Glass coaster workshop

Fused Glass Coasters

On Sunday 11th October I will be teaching a one day workshop on creating your own fused glass coasters.  This will be my first workshop at The Garth, a workshop complex on Skipwith Common, near York, i am booked to teach more of them from October.

There are eight places at this workshop - I like to work with small groups of people to ensure that everyone gets enough tuition and encouragement.  Each student will design and make a set of 4 coasters which are then fired off-site in my kiln and returned, along with rubber bumpons on the base of each coaster. This is aimed at beginners and improvers alike - if you have never cut glass before then this is the ideal project on which to learn.  You don't even need to bring along a design - I can supply you with ideas and inspiration.

To book a place please visit Silver and Stone HERE, you can book on-line or email Helen for more details.  The workshop is from 10am to 3pm and refreshments are provided.  However, it is advisable to bring a packed lunch. There is plenty of free parking. 

All materials are provided but you must wear old clothes or bring an apron. Also, make sure your arms and legs are covered (jeans or trousers) and no open toe sandals please.

Love Glass, Love Pinterest

 Duncan McClellan, glass artist

I am absolutely addicted to Pinterest and enjoy browsing for inspirational glass.  My favourite board, Glass I Love, showcases mostly hand blown or cast glass rather than fused glass because I have immense respect for glass blowers (and a bit of envy too).

Glassprimitif

I also use Pinterest to promote and catalogue my own glass and I try to remember to upload every piece of glass I have posted on-line. 

Glass Commissions

Coasters Commission

Glass production has been quite slow recently because I have been concentrating on some new designs for Swanky Maison and, as I have such a small kiln, one dish takes three days to fire.

However, I was lucky enough to receive a commission from Michelle of The Crafty Canuk to create a set of coaster for her new kitchen.  Michelle has designed her kitchen with a retro style and she wanted the coasters to reflect that.  I played around with several designs but wasn't happy with them at first.  Then I remembered a dish that I had designed using squares of bright opal glass - I still use the image as my avatar on Folksy so I played around with coloured squares in lime, orange and white on black. 

Lime green opal glass looks horrible before it's fired - the sort of pastel green that you used to see in hospital corridors - but, once "cured" in the kiln it is so sharp and limey it zings against the  orange.  I don't like totally symmetrical designs (I Iearned all about balancing colours and patterns from my quilt making days) so I added a random orange square to throw the design off-balance a little bit. 

Of course it wasn't all plain sailing - when is it ever? Six coasters, two firings and a fire polish for each, kiln breakdown half way through production, one coaster slipped whilst firing and then I misplaced one just before I posted them out..... but I got there in the end. Michelle was EXTREMELY patient and I hope they look good in her kitchen.

  

Here's the one that went wrong - I said a few bad words when I opened the kiln and saw it had slipped. Hey ho! Time to get the hammer out and make some frit!

Here are the coasters in Michelle's new kitchen

If you would like to commission a set of coasters or glass dishes or fishes plase contact me on Folksy.

Swanky Maison

My glass dishes are now available to buy on the Shopping Site Swanky Maison.

About Swanky Maison - this new shopping site prides itself in sourcing new designers who create original items for the home. Items include ceramics, glass, textiles, prints and furnishings and... now me!

All glass that I make for Swanky Maison is designed exclusively for the website and you can buy my cupcake glass dishes only from them. I have also started work on a series of dishes based on Seaside Designs, including lighthouse, boats and beach huts (I sold the beach huts yesterday).

I have also listed three glass Sushi Girls on the website, one of my favourite designs. These Sushi Girls have been slumped into deep curved moulds that make them ideal as soap dishes, for sushi, canapes or keeping your earrings in on the bedside table.

I am now working on a series of Matryoshka Doll Dishes, coming to Swanky Maison soon.

Join Swanky Maison on Facebook or visit the website for more home wares.

More commissions and collaborations

I recently received a request from a customer, via Etsy, to make a dish with a red gingko leaf design fused onto it.

I started with some drawings. Deep shapes cannot be cut into glass unless a Taurus saw is used as it will fracture under the stress. Of course, I don't own a Taurus saw, just a glass cutter and a grinder, so I had to plan where I could make cut lines that wouldn't make the glass leaf look "pieced" together. The final drawing was redrawn in thick black marker pen so that I could see the design clearly through the glass.

I made a prototype of the design in float glass so that I could work out any problems before I committed to the final piece. As you can see, I didn't spend enough time grinding the curved shapes on the leaf and the curves flattened out slightly when fused.

Because this is a flat design (the customer didn't want any additional texture or glass blobs) I wanted the actual red leaf to have some depth so I bought a sheet of streaky red and clear Bullseye glass from my favorite glass suppliers, Warm-Glass UK.

Streaky glass is tricky stuff. The streaks of color are random so it's hard to position the leaf design so that the best streaks are used. I only had one sheet so I couldn't afford to make any cutting mistakes. Of course, the best streaks were in the centre of the glass so I have lots of small pieces left!



I fused the leaf onto opal white and clear Bullseye glass and then slumped it into a dish mold. Fortunately the line between the leaf parts has fused closely together and has not made the deep ridge that you see in the prototype. Next, I emailed the image of the finished dish to the customer and awaited her verdict.

