FODDER!

Fodder, Harrogate

Glassprimitif fused glass birdies, hearts and lightcatchers are now for sale at Fodder in Harrogate! 

Fodder is a shop selling and supporting local farmers and rural businesses within Yorkshire and has a lovely cafe serving local foods too.  It's just on the corner of The Great Yorkshire Showground and is well worth a visit. I hope you will go and see for yourself (and perhaps buy some groovy glass). 

Glass Hearts at Glassprimitif

I was recently asked to make some glass hearts for a customer who wanted to give them as gifts at the Race for Life Event.



The hearts are quite simple in design and are made from a combination of pink, white and clear glass so that each one is different. The customer bought four of the glass hearts and is pleased with the hearts and I have listed the rest on Etsy for sale.



So now I am coming to the end of my obsession with hearts (I think...) and am casting around for a new idea for designing glass. Watch this space!

Folksyfinds.com

I have just joined the team at Folksyfinds.com, a blog about Folksy artists and artisans for Folksy fans.

So what's it all about? Well Folksy is a new UK social selling site for artists and designers who make "hand made" to sell their gorgeous crafts. Although it's no longer in it's infancy (more of a teenager now) Folksy is still growing and finding it's niche in the social selling world. Folksy has recently introduced international shipping, allowing it's sellers to ship their goodies abroad and increase sales too.

Where there's Folksy there are also folk and what does every hand made selling site need? A promotional blog, that's what. So Folkyfinds has been devised and launched by photographer Dan Jackson and he kindly invited me onto the editorial team. It's been a bit of a challenge for me (I had to learn to navigate my way through Wordpress and I'm a Blogger kind of gal) but I have posted my first entry this week - Hearts are Trumps.

Please take a look and why not subscribe to the site? You have nothing to lose and you will gain some great information and promos about Folksy.

Mother's Day in the UK

It's Mother's Day on Sunday 22 March and what better gift to send to your Mum than a glass heart pendant?



















Why choose glass? Well it lasts a lot longer than flowers - making it so much better value for money. You have a great choice of colours and Glassprimitif can send your glass heart direct to Mum, anywhere in the UK, provided you order it by Wednesday 17 March at Folksy.com
Of course, if you are in the USA you can be confident that your gift will arrive in plenty of time for May 10 by ordering from Etsy.

These delicate glass Polka Dot Hearts are made from opal glass and have an Aanranku silver plate bail attached. They look great hanging from a cord or sterling silver chain.

You win some, You lose some...

In a previous post, Float Glass Products, I raved about the exciting new stuff I had bought that is COE82, making it compatible with float. Whilst the colors of float glass are disappointing (compared to the vibrancy of Bullseye glass) I had high hopes that these products would help me to make new, innovative glass designs at a fraction of the cost of COE90 glass. Here's what has happened so far...



Clear bubble powder: I was hoping for large, blistering bubbles such as the ones I get in my sushi dishes but the bubbles came out more like a rash. Unperturbed, I made another tile with lots more bubble powder (see below). If you look carefully you wlil see that the larger bubbles have stress fractures in them.



Below: clear bubble powder experiments with other bubble powders.
Curious! The one of the left is clear and turquoise bubble powder. The clear powder appears to have stripped the turquoise of any color, leaving it a dirty gray. The one on the right is clear bubble powder mixed with red bubble powder. It has also stripped the red color from the bubbles. I'm blaming the clear powder but, as I am still experimenting with this, I could be wrong.



Below: bubble powder stud earrings with clear and pink bubble powder. You can see a faint sheen of pink around the bubbles. They do look unusual in the fact that the bubbles look as if the glass is under water but, as I am an "in-yer-face" with color kind of gal, I will be working on this to make it more colorful.



Transparent frit: because colored float is slightly disappointing I was expecting the frit to be a bit wishy washy. Instead, I am quite pleased with the results.
From left to right: First one is frit mixed with clear bubble powder. again, it's turned a horrible grayish color, like burnt ash.
Second one is amber, orange and red frit between two pieces of float glass. It looks quite good close up because it has tiny air bubbles trapped inside.
Third and fourth ones are both frit placed between and on top of the glass. The image doesn't show it clearly but these pieces have a lot more depth and color to them.



Below: amber, orange and red frit earrings. The transparency makes them look almost liquid. I'm quite pleased with these and they are available for sale in my Dawanda shop.



Silver and gold glass sheet: this glass has a coating of gold or silver and it has lots of pre-made scratches that make a pattern on the glass. (It would be good to be able to buy it as a solid metallic color too). Here's what I did with it.



Below: various glass nuggets fused with gold and silver coated glass. The ones on the left have been fused with a cap of clear glass. The gold and silver coating has burned out and the glass cap has devitrified. Not good! The ones on the right have been fused with the gold ands silver coated glass on top of the clear glass. Although it looks much better I didn't get the shrinkage in the kiln that I was expecting so I have since cut the glass shapes to a smaller size.



