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?

Jewellery: Sawpiercing

Earlier this summer I did a jewellery workshop.  This was my first time working with metals, and it was much easier than I would have guessed.  I've done a number of artsy-fartsy workshops in the past, and I really get a kick out of making jewellery. And, I enjoy trying my hand at various types of creative activities.  Writing is fun, but making something tangible offers a different kind of outlet and a different feeling of satisfaction.  And it's quicker!

In the pic above, I am sawing a little square of brass.  It's fairly easy to saw through... if you have good technique.   What I mean by this is that it does not require a huge amount of strength, but the saw blades are very fussy and if you go too fast or at the wrong angle, they snap.  I broke 15 blades in four hours!

Yikes!  The photo above is my first time soldering.  I'm terrified of fire and explosive gas canisters.  The bits of solder themselves are finicky.  The metal balls up when it melts, and you have to act quickly to spread it into place.

The final stage was buffing and polishing the piece.  This was easy, as the machine does all of the work.  But you need to take your time with it - the metal gets hot from the friction.

Ta-dah!  I don't really love the design (but don't hate it either).  I simply cut random shapes into the metal without any specific plan, and this is what I ended up with.  I guess it's kind of cool - certainly one of a kind!  

I have to admit, even though I learned a lot and enjoyed trying something new, I do not LOVE working with metal.  It's a very precise skill; you have to be very exact and really pay attention to the details.  That doesn't jibe well with my usual bull in a china shop approach to so many things.  

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!