Category: Glass

New glass!

5/23/2016

I was setting up my glass table this weekend and realized that I needed some room. That was the spark that finally motivated me to photograph and list the new pieces, especially the sun catchers. Of course, we are not getting much sun around here lately so I could call them cloud catchers.

I got a few other things listed as well but let's start with the sun catchers.

SOLD!

These are the 6 big pieces that range from 8" - 10". There are a few small 4" pieces too. Clearly I'm still working on my glass photography skills. Each image links to the product page for that sun catcher.

There are some tree and pinwheel ornaments too. I love making these and they would be great gifts. The pinwheels (except for #4) are made with dichroic glass so they reflect a lot of light and change color in different light.

Finally there's this piece that I'm calling Flourish. The technique is called kiln carving. I cut out shapes from a thick high temp fiber paper, arrange the pieces on the kiln shelf and then fire it with the glass on top. The glass melts around the shapes. This piece is made with pale lavender glass and comes with the stand. I see this one as a wedding gift.

Now that these are listed I can go make more!

Making glass quilts

5/4/2016

I'm taking fused glass class at Visual Arts again this session. We are so fortunate to have a facility like VisArts (formerly The Hand Workshop) in Richmond. The studio spaces are so nice and the classes cover everything from painting to letterpress to weaving to glass. I like taking the advanced glass class mostly because it gets me back to working on glass. We all work on our own projects but there's help whenever you need. Some of the people have been taking this class every session for 6 years! It's inspiring to see what everyone else is making.

My current interest is in quilt blocks. I like making these sun catchers and it's very good practice for cutting glass.....something that I'm still not great at!
I cut out the pieces for this and one other quilt last week and fired this one over the weekend. I love red and gray so this one might be a keeper! I still have to add the hanging chain but otherwise it's done.

Here's what the kiln looked like before firing. My kiln has a round shelf and it's not a huge kiln so I can only do one big quilt block in a firing. But I can't stand to fire the kiln with just one item so I try to fill the shelf as much as possible.
I added in some 4" square pinwheel blocks (pay attention to the colors of the red pinwheels) and experimented with some Christmas ornaments. The ornaments are a great way to experiment with different colors/materials/techniques. It's also a great use of scrap glass.

Yes, even glassmaking creates scrap bins!

Here are all of the little Christmas trees. They are about 4" tall. Some are definitely better than others but they all turned out pretty cute.

Here are the 4" pinwheel blocks. Did you notice that the orange isn't orange before firing? Some glass, especially reds, oranges and yellows "strike" to a different color. That causes problems when you don't organize your scrap glass well (like me). Sometimes I get surprised and not in a good way.

I also experimented with top vs corner hangers. I thought the 4: block might be too big for a corner hanger, but it isn't.

Here are my next projects. I'm gluing up a Card Trick block in turquoise. The blue circles are just bottle caps that I'm using as risers and not by bad design sense. The first block into the kiln is another in reds and yellows and some more test ornament blocks.

I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get these finished and fired. I try not to impose deadlines with my glass projects. They will be done when they are done.....like my wall!

New glass!

Making glass quilts

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