Showing posts with label bright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bright. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 March 2009

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.

Friday, 6 July 2007

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.

Tuesday, 12 June 2007

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.

Monday, 7 May 2007

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

Friday, 4 May 2007

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.

Wednesday, 18 April 2007

Fishes on Dishes


These dishes are made from Bullseye glass and are on sale at the Arts Factory, Cavendish Street, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD21 3DF. They measure 5" square and come in bright, funky colours. They can be used for sushi, canapes, candy or just as something cheerful for the coffee table. They cost £15 sterling or $28 with postage of £3 for UK buyers, $6.50 for overseas. Contact the Arts Factory on 01535 618554 or email: joanna.whitehead@keighley.ac.uk.
When I started fusing glass I experimented with a variety of glass until I decided that Bullseye was the glass for me. The colours are brilliant - my favourites are vanilla opal, red irridescent and turquoise. Unfortunately, it's an expensive glass but you get the quality that you pay for. I buy my Bullseye colours from Decorative Glass Supplies in Bradford. This is a huge warehouse stacked full of glass and glass making supplies. Makes include Bullseye, Spectrum and all the glass you need for stained glass.