Hi, my name is Ed Donovan I'm here at DC GlassWorks. You can find us at dcglassworks.com. We are a public access glass blowing facility, we also do metal and metal-casting and welding. We are primarily a teaching facility. We want to share with people the magic of glass blowing. It is an amazing substance and today I'm gonna be talking to you about glass-blowing. It's taking this molten material and transforming it however your imagination tells you you want it to look like. Creating anything you want, it's an amazing material. I've been doing it for 6 years and I absolutely love it, and I don't think if I were to continue doing this for a life time that I would ever be able to experience all of the ways that I could manipulate glass. Adding color, shapes and forms, all of these things take years to master, and yet at the same time it's always exciting. I'm in love with the process and I think that's the most important thing about glass and glass blowing. Being in love with the actual process of making something. The end result, obviously I mean everybody wants that thing to exist and be really beautiful, and yet there's so many things that can go wrong in the process that you kind of have to let that go and just be in love with the actual process of getting there and putting it away in an atelier. And then when that atelier comes down to room temperature and you can pick it up and hold it then you can be in love with the thing. I always tell students if you want to be successful at glass blowing you can’t think about the end result as much as the actual process of getting there. So in order to teach that we have these little basic steps that we start with caterpillars and then we move on to actually getting on a blowpipe. The caterpillars, or snowmen we call them, are solid so that you are basically just learning to use the jacks to do the constriction, getting used to turning the pipe and keeping your glass on center. Which is just one of the basic necessities you have to be able to turn the pipe and keep the glass on center. You start to develop an ambidexterity you really have to use both your hand at the same time doing two completely different things. It's like the old little trick that you learn in grade school, rubbing your stomach and patting your head, glass blowing is like that.

1. Introduction to Glassblowing
2. What Tools Do You Need?
3. How to Find a Class
4. How to Find a Job
5. How to Pick a Kit
6. How to Rent a Studio
7. Where Is the Best Glassblowing Museum?
8. How Much Do Glassblowing Artists Make?
9. Is Glassblowing School Necessary?
10. How to Use a Blow Pipe
11. 6 Tips, Tricks & Techniques
12. How to Shape Glass
13. 4 Glory Hole Tips
14. How to Use Puffers & Steam Sticks
15. How to Use Tweezers to Shape Glass
16. How to Use Jacks & Pacioffis
17. How to Use Diamond & Straight Shears
18. How to Get Started
19. History of Glassblowing
20. What is Glass Art?
21. History of Handblown Glass
22. Can Glassblowing Be Done at Home?
23. Glassblowing Safety
24. How Hot Does the Glass Get?
25. How to Pick Supplies
26. How to Dress for Class
27. How to Marver Glass
28. How to Decorate Handblown Glass
29. How to Use Newspaper as Heat Protection
30. How to Handle Hot Handblown Glass
31. How to Handle Fallen Molten Glass
32. How to Color Handblown Glass
33. How to Use Blocks & Paddles
34. How to Blow Glass with Todd Hansen
35. How to Blow Glass with Ed Donovan

Learn about glassblowing from pros Todd Hansen and Ed Donovan in these Howcast videos.