When picking this piece to coldwork on I liked the way that the glass seemed to fold upon itself to create creased edges and a bubbly texture at the top that you can look into through the bottom of the glass. When hand-lapping this piece it was suggested that I use a felt tip pen to mark out the places that were not ready for hand-lapping with the fine grit. After the felt tip had been sanded away using the medium grit I was able to go on to the fine grit and then used the pumice and cerium oxide to polish off and make the piece clear. I liked the idea of looking into the glass and polishing the flat part of a glass piece as you can look at the inside of the glass and the texture and shapes made within the piece.
I used metal wire to create circular forms that I thought looked similar to an apple and a tomato. I did these to see if I could make a piece that encased metal wire that was bent to into the shape of fruit. When seeing how the shapes were overlapped with lots of layers of glass it distorted look of the metal wire so the design I wanted wasn't visible.
The metal part of this piece was exposed at the end so the colour didn't really change this meant that I learnt to be more careful with more vertical pieces by being more precise with where I position the glass in a sand casting mould. What I liked about this piece is the spiral at the top which was done accidentally when the glass was poured into the mould.
Originally I was going to put the rubber bands and tin pot into a thick plastic pencil case which didn't get the clear indentation of the shapes that I wanted. However, after a tutor suggested using cling film which still has that effect of packaging I realised that it actually has a better and more realistic look of plastic packaging which I preferred compared to a thick plastic lunchbox which was my original idea.
This piece was made when I used clingfilm to make the mould and a bunch of elastic bands and a vaseline tin. What I found was that the vaseline tin had a lip which made it difficult to make a sand mould, however the elastic bands made a quite a free and interesting form, especially with the cling film. Once the piece was polished it meant that I could see the cling film pattern on the bottom of the piece.