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.

From Glass Rods to Fused Glass

I bought these twisted glass rods from Ross of Nightcatdesign and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them at first.



Here are the results - fused glass pendants and earrings with silver plate bails and sterling silver ear wires. The rods have been fused onto vanilla, white or black Bullseye glass that has been capped with clear glass. they were fun to make and I still have lots of rods to use.


When they are expose to the extreme heat fo the kiln the rods fuse flat and the colors spread considerably. This gives the glass an integrated appearance, that the colors were laid into the glass individually.


These glass rods work well on the vanilla glass. The green in the rod has a glitter to it which catches the light. The large bail is silver plate.


These matching earrings have a delicate look. The ear wires are sterling silver. Available for sale at http://glassprimitif.etsy.com

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.

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/