Gone Fishing......

More fish, fresh from the kiln. These funky fused glass fish are made from Bullseye glass and are such fun to make. Each fish has a wire loop to hang in the window or in the bathroom ort anywhere at all.

Billy the Fish available for sale at Etsy

Monty the Fish available for sale at Dawanda

Tango the Fish available for sale at Dawanda

Simon the Fish available for sale at Etsy

Celeste the Fish available for sale at Dawanda

Ethelred the Fish available for sale at Etsy

Cecil the Fish available for sale at Dawanda

Calypso the Fish available for sale at Etsy

Accordian Books

I really enjoy making small books such as notebooks, matchbooks, stitched books and books with small pockets and pop-ups. From making the first proto-type the possibilities are endless and you need very few tools either.
There is such a great range of papers and cardstock available today to make hand made books with. I have used pre-printed gift wrap and good quality cartridge paper to make this small accordian folded book but I also like to dye my own paper and use batik papers too.



You will need:
1 sheet A3 cartridge paper
1 piece of card stock
1 sheet fancy paper (for your book cover)
pencil
scalpel or similar cutting knife
ruler
bradawl
cutting mat or board
good quality paper glue
thin ribbon (not shown)
sharp scissors (not shown)



First, cut 3 pieces of card stock, using a ruler and scalpel. Accurate cutting is key here. 2 x 3" square (8cm) and 1 x 1" x 3" (3cm x 8cm). Next cut a piece of your fancy paper 7.5" x 3.5" (19cm x 9cm).



Cover each piece of card stock with an even coating of glue. I have used a gel glue but, if your paper glue is a particularly thick kind, leave it for 30 seconds to dry slightly before placing it on the fancy paper. I position the card stock on the paper "by eye" but you may want to measure the position and mark lightly with a pencil on the back of the fancy paper.
Make sure you leave a tiny space between each piece of card so that folding the book cover will not overstretch your paper.



To avoid smudging the glue onto the paper it is advisable to make your book in stages. I place the book cover under a heavy weight (such as a book or the cutting mat) and allow it to dry for 30 minutes. If you do not press your book flat the thin glue will cause it to warp and become misshapen.
Once the glue is thoroughly dry, use sharp pointed scissors to carefully snip the edges of the fancy paper, as shown above. You should also make a small vertical cut at each end of the book's spine. as shown below. This will prevent the paper from bunching around the spine.



Carefully fold down and glue the paper edges over the card stock, taking care not to over-wet the paper with glue. Resist the urge to fold the book yet, instead place it under a weight for another 30 minutes.



Once dry, cut two lengths of thin ribbon and glue these onto the inside of the book, back and front, as shown above. Leave to dry whilst you make the book pages.



Constructing the pages. You will need to measure and cut two strips of cartridge paper 2 3/4" (7cm) x the length of an A3 piece of paper. Draw a guide line on the back of each paper 2 3/4" in from the edge and score your pencil line with a bradawl. Take care not to press too hard with the bradawl or you will tear the cartridge paper.
Now fold the paper along the scored line. Your first fold will be a mountain fold (as shown above) and the pencil mark will be at the back of the paper. This pencil mark won't be visible when the book is finished.

This is how you fold accordian-style pages. If your first fold was a mountain fold then your next one will be a valley fold (the shape of the fold is self-explanatory). You won't need to measure and mark each fold with a pencil and bradawl as long as you fold CAREFULLY and accurately. Fold both strips of paper in this way until you get to the end.

You should have a small strip of surplus paper at the end. I call this piece the "tail". Cut the tail from only ONE strip of paper, you will need the other one.

One strip of paper won't give you enough pages for your accordian book so you need to join two strips together. Take the "tail" from one strip of paper and glue it to the second strip. Make sure that you glue a valley folded piece to a mountain folded piece and that the tail is at the back of your paper (you don't want the tail to be seen when the book is finished). As shown below.