Success! The dish was shipped off to Germany and here is her feedback:

"The dish has safely arrived this morning. Simply great! Many thanks."

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.

I've been shopping!

Unlike most "normal" women I hate shopping - for anything. Wandering around shops, browsing for clothes, presents, food drives me mad because I consider it a complete waste of time - I could be at home painting, drawing or fusing! So the internet is perfect for me as I can order all my books, glass, gifts and fusing materials on-line.

Here's my latest glass purchase from http://warmglass.co.uk It's all Bullseye including transparent colours, opal black, white, vanilla, some dichroic coated black and a whole packet of stringers. Yum! I also bought some "staples" like kiln wash, Glastac and silver plate bails but I won't bore you with those. Now, out of my way - I'm off to create with these glass goodies.

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.

Ready to Go

My parents are coming for a visit so I have pepared a week's fusing in advance. Hopefully, I will be able to fuse each day even though I can't devote much time to working in the studio. All this beautiful Bullseye glass was bought from http://warm-glass.co.uk

Sheesh! That's bright.

I recently bought some Bullseye thin opals from http://warm-glass.co.uk/ and I really love these bright colours. I am working on a series of dishes using retro squares but I need add a few more colours to my stash. That pink is a bit pale but the yellows fuse into lovely marigold shades.

Dichroic glass is lovely

I love dichroic glass. I first saw it on a US glass website and thought "that is the glass for me". I originally used Dichromagic but now I only use CBS (Coatings by Sandberg). When I first started making dichro jewellery there wasn't very much made in the UK and so the galleries I approached were quite taken with it. I went to the British Craft Trade Fair at Harrogate and most of the dichro I saw there was fairly awful (quite a lot of badly cut and underfused pieces) which encouraged me to invest more time and energy into making dichro fused pieces. Now, of course, the market is saturated with dichro and I am constantly changing my ideas and designs to keep it fresh. There is so much mass produced dichro on eBay that I can't get a good price so I'm quite glad there's Etsy now. I like to add small pieces of dichro on fused glass dishes to give them a sparkle but dichro is so expensive I have to use it sparingly. Like all my glass, I save every fragment when I have cut it and fuse the small pieces in the kiln to make decorative "blobs".
What is dichroic glass? Dichro isn't a glass in itself but layers of quartz crystal and metal oxides that coat a glass surface. As long as the coated glass is compatible with other glass then dichro coated glass can be fused with transparent or opaque glass. CBS dichro is coated onto Bullseye therefore CBS is compatible with all glass that is 90COE, including Bullseye. You can also buy other dichro coated glass, such as float, which will be compatible with glass that is 82COE. Both these types of dichroic coated glass are available from www.warm-glass.co.uk
Why use dichroic coated glass? The dichroic coating transmits a colour which, once heated, reflects a different colour from its surface. This reflection is dependent on the angle you hold the glass at because the refracted light from the surface makes it faceted. Dichro can also be influenced by the colours you are wearing as dichro jewellery can pick up different variance of colour. A good example of this is the blues which can range from cyan to violet. Wear it against black and it will be different than wearing it against, say, green. Wearing dichro jewellery is very attractive because the flash of changing colour catches the eye as the wearer moves around.














Dichroic glass jewellery by Glassprimitif is available from:
www.shawgalleries.com
www.glassprimitif.etsy.com
www.keighley.ac.uk/kaf

But these aren't red!

No they're not but if I worked with red glass all the time I would get stuck in a rut. Instead, I really like these Bullesye opals I bought in turquoise, soft blue, lime green and vanilla. I have mixed them with transparent blues, turquoise and greens to create these dishes. There are two sushi dishes, both starring on http://www.glassprimitif.etsy.com and a larger glass dish that I don't want to part with yet as I like it so much. I'm going to order some more opals from Warm-glass in funky colours.

Glass is good

The first glass I began fusing was float scrap that I could get free from work. I would fuse washers, copper wire, copper sheet, leaves and razor blades between the float. I still have these samples in a box along with all the pieces that went wrong. (It's a big box). When I got more familiar with glass fusing I looked around for a coloured glass that met my requirements and settled on Bullseye. The colours are so rich and vibrant. Here's an example of a few pieces of my Bullseye glass stash. My favourite colours are red (of course), vanilla, lime green, orange, amber, black and turquoise. Bullseye isn't the cheapest glass and all ambers, oranges and reds are the most expensive because of the gold content. So I have been looking around for a more competitive supplier. I have to weigh up my fuel costs against postage costs and it is definitely more cost effective to order glass by post than to travel to the warehouse I usually go to. The most competitive UK Bullseye supplier has to be www.warm-glass.co.uk where I already buy my dichroic glass. The new site is easy to navigate and they stock such a huge range of Bullseye colours that I am reeling from the choice. I'm going to have to make a purchase soon as I want to make dishes in chocolate and blue opal glass. I can even save glass I like in my Wish List so that I can go away and think about it before I commit to buy. If anyone wants to buy me a present from Warm-glass I would like the book "Contemporary Warm Glass" by Brad Walker. Thanks!