December 21, 2024

What Can You Do To Help?

#ELEV8THEBEES

The main goal of our Elev8 the Bees campaign is to bring awareness to the community and help raise money to save the bees! For this campaign, our team of glass blowers over at the Elev8 Premier Studio created a colony of bee-autiful rigs, water pipes, sherlocks, pipes, and pendants! They collaborated with other artists as well to create over 50+ pieces for this cause! These pieces are for sale at either of our shops in Colorado Springs (Elev8 Glass Gallery or Elev8 Presents Hemp). A percentage of the profits from each piece will be donated to the Colorado Beekeepers Association. We will also be doing an Auction March 15th on the Elev8GlassGallery Instagram page for one of our finest bee rigs! 100% of the proceeds from this auction will be donated to the Colorado Beekeepers Association. Elev8 the Bees T-Shirts are available, 20% of the profits from each shirt sold will go the Colorado Beekeepers Association! They are a great way to show your support and help us spread the word! They are limited edition and each one features a glow in the dark logo. As we grow as a company we hope to help out other areas as we can! This campaign is just the start for the Elev8 crew, we fully intend on helping the world be a better place for you, me, and the bees! The biggest thing we can do for the bees is to plant more flowers and let them do their thing. Sadly, over the past 15 years, colonies of bees have been disappearing, and the reason remains unknown. Referred to as ‘colony collapse disorder’, billions of Honeybees across the world are leaving their hives, never to return. In some regions, up to 90% of bees have disappeared! Help us help them! #elev8thebeesSpread the word of our Auction/Giveaway

Elev8 Premier Bee Rig Auction

Bidding starts at $150 with minimum increments of $20
Reserve: $600
Buy It Now (BIN): $1,250
Winner pays shipping
Snipe rule in effect
Starts March 15th at 4:20pm and ends March 17th at 7:10pm
SERIOUS BIDS ONLY! Once a bid is placed you may not remove it. Payments must be made within 24 hours through PayPal. Failure to follow through with payment will get you banned from future Elev8 Auctions.

Winner will be announced once the auction is over via tag!

Instagram is in no way affiliated with this auction. MUST BE 18+ to participate. Must be able to show ID that proves your age!

LEARN MORE BEE FACTS THAT MAY MAKE YOU SAY WHAT'S UP WITH THAT!!

Story

The idea of the #elev8thebees begins here with this bee rig. Jeff our shop manager loves to make bees and his bees are out of this world! Elev8 Premier likes to make pieces that are inspiring in design and bringing our artists together. This project is an amazing project that like a bee colony we need the help from all our blowers, what ever their skill set is. With that the plan for bee rig #1 was born and the #elev8thebees campaign was born this May 5, 2018. This rig features canary yellow with illuminati layered over it. We love the effect illuminati brings to the art. Ever so light it can be placed on top of colors and not really seen, that is until a UV light is put on it. A chunck of black glass was also made by Robert with jet black frit. These two colors are combined with clear to get the rig to come together. This rig also marks the first time Steve successfully put a dope perc inside a dab rig. The illuminati can also be seen in the bee perc as the wings are made of this neat glass and the yellow on the bee is also covered in illuminati. Our next shop hand Kevin is perfecting his implosion marbles here so the bees have something to get some pollen from. The exciting thing here is that our entire team can join in making each rig very unique going in their own direction, yet sticking to the theme.

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This bee rig #4 is the first time Steve has done a cut and flip. What is a cut and flip, well its a big deal. Its when you draw on the glass on the outside. When you draw on the glass it is blown out so the glass is thinner and bigger what the final piece will be. This allows the glass lines to melt together and become a solid color. Once the glass has the image drawn, or painted with glass on the outside, it is shrunk back down so the glass gets the same wall thickness. When the artist draws on the glass it is making that part thicker than the rest, along with that the color has a much lower viscosity. Once the glass has been manipulated so that it has an even wall thickness it is opened up on one end. Then the back is heated and a pair of glass scissors is used to cut it open. Once cut the tube is literally flipped inside out, turning the outside drawing to be the inside. Once it is melted back into a tube more frit is lain in so that the clear becomes colored. Well this simple process can take 2-3 hours to complete the drawing and get it flipped inside out. Then the part is taken and built into the bee dab rig. When we use this method we do not put a big perc inside the mini tube as it would be hard to see it. The marbles were made by Kevin for this piece.

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This #5 bee rig has a super great story! Well, glass requires a massive amount of skills and knowlege how to put it together. Even if you can attain that knowledge issues still happen. In the glass worlds its not always what you can make, but what you can save. So for this one, its a story and that is that. So we are doing this #elev8thebees to bring some light to the crisis the bees are facing. Their colonies are falling and that can get a bee angry. Maybe not even anger the bee can control, like one of the bees inside this rig that got very angry. So the two bees were attracted to the honey perc inside the rig featuring dot stack with Illuminati and hellions. Only under UV light can you really appreciate the time that went into the dot stack perc. Well once the bees were inside the rig one of the bees was inflicted with anger. His wings began to flap out of control to the point that one of the wings flew off and hit the side of the rig. This caused the rig to get a crack in the clear part. Well. the bees did not care for this so they called on some of their mates to come help put the rig back together. When the bees outside arrived the went to work and fixed the crack with their nectar making solarium dots on the outside. If you look carefully you can see inside where a fallen wing sits on the bottom of the rig. The wing has been melted to the rig so it will no come out. All the black is also covered with Illuminati so that it glows as well.

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#14 is a colab with Rob, Kevin and Simply Jeff at Elev8 Premier and this one is called the "Birds and the Bees". Rob is a great first year pushing hard as FU*&. He nailed the orange and Illuminati color on the body. Kevin has just been nailing the bees, so much that at this time I have to say he makes a better be then me. HAHAHA its great seeing people grow! Then Jeff knocked these two implosion marbles out the park. The marbles were sitting there waiting to be placed on the perfect piece, the time was at that moment as the colors made the perfect contrast. They found a home! This was a super challenge and why it is so rewarding. Getting a bee perc inside was not easy, took 2 tries and this one took some manipulating as there is not a lot of room in there for the space the bee perc takes up. So neat though as it looks as though the bees are touching the outside of the clear glass. As this shape calls for the stem to be secured I had a piece of busted glass that was going to be made into a piece of shatter. When the second hole went in all of a sudden it looked like a bird, and with just a little sculpting, there was a bird face. Then you have to have an eye right! The recycle function really works great and delivers that vortex in the water that you want. It took 14 rigs to get to where we all felt comfortable enough to do the hourglass recycler you see here. There will be more coming!

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#17 This might be the coolest bee rig we have. Why do we say this? Well, it is kinda the first one that started this. It is not the first one, but it is what may have started the idea. This bottom part with the perc was made about 2 years ago. Jeff E. started it with big hopes and then even bigger dreams he did not share with us. Well after seeing the bees inside that is what sparked the idea of lets make bees like this. Jeff took the bees to a new level 2 years before and just held the idea. After we started the project Steve walked by and said what are you doing with this, its been here forever. Jeff said not sure, its a bit at a point I am not sure, well Steve said, I'll take it from here. WOW. It turned to be the loudest rig on the planet, least we think so. When you use it and inhale hard, it calls the bees. So we may never sell this one because it means so much, but we have to show it to you.

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