Once dry, fold all the pages together. They should spring apart as you let go to form an accordian.

Nearly finished! Glue the back of the first page to the inside of the front book cover. The first fold facing upwards should be a valley fold. Make sure that your page covers the edge of the ribbon. Press it firmly and leave to dry. (Don't place it under a weight or you will squish the book cover).

Repeat the process by gluing the back page to the inside back cover and leave the book open to to dry.

When dry, carefully fold the pages up and tie the ribbons together to hold them in place.

Voila! You have just made a delightful book that you can fill with drawings, notes, photos or collage. Here are some sites you can buy handmade books.

Kupokiley

Staceyhandmade

Giftshed

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.

Sources of Inspiration

As an art teacher in secondary and further education I often help students who are struggling for inspiration and ideas. As a glass artist I sometimes struggle for ideas myself. This “block” on ideas isn’t easy to cope with as it can leave you feeling fed up and panicked but, just like writer’s block, it soon passes.

How does an idea start? Twenty years ago I worked as a freelance designer and my clients expected me to produce at least 3 to 5 good quality ideas for each brief. Working on new designs with short deadlines made me ideas-rich but, working at that pace, also left me exhausted creatively. Fortunately design is more to do with nurture than nature and, once you are in your stride as a designer, more ideas flow. Imagine your first idea is like an acorn that grows into a strong tree that branches off with similar ideas that then scatters more acorns (ideas) that start the whole process again. That’s how contagious ideas can be!


Where to begin? Anything or anyone can trigger an idea - a landscape, a building, a song, a conversation, a colour ….. it sounds pretentious but it’s true. Are you completely stuck? Don’t have an idea of your own? Stop looking around and look inside yourself instead. What do you like to do? What are your interests? List three things about yourself. Here are some possible examples:
I drink a lot of tea!
I love gardening.
My favourite colour is red.
Three design ideas already. Let’s take a look at Drinking Tea and list words that are linked to this idea:
Tea leaves, tea bags, tea pot, tea cups, tea strainer, tea spoons, sugar bowl, milk jug, saucers, tea plates, biscuits, dainty cakes, napkins, tablecloth….
Now I gave gathered the ideas they need to be developed into a design. What am I going to do with this design? Will it be a collage? Mosaic? Patchwork quilt? Glass dish?

An appliqué quilt based on the idea of Drinking Tea.
Look through magazines and catalogues, selecting and cutting out images of tea pots, cups, cakes, etc.
Make rough drawings of the shapes of the images.
Decide on the shapes you like and photocopy your drawings. Play around with the cut out shapes on a large piece of plain paper. Can you construct a design that you are reasonably happy with?
Look at patterns and colours of china tea sets that you might like to use on your appliqué shapes. Willow pattern? Royal Copenhagen? Stripes and spots? Roses? Plain colours? Check tablecloths?
Spend some time looking at fabrics that will suit the design for a Tea Drinking Applique Quilt. Think about three main things when you select material: colour, pattern and texture.

Where can you keep all these ideas? Becoming ideas-rich and collating images is addictive but it is difficult to develop these ideas if all your reference is loose. You may find ideas for future projects whilst researching for a current project or you may want to go back and look at a previous idea.
There are several ways you can store and group your reference and images. Choose one or more that you are comfortable with and suits you.
Sketchbooks hard backed, A4 or A5 size, plain or patterned cover, artists’ sketch block, children’s drawing pad.
Notebooks plain or lined pages, jotters, exercise books, spiral bound books, hand made books, stapled pages. (You can buy plain books on Dawanda).
Scrap books sugar paper, scrap computer paper, foolscap paper.

Where can you find sources for design? Magazines, children’s books, catalogues, photographs, travel brochures, newspapers, postcards, paint charts, fabric swatches, architecture, nature, patterns, ethnic art, historical and contemporary art, postage stamps, found objects, pebbles, shells…..


