More Glass Fusing

A couple weekends ago, I did another workshop at Nanopod Studios. This was a glass fusing workshop, which I have done before (and love doing!!!) but Tosca Teran (the owner creative wizard of Nanopod)  did things differently than what I have tried elsewhere.  (You may recall that I did a post a few months ago on Pate de Verre which was also at Tosca's studio).

At this workshop, there were tons of materials to work with, in addition to sheets of glass.  There were colourful glass rods (about the length and diameter of a pencil), stingers (very thin glass rods - skinnier than a spaghetti noodle), and lots of Frit (basically glass sprinkles), plus paint.

Another Budding Artiste named Lori did the workshop with me.  She too has blogged about the experience, and I have to admit her photos are much better than mine, so I shamelessly stole a few of them!

These are the pendants before being kilned.  Mine are mostly the blue ones in the middle (but not the larger ones along the upper and left edge of the frame). I also did the red one near the top.  You can see the use of the stringers on the blue square with white "stripes".  Stringer were cool to work with, they snap so easily.  The two dark blue and turquoise ones to the right - that sort of look like weird blue Lego pieces are the ones I did with glass rods.  The rods cuts fairly easily with a tool that looks like it belongs to an evil 18th Century dentist.  The whitish one at "one o'clock" is layers of clear and light blue glass with lots of Frit between the layers.  And finally, towards the left, the dark blue square with a whitish/clear piece on top is another example of Frit (plus some paint).  And at the bottom left, is a cool piece made by my classmate Lori.  Zoom in a bit and you can see that it's a dolphin jumping out of the water.

Another pre-kiln picture; that's Lori in the background.  My shirt and Lori's pants are a perfect colour match! 

Here's what all of our pendants look like after spending a few hours at extremely high temperatures - like hotter than a Manhattan sidewalk in July.

A close-up of the pendants I made. Too bad the photo above has such glare. But you can see how the ones with stringers turned out - pretty cool, eh? The two mottled dark blue ones in the center/upper right (above) are the "Lego" ones after being baked.  And in the pic below, you can see how nicely the Frit melted.

What made this workshop different than other is that we got to choose one pendant to make into a ring (sterling silver band).  I confess that I suck at metal work (see previous post on Sawpiercing).  So, Tosca did 99% of the work, but I did file the metal a wee bit.  

At any rate, I really like the way my ring turned out!  And I am very, very impressed with Lori's ring.  I think it's stunning!  I love the colours, I love the size and shape, and I hope she wears it often.  It's just gorgeous! 

Lori has more pics on her blog called Frivolous At Last.  You can check them out here.

Lori's ring - awesome, eh?

Pate de Verre

After burying myself in school for the last several weeks, I finally got busy doing something new and different, and very cool: Pate de Verre.  I had no idea what this was all about when I stumbled upon the website for Nanopod Studio and saw their list of upcoming workshops.  

But since it wasn't terribly expensive and was just an afternoon, I figured: What the heck - might as well give it a try...  

The instructor was Tosca Teran y Hidalgo, and she was amazingly patient.  I think I asked her 627 questions (many of which were duplicates!)   

The inside of the mold is "painted" before you do anything else.  The paint is not what you'd expect.  It's very finely-powdered, coloured glass to which you add some kind of magic solution to bind it enough so that it will hold in place.  Once you have the outer (or bottom) layer painted, then you fill the mold with little bits of ground glass - the pieces are so small and so fine that they looks like grains of sugar.  

Next, the masterpiece is kilned for several hours.  The temperature of the kiln is fairly low (comparatively speaking), which is why the glass granules retails their shape, as opposed to melting together. 

Here's a short YouTube video that gives a brief explanation of what Pate de Verre is and how it's done.  

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So, I did the first part (above) on Dec. 13, and went back tonight to pick up my finished piece.  Very cool! 

I had to use a little chisel  and a pick (it looked like a medieval dental instrument!) to gently smash away the plaster cast.  I literally broke the mold.  Anyhow, the pics tell the story and you can see my colourful skull end result.  

Did I mention that this activity was very cool?!  I had a lot of fun doing this and look forward to doing it again some day.

The five photos above were taken by Tosca Teran - the artist-instructor who owns Nanopod Studio.  Tosca is awesome - and very patient!  Her studio is filled with all sorts of her creations: jewellery, metal works, glass works, a wild pair of shoes and a very funky pink felt headpiece/wig! I can't wait to return and discover some new creations.  

Glass Fusing - WOW! So Cool!

I keep finding so many fun things to do!  

On August 17th I attended a GLASS FUSING class at The Devil's Workshop taught by multi-talented artist (and ad-hoc photographer!) Melissa - check her out on Twitter @ladywildebeest .


I've never tried anything like this before - and it was so cool!  It's much easier to do than you'd guess.  Basically, you use a miniature pizza cutter thingamajiggy to score where you want to cut.  Then you use some kind of pliers more or less to snap off the piece you're working with.  You can add layers, paint them, add more layers, and use different colours, shapes and sizes.  These four pictures are from Aug. 17th.  You can see my six pieces (pendants) in their pre-kiln stage.

Today, August 29th, I finally got around to picking up my pieces after being fired.  The firing takes several hours, and then of course the glass needs a lot of time to cool down.  So cool to see how they all turned out!!!  

I like some of the pieces more than the others, but since the whole endeavour was a new thing - an experiment - I've got to say I am quite pleased with the results!  And keep in mind, I was winging it - I had no clear plan or idea of what I wanted to make.  I just wanted to do something creative.  The three blue ones in the centre are my faves.  I really enjoyed doing this and cannot wait to give it another whirl!