Hearts of Glass. These glass hearts have been hand cut and fused by me, Glassprimitif. They are made from float glass (coe82) with a coating of gold or silver glass. Each one measures 1.5" (3cm) and are available for sale at Glassprimitif on Etsy.

Rip out my heart!

Each of these glass hearts has been made as Valentine gifts and they are available for sale at http://glassprimitif.etsy.com All shipping is free.

The Best of Asianicandy

I have been exploring the boutique store http://asianicandystore.com/ as their oriental inspired items are just gorgeous (slipped in one of my sushi dishes here).
http://www.asianicandystore.com/icandystore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=324
If anyone wants to buy me the blue kimono jacket please don't hesitate - I promise I won't be embarrassed. Awww, thank you so much.

Green is the new Red!

For someone who is passionate about Red I have an awful lot of green in my Etsy shop. So I have posted these images to remind myself why I like red so much. The reds range from bright orange-red (leaf dish) to a deep blood red (white stripes dish) and a range of reds in-between. The latest sushi dish (third one down) is a new red called Pimento. It goes really well with grey and white. All this glass is available at http://glassprimitif.etsy.com.

Creating a Glass Dish Part 4

After one day fusing and one day slumping the dish is finished. I take the cold dish from the kiln and check the back to see if any kiln wash is stuck to it. I then wash it in warm water with washing up liquid and dry it. Now for some kiln maintenance - I check the kiln shelf to see if it needs repainting with kiln wash and vacuum out the kiln ready for the next fusing.
These dishes are available from the following outlets:
www.glassprimitif.etsy.com
www.shawgalleries.co.uk
www.keighley.ac.uk/kaf

Creating a Glass Dish Part 2

When the glass components of the dish are dry I arrange them on a primed kiln shelf and glue some decorative fused glass blobs onto the hearts with Elmer's glue. I leave the glue to dry thoroughly before I place the kiln shelf in the kiln. I us a liquid primer that I make up myself and apply it with a haik brush. Haik brushes are quite hairy so I am careful to rub off any hairs that stick to the shelf. I give the shelf five layers of wash and dry each one with a hair dryer before applying the next. I used to spray the wash onto the shelf but this was too messy as the spray bottle kept clogging. Also, I like the texture the brush marks give to the base of the glass.

Now I switch the kiln on for the initial heating phase. I start at No. 2 on the kiln dial for the first hour and bring the glass up to it's strain release point by 150f every 30 minutes. When the heat reaches 1000f I put the bung in the kiln and take the kiln up to 1,500f at a faster rate. When the glass reaches its strain release point I look through the bung hole to check on the glass. The kiln holds this temperature for between 5 and 15 minutes (longer if its float glass) to soak the glass. By now the glass should look nicely rounded and glowing. I remove the bung and turn the dial back down to 2 (on my Aim kiln I reach 8 on the dial) until the temperature reaches 1000f. This is the rapid cooling phase and when the kiln reaches 1000f I replace the bung and leave it to soak at this temperature.This enables the glass to anneal so that becomes tempered and won't shatter when the kiln is cold. I like to leave the glass to soak for a minmum of one hour . Then I turn the kiln off and leave the glass to cool to room temperature.

Creating a Glass Dish Part 1

This is Bullseye glass and it's my favorite. The Bullseye factory is in Portland, Oregon www.bullseye.com which is why it is more expensive than in the US. Must be the air miles! But the colours are lovely, it is easy to cut and grind and doesn't lose its intensity when fused. I'm a big fan.


So these are the colours I am going to use in my glass dish. I have cut a square of 5" in thick clear glass, a slightly smaller square of thin vanilla opal and now I am going to cut the heart shapes in red, orange, amber and lime green thin transparent glass. I draw round the paper heart template with a permanent marker pen and cut the hearts with a Toyo cutter. I try to be as economical with the glass as possible, saving small fragments to use as frit and larger pieces for other projects.


Here is the glass dish prior to grinding. I have a small Glastar diamond grinder which I bought from Tempsford Glass about four years ago. It gets a lot of punishment but its still going strong. I like to use a fine grinding head for Bullseye and change to a coarse grinding head for float and very thick glass. Once the glass has been smoothed I wash it in hot soapy water, rinse it in vinegar and water then dry it very carefully.

Hearts of glass

Before Valentine's Day Shaw Galleries asked me to make some heart shaped pendants. Yikes! I anticipated that the shapes would be very difficult to cut but, after a bit of practise, I really enjoy making these now. These ones are Bullseye chips placed between a clear and vanilla glass heart. Unfortunately, if I don't get them right the first time, they lose their shape in the kiln when re-fired (top left pendant) and become triangles. I also make these in dichroic glass. (See below). Hearts of Glass now showing at Shaw Galleries in Skipton North Yorks UK www.shawgalleries.co.uk and also at www.glassprimitif.etsy.com