If preparations for Christmas are making your head spin, why not join us for our glass fusing retreat for Advent. You’ll have two days’ escape from the rat race to spend glass fusing, with opportunities for prayer and reflection, in our Chilham studio. (If you just need the breathing space, prayer isn’t compulsory.)

It’s a great opportunity to escape from the busyness of the season and spend a couple of days of quality time with God and a few other people, exploring the creativity that you might or might not have discovered yet. (As a bonus, you can make some Christmas gifts if you like!)

We’ll spend a day creating smooth, full fused glass, learning to cut glass first if you haven’t done so before or if you’re a bit rusty. We’ll then spend the second day exploring tack fusing, which allows you to create things with texture. Either can be slumped afterwards, to give something 3D such as a bowl, soapdish, stand-up plaque to put in front of a candle, etc.

If you’re already an experienced glass cutter, you can dive straight into making your Bullseye glass creations on Thursday morning.  It’s entirely up to you whether you make both full fused and tack fused things or whether you’d prefer to spend more time on a particular project. If you want to make something bigger than usual, we’ll just ask for the cost of the extra materials.

You don’t have to have a Christian faith to join us; while we’ll be using the prayers from “Celtic Daily Prayer” (a non denominational Christian prayer book), prayer is entirely optional, not compulsory. Everyone deserves the chance to escape from cover versions of “I wish it could be Christmas every day” 😉

The cost of the two day retreat is £190 which includes your raw materials, the use of the studio & equipment, refreshments and lunches both days. If you’d like to stay in the village, our “where to stay” page lists some B&Bs, hotels and self catering accommodation that might fit the bill; you’re free to arrange this separately.

Your glass will take around 24 hours to fuse and another 24 hours or so to slump if you want something 3D. You can come back to collect it or we can post it to you. If it weighs under 2kg including packaging, p&p will cost £7 – mostly for the packaging, to make sure that your creations get back to you safely.