For over a year I have been thinking of and dabbling with the idea of creating some kind of "glass" wallpaper
or linen or fabric to use as a background for floral designs. So, throwing caution to the wind, I finally just sat down at my torch and worked on this until I got, what I think, is a pretty unique and excellent result.

I tried several different ways of trying to create the background and ultimately I settled on the following procedure. After pulling out about 150 small diameter rods of pink and purple glass encased in clear, I sized and grouped the rods in sets of two. The longer ones to use for crossing the center of the paperweight and decreasingly shorter ones for use on either side of the center rods. Then I fused each set of two rods together at both ends and pulled a bit of a tip on each end. After all the rods were done in groups of two I started from the center with two rods of purple and started adding groups of two pink rods on both sides. The groups of two are fused to the next two with a very small dot of clear between the points of each end. So working from the center to each side I fused all the tips of the rods together, creating the 'circle' of wallpaper background. Then the lampwork flowers were fashioned, the design created and fused together and then all was placed right on top of the "wallpaper" rods. My major concern was that after all the work was done, when I encased the design, that the "wallpaper" rods would not allow the vacuum system to properly draw the air out of the design. I had visions of bubbles trapped all along the rods. But, low and behold, the result was flawless!

I would greatly appreciate any comments on this new direction, be they positive or negative. Any comments submitted to the blog will be published and that would allow readers some insight into what others collectors might think. There is a "Add Comment" link right below the image of the paperweight.

Sincerely,

Chris