Suicide Glass!

Fused glass and razor blades are made for each other! With the latest craze of Steam punk* these glass items seem to fit right in.



I fused my first Blade Dish about four years ago and I have been making them occasionally since. They are a combination of float glass (picture glass) which gives the glass a greenish tinge and red enamel powder sandwiched between the glass. Oh, and don't forget the razor blade. Because steel blades are so thin they don't cause fractures when fused.



My first dishes were always shallow, because I worried that a deep slump would cause the blade to fracture the glass. But as you can see from the deeper dish (above) the metal is flexible enough to bend and slump with the glass.

The ultimate steam punk accessory must be the Rock n Roll Suicide pendants. I wear one to work sometimes and I always get comments (and sometimes funny looks). As David Bowie said "Your too old to lose it, too young to choose it..."

Pendants and dishes are now available for sale on Folksy and Etsy.

* "Steam Punk is a sub-genre of fantasy and fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era —but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy." Wikipedia.

Glass Fish

One of my favorite glass items is fish. They are great fun to make because I can play with so many different combinations of colors.



Here is Sammy, a pendant made by Smokeylady54, using one of my glass fish in her creation. She has added her opwn lovely lampwork beads and leaves, as well as pearls and Swarovski crystals. The toggle on this piece is Sterling silver and the necklace is just under 22" long.



Sammy is for sale at Smokeylady's Etsy store . I also have some glass fish in my Etsy store too. Below are "Sid and Nancy", two punky fish waiting for a home.

Creative Glass Guild January Challenge

The CGGE Challenge for January is for members to create glass art by recycling. The CGGE members have produced some fabulous glass items such as beads from wine bottles, fused roundels in stained glass, pot melts from scrap glass and fused glass "mistakes" smashed and then re-fused. Here is my contribution - although it is more of an example of "how not to"!
1. The first image shows a collection of old and battered picture frames that have float (picture) glass. All this glass is fusible but, as the source is unknown, I don't combine it with other float glass. Sometimes picture frames come with really poor quality glass and so I match like with like.
2. The second image shows a selection of metal items that I used as inclusions in the glass. These included copper, rusty washers and dubious metal decorations.
3. This image shows two fused glass coasters with metal inclusions. They were fused at the same firing in the kiln and they look fairly good!
4. The copper star shape has fused well because copper fuses at high temperatures and, as the copper shape is quite thin, it fused with a relatively flat air pocket inside the glass.
5. But look carefully at the coaster fused with rusty washers. Because of the variety and thickness of the metals the glass coaster has a stress fracture running along the base, which formed as soon as the coaster was removed, cold, from the kiln.
6. The final image clearly shows the stress fracture along the bottom of the glass. It's still in my studio and I look at it every day - waiting for the coaster to go "ping" and fall into pieces.