boro fish goblet and some glass eyeballs

8.5" tall boro goblet, with a hollow jumping koi in the stem. This poor little fellow has been staring reproachfully at me for months, waiting for me to make a suitable bowl and foot for him. Well, now that this fishy is happy, I feel free to make more.

I was pleased to receive my copy of GlassLine today, and see some really nice glass eyeballs on the cover. Recently I read a tutorial on making glass eyeballs. Not the tiny murrini type, like this fish has, but big life-size eyeballs. Okay, it's kind of hard to keep them small enough to be life-size; mine usually end up looking like they belong to the jolly green giant.

Anyway, I realized that the back of the iris looked just like the front, so I could make a double-sided eyeball! A double sided eyeball has two advantages for me -- it should work well as a goblet stem, and also, I really dislike doing marble backing patterns. lol. I'd rather make another eyeball, in the same time it takes to melt in and re-round all that glass.

Here's a pix of some miscellaneous stuff that is currently stuck in a piece of styrofoam, waiting for a goblet to call home: a dichro beetle, some ~50mm wide eyeballs, and a flower ring that I'm still staring at and wondering what it needs. The eyeball on the left is double-sided.

Here is a pix showing both sides of the double-sided eyeball. The two sides don't quite match, but I think I know how to do better next time. And it's not like they'll be viewed next to each other.

I'm definitely going to have to try making some cat eyes next!