Showing posts with label confetti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confetti. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 January 2008

Enamel Powder with Glass


These two dishes, Squiggly Blue and Squiggly Red, have been fused with enamel powders and glass confetti. Enamel powder (the kind you use on copper to make enamelware) is fine coloured glass that has been ground to almost a dust. It is so fine that it will fuse with most glass types and the glass co-efficiency problem doesn't arise.


After I have cut and smoothed the edges of both pieces of glass I paint squiggly lines on one piece of glass with white glue (such as Elmer's). I then shake on the enamel powder and tap off the surplus onto a sheet of clean paper. Any powder that doesn't stick to the glue can be tipped back into the container that it came from. To avoid the enamel powder falling in lumps or blobs onto the glass surface, I shake it through a fine sieve. I then take a clean, soft paint brush and brush away any residue of powder that isn't stuck to the glue.
Next, I cap the glass with another piece of clean glass and dab glue onto pieces of glass confetti. Glass confetti are very thin shards of coloured glass that you can snap into rough shapes with your fingers. Once the glue is dry (I like to leave it thirty minutes) I place the piece in the kiln and start the fusing process.
Once fully fused, the glass is then slumped in a mold to create a squiggly dish. The Squiggly Dishes are now avaiable for sale in my Etsy store at http://glassprimitif.etsy.com/

Monday, 14 May 2007

About Float

"One day we'll float....take life as it comes" PJ Harvey

I first started out fusing with float glass. It's cheap, it's plentiful (ask for scraps at your local frame maker's) and it's easy to cut. Float is called "float" because it is poured onto a bed of molten tin within a furnace and then machine rolled. It is totally flat and is used for window panes and picture glass. It's disadvantages are: it takes longer to reach full fuse temperature than most other glass, it sometimes becomes cloudy or milky during fusing and it can send splinters out when grinding. If you want to avoid cloudy glass (devitrification) then spray it with A Spray before it goes in the kiln and wear those goggles when grinding! Tempsford Glass sell Spray A.
http://www.tempsfordstainedglass.co.uk/
At first I fused copper wire and copper sheet between two pieces of float but then I discovered coloured float confetti. Now coloured float is widely available (only in transparents at the moment) which makes it cheaper to create dishes and coasters than using Spectrum or Bullseye. The good news is that dichro coated float is also available, although it's not as nice as dichro coated Bullseye.