Sunday, November 27, 2011

"Fossil Vitra" Fused Glass

Today I'm firing my gas kiln outside to cone 10. It's going to be a LONG day. The firing takes anywhere from 10 to 13 hours, depending on when cone 10 at the bottom of the kiln bends over. The kiln needs constant monitoring, recording temperature, increasing the gas flow, adjusting the damper. Plus I need to monitor MY anxiety and worry as to the outcome of the firing. The way I do that is to work on another project and try to forget what's happening to the 40-50 pieces in the kiln!

Today I am working on fused glass pieces from a project called "Fossil Vitra Tutorial" which was published on the FusedGlass.org website. Here is the link:
http://fusedglass.org/learn/project_tutorials/fossil_vitra

I have applied glass powder directly on leaves and these leaves are fired under glass. The leaves burn away and the glass powder is fused to the sheet of glass. It is all explained very simply in the tutorial. I've done it before and the results were excellent. I was asked to make a couple 6" x 8" plates similar to one in my Etsy shop, so today was the perfect day to do it. I also made two 5" x 5" plates, all shown in the photos below.

Here is the leaf on a paper towel with a 6" x 8" drawn pattern.

I've sprayed the leaf with hair spray, added brown glass powder to the
stems and started applying green powder to the leaves.

Here's what it looks like. I added a second green powder and the yellow for highlights. After it dries, I carefully lift it onto a piece of fiber paper and place it on the kiln shelf.

I carefully place my glass (two layers) over the leaf while holding my breath. 
I don't want any of the glass powder to come off.

Here are the four pieces ready to be fired. 
I'll show you the results in a couple of days!



10 comments:

  1. These photos are very helpful. Please tell me, are those two sheets of glass already fused together, or did you curve the edges? I'm guessing you pre-fused them? Thank you!

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  2. Thanks for reading my blog! If you read the fusedglass.org article I referred to in the second paragraph, he used a single layer of glass. I used two pieces. No, they were not fused together previously. And I did grind the edges to round them first. This is a great project to try. Hope you will let me know how it works for you ... And share your photos too! If you have read my new posts, I've done some iridescent glass pieces using clear powder through stencils and on top of leaves. They all look great. Again, thanks for looking!

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  3. That was my very question after reading the fusedglass.org page, one layer of glass or two. Thanks! This helps a lot.

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  4. Hi, Annie,
    See my blog post of December 8, 2011 for the results. Such a fun project. I can't believe how long ago that was!

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  5. Go to Blog Archives on the right side, then go into 2011, then December. You’ll find the photos there. Such a fun projec! Are you going to try it? Thanks for your comment.

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  6. Id like to see some finished love this idea.

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  7. I have done this with fused glass.org.. excellent instructions..I created a fern. it worked beautifully.. I am going to create more this week with maple leaves.

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  8. I was unable to publish a photo.

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