Skagway Alaska's Jewell Gardens – go forth and blow (glass, that is)

Classes like this are available around the world and I’ve done several.  This is a particularly nice one in Alaska because of the settings and options.

If you are looking for something interesting to do in Skagway, I highly recommend going to Jewell Gardens and doing one of their glass-blowing classes.

The class

The gardens there are quite beautiful, but go for the glass-blowing.
I have done several glass blowing classes and this was by far the best one regarding having fun and knowing what you are getting.  One key thing is that this is the only glass place I’ve been at where they show you an example of every color you can use and a couple of examples of each technique you can use.

Picking what to make

The guys who lead our group explain the general process of glass-blowing. Then you choose whether to make a hanging ball or a standing ball (examples above) and which colors and which pattern you want to use. 

Most of the places I’ve been just ask you which colors and then sometimes you don’t like the color combo since there are different reds and oranges, etc.  But since you could see the actual colors here, you could pick exactly what combo you wanted, and with all the examples you could have a pretty good idea of what you were going to get.

The process

After picking the colors, type and pattern of the glass globe you’ll make, the team helps you through the entire process to ensure you get something you can display.  They have fun with it, while still being very safety conscious.  Left to your own devices, you would very likely just end up with a glop of glass on the floor. [That was essentially my first glass blowing experience, we all made what we not-so-lovingly called “cow plops”.]

The glass takes quite a while to anneal (cool down without cracking) after you are done, so the team there mails them out when they are ready and you’ll get your globe in 4-6 weeks (because mail from Alaska isn’t super fast).

The result

This is the globe I made. I wanted something that looked somewhat like Mars, so it’s pretty much perfect.

There are many other things you can do in Skagway as well: