Skagway, Alaska Part 2

When I was little, my Mom brought out this book at Christmas every year called Jolly Old Santa Claus, and it gives you a sneak peek into Santa's life at Christmas. The story is great, and the illustrations are incredible. My favorite illustration to look at has always been the one where Santa goes to check on his brownies (that's what the story calls the elves) who are busy making glass ornaments to decorate Christmas trees with:

(OK, I lied. All of the illustrations are my favorite. But this one certainly is beautiful!)

So, when I found out we could go on a glass blowing excursion when we were in Skagway, I immediately made Jeff sign up. After our trip to the Yukon, we went to make our ornaments at Jewell Gardens.

The outside gardens are beautiful, but shocking. Skagway has a short but productive growing season.

Ginormous kohlrabi, anyone?

Or what about a huge cabbage?

I had no idea that this is how artichokes grew.

The fish in the garden. : )

After exploring the beautiful garden, we got to visit the glass blowing studio. The pictures below are combination of ones both Jeff and I took. He took pictures while I made my feathered drapery ornament, and I took pictures while he made his swirl ornament. It was so fun!

First, you collect glass.


After collecting the melted glass, you turn it a bit in another oven to keep it similar to the consistency of honey.


Then it gets rolled to make a sphere shape.


The glass at the studio that was collected is clear. To make a colored ornament, the melty glass gets dipped into small pieces of glass that's the desired color.


Then, the glass gets put back in the oven to allow the pieces of colored glass to melt into the clear glass.


The newly colored glass gets rolled out on a metal table. This gives the colored glass a swirly twirly pattern.


The glass is rolled and smoothed out so it's fairly even in shape.


The metal pick was drawn from the bottom of the glass up to make a wave type pattern on my ornament.


This was repeated three times.




Then the glass went back into the oven so it could remain at the proper temperature for working.


The glass was taken out of the oven, and put into this cup type object to make it a more desirable sphere shape.


And then we got to huff, and puff, and blow the ornament up!






Once the ornament was the right size, it was taken to a very high tech piece of equipment - a tin can with cloth in it - to be removed from the apparatus.


Then, a small amount of glass was collected and touched to the ornament.


Tools were used to thin out the molten glass and to stretch it.


Then tweezers were used to grab the ribbon of glass . . .


loop it around . . .


and make the loop for the hook. Then,


Viola! The ornaments were done! : )


Neat, right? : )

Our ornaments had to cool down slowly, so the garden shipped them to us. It was a fun surprise to see what they looked like, because the colors never really came through because the glass was red not. Here's what the finished ornaments look like:

As an added bonus, our group got to watch the artist make a fluted glass bowl. The garden chooses to sell the demonstration pieces to the groups who get to watch them made. So, Jeff and I decided to buy the bowl since we were able to choose the colors and watch it be made. : )