Turbo Top – Fun with Vitrigraph…Fast!!

Here’s the first of many products that need to be talked about from my Las Vegas adventure. It’s the Turbo Top and the Turbo Lift by Innovative Glass Solutions. Have you tried vitrigraph? You pull hot glass from the bottom of a suspended kiln to make swirly shapes and canes and twists that are amazing additions to fufsed pieces but also make great jewelry items on their own. Larr Cunningham of Innovative Glass Solutions has created both the Turbo Top and the Turbo Lift to help make the vitrigraph experience that much better.

The Turbo Lift allows you to mount your kiln and be able to adjust the height of it to 5 vertical positions. So cool. It allows a vertical range of 28″ in 5 pre-set increments. And it comes preassembled so you can easily attach it to your kiln. The Turbo Top heats your kiln in half the time. This makes getting to your vitrigraph good times that much faster. And it fits most table top kilns. So if you’re ready to try it out, play with vitrigraph, you need these fabulous tools. And as a bit of a disclaimer, I’ve worked with Larr and Leigh Adams teaching Extreme Vitrigraph, which adds torchwork to the party, and these are essential add ons to your vitrigraph experience! Pull some hot glass!! You can currently find these at Pacific Art Glass…

As if Diwali weren’t colorful and fun enough, The Festival of Lights: A Lift-the-flap Diwali Celebration by Namita Moolani Mehra, illustrated by Darshika Varm, makes it even more fun to read about with flaps and things to lift and pull to see more information or details in the illustrations.

The book is a story about a family getting ready for Diwali and what happens on the different days of the five-day celebration. There’s cleaning, shopping, crafting, food preparation and getting the home altar ready for the big day.

It covers decorating the outside of the house with rangoli, diyas and lanterns, buying sweets to share with family and friends, the sights and scents of the mandir (home temple), getting dressed up in new fancy clothes, the story of Diwali and celebrations with relatives.

Flaps (there are more than 140 in all) give you vocabulary words for different foods and definitions, as well as fun things like what’s inside the shopping basket or where the cat is hanging out. They also help illuminate the story of Diwali, which is the triumph of good over evil as Lord Ram defeated the demon Ravana to save his wife, Sita.

This pretty and colorful book helps kids understand what Diwali is and how it is celebrated, regardless of whether they practice it at home. This would be a nice book to keep in a classroom (it’s rated for kids ages 3-7) or to have at home to teach kids about Diwali even if it’s not something you celebrate. Where I live there are a lot of people from India so we are probably exposed to Diwali more than some other regions of America, but it’s a nice holiday to know about wherever you live.

Combine with the book Diwali and check out some fun lantern crafts and printables for kids to round out your experience.

About the book: 24 pages, hardcover, published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail prices $22.99.

Have you read?