Our handmade glass flowers with infused cremation ash have been a big hit with several people buying memorial bouquets to remember loved ones by. We decided to show you how these lovely creations are made!
The first step in making our glass flowers is to layout the bloom. We add cremation ash into the channels between the petals - in this case made up of Light Powder Pink Frit. Our flowers use around a tablespoon of ash each.
Now that we have our petal prepped, it's time to start working with 1800 degree molten glass! Taken from a crucible, a gather of molten glass is rolled in green frit to make the stem. Several layers of frit are added as we build up our flower stem.
The Molten form is then turned to widen the edge. Both gravity and tools work to make the end of the molten blob flat with a lip. At this point, the glass is still 1600F+ and is viscous. Special care is needed not to either touch anything flammable or non-graphite as molten glass is super sticky.
Of course, being super sticky has it's advantages when you're trying to pick up the petal design we laid down earlier. The gather is inverted and applied to the pattern with light pressure. Both the colored frit and cremains (well defined in the photo above) are picked up. the frit slowly melts into the glass base; the cremains don't melt but become infused in the glass matrix.
Using additional tools, a light ripple pattern is applied to the blossom. With a gravity assist, the outward edge of the blossom curls inwards. At this point the glass has cooled significantly to be barely viscous but it is still hot enough to glow a dull red.
The next step (not shown) is reheating the base so it becomes viscous and drawing out the stem. This further draws in the inner aspect of the flower giving it that lovely look. Once the stem is drawn out a small tap will break the connection between the rod and flower.
At this point, the flower is still 1000 degrees and the internal structure is under a lot of stress due to the creation process. If you were to leave this outside or on a work-bench it would rapidly cool and likely shatter. To prevent this, the flower is placed within an annealing oven that slowly heats up, then cools down the flower over the period of several hours. This relieves all the internal stresses.
Hopefully you found this informative. I would like to thank Barbara for providing me with these wonderful pictures. If you would like to buy these flowers, click on the product listings below. Please contact us at hello@spiritpieces.com with any questions.
