Float Glass Products

At last! My glass order is finally here. All these goodies are co-efficient with float glass (coe 82-84) and I am already experimenting with them.



Shown here: two sheets of "precious metal" glass in gold and silver, five jars of fine glass frit, three jars of glass bubble powder and a bucket of glass "tangles". The tangles looks fabulous and I hope to make some dishes based on sweet shop candy with them. They are like hollow twisted glass stringers, but a bit thicker than the normal stringer.
Not shown - two pens of "liquid" stringer in black and white and two nibs.



Below are some examples of float glass fusing products including a slumped dish made with different colored frits. I could have bought float glass millefiori too but the colors are rather disappointing. I think I'll wait until the technology for float glass can create colors that equal Bullseye or murano.



Anyway, I will be posting all my experiments (good and bad) here on my blog so please stay tuned!

Funky Fish

I make a selection of glass fish from scraps of glass. The glass nuggets are fused in the kiln before I place them on the fish so that they form a blob rather than fusing flat. I start off by cutting out a paper template and drawing round it onto the glass, using a permanent marker pen. Once I have cut the basic shape I then grind it into a better shape. Then the fun part is sorting through my spare glass to decide on colours and decorative shapes. I really enjoy cutting glass, the more awkward the shape, the better the challenge. Grinding large pieces is boring but shaping difficult pieces such as hearts is very satisfying. Once everything is shaped, washed and dried, I put it all together with touches of Elmers Glue. I fuse the hanging wire between two pieces of glass to secure it. Then into the kiln for fusing. The exciting part is taking the glass out when the kiln has cooled to see what I have got. I have three fish designs at the moment, Submarine, Flounder and Tiddler. I'm not particularly fascinated by fish, but they sure are fun to make!
A selection of tiddlers are available in my Etsy shop.