Examining and Evaluating

in my last blog post, I talked about my idea to create my own sheet of custom-colored glass by fusing together opal frit with clear frit and bits of scrap glass. I thought it would be a cool way to develop a piece of glass that I couldn't buy from a supplier and that would be just what I had in mind. Well, my first fused plate attempt is finished--with no bubbles or other major kiln malfunctions this time, thank goodness--but while the completed plate is nice and all, the result isn't quite what I had in mind, either, so I'm going to have to put the old thinking cap back on and try to come up with another approach.

Having tried this whole make-my-own-sheet-of-glass idea, I've decided that the look I'm really working for is a plate-sized pot melt, which may not really be possible with a kiln the size of mine. One of my books on glass fusing describes a fairly complicated-looking framework of hot damz, kiln furniture, homemade fiber paper mold and heavy screen to make a plate-sized pot melt. It looked really complicated to me when I read through the directions, but it is probably what I'm going to have to try to get the look I want...either that or running the kiln up really hot and doing some open-kiln combing or swirling or something like that. (My face gets hot just thinking about it!) The mental image for what I'm hoping to attain involves something much more smooth and marble-like than the result I got in this first experiment. In this attempt, the little bits of colored frit that I thought would melt and smooth out into a swoop of color just didn't do that. They remained small, square, frit-shaped and crumb-looking instead! Not at all the effect I was looking for.

You can see the first kiln shot of the square fiber mold and the layered frit in the blog post just below this one. I had swirls of opal frit layered under clear with bits and pieces of coordinating colored scraps of glass on top of that. Thinking that part over, it may have been better to put all of the colored bits and frit underneath the clear, but that's how we learn, right? Here's the second kiln shot...

You can see the inner square that resulted from what I put in the mold...clear and opal frit with flecks of color in a lace-like rounded square. After I washed that up and removed the tiny little areas of kilnwash that had stuck on the back, I laid it over a piece of red and clear streaky glass that I cut to the same size and shape as the sushi plate mold. Another piece of learning...I should have cut that about two blade widths narrower. I put step two through a full fuse cycle to marry the two separate pieces together--still kind of hoping for some smoothing out of the frit. The full fuse came out just fine, other than no smoothing out of the opal frit, no lovely casual swirls of opal color soaked into the streaky and clear red behind. Sigh.

To complete the plate-building process, I put the resulting square of glass back in the kiln a third time, laid over the top of my new sushi plate mold. I stacked the plate mold up off the kiln shelf with some kiln furniture, made sure the air hole was open (!) and ran that through a slumping cycle. It slumped perfectly...no bubbles...only one little lipped edge where the glass square was apparently just a little bit bigger than the mold. I don't have a glass saw or a separate grinder...just a Dremel with grinding bits...so I may or may not try to get that edge off. It could just be a little idiosyncrasy that marks it as my first experiment and a reminder to aim for a blank that is just slightly smaller than the mold!

And here it is, after three firings and hours and hours of cooling........Now I just have to figure out how to buff out the bottom to make it smooth rather than scratchy...... It's OK, really, I know that...but it doesn't match up with the picture I had in my head, so for me it was a learning experience but not a resounding success. Food for thought, I guess...and fodder for my next creative experiment!!

Forging Ahead!

Call me crazy, but even after all of the kiln maladies I've had in the last couple of weeks, I'm experimenting once again! I bought some molds from a fellow Etsyian a few weeks ago and have been eager to try them out ever since. I had a couple of special requests to complete before I could do that, though, which took a bit of time now that I'm back at work for another school year, so today is the first opportunity I've had to get it going. One of the molds that I bought is a sushi plate...nice squarish shape, shallow curve...a very modern look that I really like. The problem was, I had an idea that had been brewing in my mind of what I wanted in a first plate attempt, and none of the glass I have in the studio really worked. So, rather than buying more glass, waiting for it to arrive and then playing around with that, I decided to go ahead and try to make my own custom square of glass using a fiber paper mold.

Now, I'm new to fusing and there may be really good reasons why one shouldn't do this, but being a relative novice, I don't know what they are until I try. (Sometimes things are much less stressful this way!! Until you open the kiln to a disaster, at least.) Using the plate mold as a pattern, I cut a fiber paper mold out of a sheet of 1/4" thick fiber paper that I have on hand. I trimmed the corners to fit so they wouldn't extend out too close to the heating elements and then filled the space up with two different colors of opal frit, swirling it around in a random pattern with my paintbrush, then followed that with a thicker layer of clear. Once I had the base colors set up and the area covered over really well, I evened it out using a small sheet of glass for a straight edge and started adding embellishments. You can see the flecks and chunks of color in the picture above. It doesn't look too exciting here, but keep in mind that there are swirls of opal frit buried underneath the clear that will all melt in together and hopefully stretch out a bit in the finished piece. Depending on the thickness of the glass once it's done firing, I may need to refire it again with a sheet of thin clear added in. That's OK with me, since I may want to add more embellishment at the same time once I see what happens here.

Then, since I like to make good use of a firing when I can, I spread out some red opal frit along the edge of the fiber paper to make some fused "lace". I hope to use it in some upcoming holiday pendants or tiles if it turns out well. I read about this technique when I was browsing through some online fusing projects, but didn't have good luck with it when I actually followed the directions and gave it a try. As it happens, though, the black frit that overflowed from the making of the treble clef symbol I mentioned in my previous blog formed itself up into some passable black "lace" last weekend. It took three re-fillings and re-firings of the treble clef mold before the glass was thick enough to take to the next step, which resulted in three layers of frit overflow around the edges of the fiber paper mold I had cut. (You can see some of that overflow in the picture below.) Without my even trying, I ended up with a couple of really interesting lengths of black frit "lace". (Actually, that was only fair, wasn't it, after all the trouble I'd been having?) I combined the nicer of those bits with some fall colored glass (and some plain white) and fired them yet again to create several new pendants for my shop. They'll be showing up there in the next few days.

I'm really excited to see if this whole experiment ends up being worth the time and the frit! We've been wanting to invest in a new set of dishes for ourselves but just haven't come across a pattern that really excited us. Wouldn't it be sweet if I could just design our own, unique, one-of-a-kind set? Fingers are definitely crossed here....