Design boards. I like to make design boards, I have been making them since art school (a long time) and still look at the very old ones when I am looking for a fresh idea. This design board is for an idea I have for making glass sushi dishes. I sought out images of origami paper dolls and toys and have included washi paper with some drawings I have made. I am looking at three things: shape, colour and texture. The pleasure of making a design board is arranging the images and then sticking them down.
Working Drawings. Unlike finished drawings, working drawings are dispensable – they can be scribbled over, redrawn and notes made in the margin. Working drawings don’t need to be to scale – that’s the job of the finished drawing. When I have thrashed out several drawings on paper I then draw the exact measurements for a sushi dish and finalise my design.
The finished outcome. So from a design board I have finished a selection of sushi dishes called “The Sushi Girls”. My design board and drawings helped me to resolve problems and adapt my designs for glass.


A quick note about copyright – copyright law is tricky to enforce unless you are a powerful corporation who makes soft drinks or Japanese cartoon cats, or you have a lot of money to enable you to sue. This means that the little people (like you and me who can’t afford to hire lawyers) are vulnerable to having our precious work copied. Here are some does and don’ts:
Do take care when downloading images from Google that you are not infringing others’ copyright. Pasting their images on your design board is fine as long as you are not directly copying their work.
Instead, take a look at Dover Books which are 25% copyright free http://doverbooks.co.uk/ . These books are a fantastic resource.
Make sure that your designs at lest three steps away from the sources of reference you have collected.
Please don’t scan websites like Dawanda and Etsy to directly copy others’ hand made items and then sell them through another selling website. You WILL get found out.
If your idea and design is your own and unique then ask the viewer to respect your copyright.

And finally, please note that this article is solely the property of Glassprimitif. Please do not copy parts of it out for re-publication without the author’s permission.

Vote for the Colours of Dawanda!

I am taking part in the Colours of Dawanda competition on http://en.dawanda.com/glassprimitif vote for your favourite participating Pinboard and you could win a prize of you choice. Here's my Pinboard http://en.dawanda.com/list/Glassprimitif/8509-Colours-of-Dawanda

and here's the link to post your vote. http://en.dawanda.com/topic/18/10248

Scarey skullies!

So, I made one scarey Skully and my son took it as a present for his friend's birthday. So I made another skully and my daughter took it for herself. I have now made five more skullies so hands off, kids! To bag yourself a scarey skully got to http://glassprimitif.etsy.com/ or http://en.dawanda.com/shop/glassprimitif

Inclusions in glass

What is an inclusion? Well it's anything that can be fused between two pieces of glass (but not glass itself).

What objects can be fused as an inclusion? Washers, razor blades, certain types of metal foils, copper wire, coins, leaves, clock parts......

What can't be fused as an inclusion? Paper, plastic, hair, fabric, string, wood, foodstuff.

Why can you fuse plant matter but not paper or fabric? Because they will all turn to ash in the intense heat of the kiln but certain plant matter will leave behind a skeleton in the shape of the inclusion - such as ivy leaves, ferns and heather.

Why has the glass cracked around the inclusion? This happens when the inclusion is too thick for the glass such as heavy coins and bulky washers.

I have fused metal foil in between my glass but it has turned black. It could be that the foil is too thin or that it isn't a fusible foil. for fusible gold, silver and copper foil coe 90 go to:

http://www.warm-glass.co.uk/Shop/CategoryProducts.aspx?CategoryId=68

Copper sheet sometimes sheds small rusty or black residue between the glass. Clean the copper well with a silver cleaner and wash in hot soapy water before use.

Can all types of glass be fused with inclusions? Gosh, I don't know the answer to that one - I fuse inclusions (with the exception of the coe90 foils) between float glass coe 80 -82.

Fused glass sushi dishes with inclusions can be bought from http://glassprimitif.etsy.com/ and fused glass pendants from http://en.dawanda.com/shop/glassprimitif

These glass items have been designed and made by me (Glassprimitif). Please respect the copyright of this design.