Handmade Faire
Yesterday I participated in my first craft show. It was the Handmade Faire in Waretown, NJ.
www.handmadefaire.org
I didn’t sell too much stuff, mostly record bowls, but it was a good experience. I now have everything I may need (merchandice, signs, business cards, etc) so should I decide to do another show, I’ll be all set.
Here is my table from one side:
And the other side:
And last night, my dad and I decided to see if we could “fuse” glass using a torch. I brought home some glass from school, and my mom gave me her old glass cutter and pliers, plus she had a glass grinder! I have everything i need (except for a kiln) to fuse glass. My dad thought that we might be able to use an oxygen torch to slowly melt the glass to fuse it.
Here is the piece I started with—-an eyeball:
Unfortunately, we heated it to fast—and the white exploded immediately:
We decided to switch to a lower temperature torch. This is what happened with the first torch—it just bubbled the clear, and turned the white piece black.
And here we are torching with the lower temp. torch:
And the final product. It didn’t work quite as well as we had hoped, but it was fun anyway.
Fused glass – part 2!
(For Part 1- see below!)
Last week I posted pictures of my first attempts of fused glass. One of the professors, and my friend, taught me how to layer the glass and properly heat it. I had to go to class, so he said he’d baby sit my pieces for me.
Since i had made so many, we put the pieces into the large kiln. Unfortunately, they got too hot too fast, and stayed hot for too long—-so my pieces “morphed” into blobs.
Yesterday, we cut down some of my blobs, and decided to re-heat them. This time, we put them into a smaller kiln that doesn’t get quite as hot. I also stuck around and watched them so that I knew the exact time to unplug the kiln and allow them to properly cool down. Since we were firing up the kiln, I decided to make a few more pieces to throw in there as well. I didn’t use proper “fusing” glass for this, I just dug into the scrap bucket. But, I love the way they came out anyway!
So without further adu, I present fused glass—-part 2!
Here are my pieces on the kiln shelf before they were “melted”. They look all gross and primitave:
lowering the lid:
and halfway through the fusing process. I loved how they were glowing red!
And now the pieces:
this one is so beachy
this one represents an orange:
this one is one of my originals. It’s also one of my favorites. It’s a lime green translucent base, with pieces of dichrotic glass on top. There’s also matching earrings. Unfortunately, it didn’t photograph well. It’s much more vibrant in person:
I love the colors in this one, but I might saw off the uneveness and re-melt it
I loved the colors of this one so much I made two:
This one reminds me of the ocean with the blues and greens
Another one of my favorites—I kind of like the air bubbles:
This was the lattice one from last week. I can’t beleive it’s a blob now! But I still love it.
And this one is also from last week. This is dichrotic glass on dichrotic glass. It didn’t photograph too well though.
fused glass—part one!
For my job at Georgian Court, I teach weekly art/craft meetings. In a few weeks, we will be doing a class on fused glass, where the students will be able to make a small trivet, sun catcher or pendant. Yesterday, I went in with the stained glass teacher, and he helped to teach me the basics of glass cutting, grinding, and finally fusing.
Here we have Jose’s musings on different ways to layer the glass for optimal fusing
And here is Jose teaching me how to use the grinder
After being informed that I am an accident waiting to happen, I was presented not only with safety goggles, but a full safety mask. Here I am totally rocking the newest in crafting fashion, while grinding my first piece of glass.
Next you take your base glass, and using clear nailpolish, arrange your small pieces of glass onto it. I am using dichrotic glass here for an “oil spill” effect.
It’s a painstakingly tedious task with such small pieces of glass, but soooo fun
Here are some in different stages. All pieces of glass (for pendants) have a base, a middle decorative layer, and a top clear layer to ’seal’ it. I was making pendants to be hung on a neclace later, so the white strip is a foam substance that will be taken out later to form a hole to thread a chain through.
The pendant on the left has a deep red base, and 3 circles to form Mickey. The one in the middle has a lime green base, with the dichrotic glass, and I also made two smaller pieces to form into earrings. Lastly, the one on the right had (after this picture was taken) blue and green glass to go with the amber base.
Jose also explained that trivets can be easily made by layering strips of glass. I made a small piece to be turned into a pendant as well. This piece is only 1.5 in x 1.5 in.
Here we are lowering the shelf into the kiln. It’s important to put the shelf on stands. Each of the pieces is on a piece of “shelf paper” that will disinigrate during firing, but will enable the glass to melt without melting to the shelf directly. After firing, the paper will be dusty, and you just simply wash it off of your piece. Here you will see the three pendants shown above, plus one last pendant I did last minute, and one last pair of earrings. The large piece on the top is the piece my mentor did. She was making a trivet or suncatcher out of hers.
And here it is in the kiln. These will be fired for about 6-7 hours at 1700 degrees. They will take an additional day to cool off.
I should be able to pick these back up in a few days, so stay tuned to the final pictures!
