking them home I discovered they were too big for the downstairs loo, so went back to make another smaller one.
And here it is. The shards at the end of each strip are the ends cut off the blue one, as they didn't work once cooked.
This is the blue one cooked, pre slumping (to give it a bowl shape).
Although it looks lovely I wasn't happy with the pieces at the end, which hadn't 'knobbled' as we expected and were too prominent. They came off and became the knobbles for the small one above.
The green one cooked but not slumped.
And finally, each soap dish in it's final resting place.
The blue one next to the kitchen sink.
The green one by the bath.
The purple one in a brand new en-suite.
And the small one in the downstairs loo. Sitting very neatly between the taps!
I'm really happy with how they have all turned out, and had so much fun exploring this with Jane. She's great to work with!
#mindfulnessandcreativity #glassmaking #playing #saynotoplastic
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