Watch more Glassblowing for Beginners videos: www.howcast.com/videos/465895-How-to-Color-Handblown-Glass-Glassblowing



Hello my name’s Todd Hansen we’re here at the Art of Fire Contemporary Glass Blowing Studio in Laytonsville, Maryland. We're at www.artoffire.com. I’ve been a glass blower for about twelve years now, I’ve got several different lines of glasswork that I work on and I’ll be talking to you about glass blowing. Clear glass is really pretty but colored glass is nice to look at too. There are several ways to get color into blowing glasswork. The way that actual colored glass is made is to add minerals or elements to clear glass so when you hear the term cobalt blue, the manufacturer’s thrown cobalt into a vat of clear glass and has turned that glass blue. Copper ruby is just that, it’s copper that’s been thrown in and that makes the glass a really deep red. Cranberry glass, the pink glass is actually made from gold so depending on what you throw in, the concentrations that you add and maybe whatever element you might add as well you can get a pink or a transparent versions of different colored glass and one of the ways we color our glass when pouring into it is taking colored rods that someone else has made. We’ll take a chunk of glass and we’ll preheat it and then stick it on the tip of a blowing iron, that becomes the very first bubble that you’re working with that’s actually a bubble of color, we’ll take that and we’ll heat that piece of color up, we’ll blow into it just a little bit and trap the air with our finger and I’ve got a small bubble my piece of color now then what I’ll do is layer clear glass on top of that. With those layers of clear glass you can also pick up frit, which are the smaller crushed versions of colored glass to decorate the glass and also take threads and trails of glass and wrap that around the body piece too so you’ve got a little color on the inside, color on the outside and then depending on how you manipulate that you can decorate the piece even further.

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.