a wolf angel is not a good angel

Holiday, and of course I forgot to pick things up yesterday, so I can’t today, and I’m away for the weekend as of tomorrow Very Early. Oh well.

The first day we fused flat, which means that the things got melted until all the layers became one. But they fused too long and melted out significantly.

I made a few small pieces. Two of them looked boring, and the photos improved them not a whit. So no photos of them (but I learned something about it). One looked neat, and I’ve taken to wearing it as a pendant.

The last small piece I made was going to be a crescent-shaped pendant, which pretty much it is, but I have no idea what I will use it for. Possibly a pendant, possibly I will use it as part of a stained glass piece. I think it turned out nicely, but it’s a little boomerang-shaped for a moon, so I’m still deliberating.

I also made a “hey, I wonder what it will look like if” piece. As it turns out, it looks like a mask — the bubbles added to this piece, and it’s certainly my favourite thing from the weekend.

The sparkly green stuff is glass with mica in it, which I heart. (I’ve taken to that phrase.) It melts significantly less than other pieces. Unlike all the other stuff I made, the base on this glass is not clear. The main part is light blue, the “chin” is light green, and there’s a square in the middle that’s got both, so it turned out turquoise. The light streak in the forehead happened when I put a piece of light glass (maybe clear? I forget) on dark blue. You can add depth that way; it’s something I’d like to work on.

One piece I had ended up with holes and looked sort of . . . unfinished. So I put more glass in it, and refused (re-fused) it. I think it might need another fusing, though it worries me a bit, because that will be number 4 (first one is when it’s made), and this glass might devitrify. But if I let it cool slowly, I should be okay, I think.

I actually turned the thing upsidedown for the second fusing, which really adds depth (though it’s hard to see, in photos). The flower one is filled with frit, which is bits of ground up glass. The big empty hole will be filled with a piece of teal mirror glass, as a sort of lake. I will probably use this for a box top, though it’s a little misshapen for that.

On my second day, other than replacing the landscape (I call it a Marsscape because to my mind it looked like it was there; I don’t know why), I made a few other test pieces. One of them was intended to be like the mask, but it looks terrible — I didn’t take a photo of that; I will only when I’ve managed to get it to look better.

I did three small pieces, too. As you can see, it’s very obvious what the layers of glass were. My mother is going to hang it in the window. I rather like it.

Being a cat person, I always wanted to do something with cats. I have a piece I made of a cat — maybe I’ll dig it up and take a photo — but I find that copperfoil is too hard-edged for cats to look right. Fusion, however, isn’t. You can really see the layers here; as I mentioned, I don’t much like the look. I think fusing it a bit more (but not totally) would work best. (I intend to do as much. I’m also tempted to move up my kiln-buying to July, if I like the slumping class with the guy with 20 years experience.)

Up to the light, you can really see the red glass. Warm colours aren’t easy in glass (red is made with gold, so it’s superexpensive), and I find there are rarely any I like. But this, as an accent, works well. (Compare it to the mask, where it’s over light blue & green — the red there is very ineffective.)

You can really see how the mica sparkles in this photo.

I intend to use this one as a box — for myself, for once (though the box I am working on now is also for myself). At this point the plans are for it to have a mirror bottom (classic, but I’ve actually never made a box with mirror bottom; I like them better with glass bottoms) and red sides.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2004 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Arting, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.