and adding it to the LONG list of "things I didn't immediately excel at> 😁
Just got back from a "class" on making your own glass beads. It was at Cleveland Rocks and Beads (my first time there--GREAT place!), and it was just bff and me, plus the instructor. Holly did an excellent job explaining the process--it wasn't her fault we didn't always do what we were supposed to--and was very helpful, being hands on when we needed it and hands off when we didn't. There was a lengthy sit down session at the start where she got maybe a bit too technical--do we really need to know the chemical properties of glass?--and we had to sign a pretty lengthy waver that basically boiled down to "we won't sue if we burn ourselves". There were a lot of safety precautions, things like "wear your hair back or up" and "wear natural fibers because hot glass will flick off cotton but attach to polyester and melt into your skin", and it made me a little nervous to be playing with a blowtorch, even though the blowtorch was secured to the table, as we needed both hands free to melt the glass sticks and gather them around the mandrill to form the bead. Honestly? Even though I'm the one who likes to roll paper beads and string them into bracelets, I feel bff enjoyed the class a bit more than me (though I *did* enjoy it). She's already talking about taking more classes...there's at least five more in which you learn different shapes (we only learned to make donut beads and round beads today) and adding different colors and textures. Me? I'm not opposed to doing more classes but neither would I be terribly upset if we didn't.
The beads had to harden in the kiln until tomorrow and won't be available for pick up until Monday. The store is WAY closer to bff than me--she's maybe 15-20 minutes away whereas I'm more like a 45 minute drive away--so she's going to pick up the finished beads on Monday and bring them along on Wednesday, when we're meeting a mutual friend for lunch at Cheesecake Factory.
