To: Soul Searchers
From: Design Muse
Date: When You Need It Most
Subject: Brillant Oasis

The mix of enticing colors, innovation & functionality make the glassybaby hand blown decor accents easy to enjoy in a multitude of ways. glassybaby was nurtured to life by Lee Rhodes when her life itself was being threatened. Lee was battling a rare lung cancer & raising three small children. Her fight was challenging and she looked for an oasis of certainty & peace.

During this time she gave her husband a Christmas gift of glass blowing lessons. The first project he crafted was a small, bright cup similar to a baby cup. As he brought them home, Lee set tea lights in them and placed throughout her home. Her oasis began to take shape. glassybaby was born.

Over the next five years, Lee encouraged her husband to make more glassybaby so she could give them away as gifts to her friends. Eventually she learned to blow glass and create glassybaby, and then searched out local glass blowers to assist her with the production. She became driven to spread the light of glassybaby. To her, they became "that deep breath that we often forget to take".

To honor those who have walked down her same path, Lee established glassybaby goodwill. Every year, glassybaby goodwill designates a select group of colors to benefit local and national organizations contributing to cancer patient care and cancer research.

In The Artist Studio
Lee shares her process:
First, glassblowers gather a ball of clear, molten glass on the blowpipe and blow into it a bit. After reheating, a piece of colored glass is dropped onto the bubble and then rolled over the clear. A final layer of clear glass is gathered over the color, creating the unique, three- layered starting point.

After reheating, the clear-color-clear glass ball is blown out at the glassblower's bench into the unique glassybaby shape. Then blowers drop the hot glass into a mold and blow it out to give it some height.

Returning to the bench, the blowers transfer the glassybaby from the blow pipe onto a punty pole and it is reheated. The reheated glass is spun on the punty pole and cut down to the familiar shape.

On the annealer oven, the glassybaby is "bonked," or knocked off the punty pole. Blowers then heat the bottom of the glassybaby and add the stamp, which marks it as genuine.

Find your oasis at glassybaby.com

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