BROKEN COBALT WINE BOTTLE PLATE

I had a request for a broken wine bottle plate measuring 12" square through my Etsy shop. I have had two large cobalt bottles sitting for years waiting for this sale! My daughter gave them to me. So I got out a heavy plastic bag and a hammer and started breaking up the bottle. It didn't take long.

You can see that the pieces are covered with fine glass dust and have to be cleaned. Yes, I did it individually. I suppose I could have put them in a bucket with Dawn, shook them about, rinsed them. But they would still have had to be dried ...

Here are the sparkling clean pieces ready to assemble into a square plate.

I drew a 12 inch square on thin fire shelf paper, and unfortunately the glass from the bottle didn't fill the square. So it will be an 11 inch square plate. You can't add glass from another bottle ... the glass may not be compatible and it might crack next week ... or in a few months. The piece is firing tonight, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it looks ok in the morning. It will still need a second firing in a mold.

NEW TEXTURED PIECES USING THE SIZZIX

It got a little cooler tonight in the "studio" (the hot messy garage!), so I cut some 30 gauge copper strips and got out my newly purchased "on sale" embossing folders. Actually one was given to me by my good friend Ellinor who found it at Hobby Lobby (the fan shaped design). I had tried to duplicate the pattern using the Cameo Silhouette. It would have taken several layers glued together, weeding out all the little pieces, to get the same effect. Thanks, Ellinor!!!

I love these textures and can't wait to rivet them to heavier copper to make a few more new cuffs. Here's a cuff I made earlier that I'm sure I shared.

COPPER WASHERS

This is a post about copper washers, but .... first things first! I almost didn't notice this small cactus blooming. We can only water twice a week now in Southern California and I was so lucky to get a shot of this beautiful bloom on one of the watering days. Maybe a prickly pear cactus? It was gone the next morning.

Okay, off to the washers. My daughter brought this box of washers from Harbor Freight for me on Mother's Day, and it's taken me this long to open the box and use them with the rolling mill.

The box has several sizes. A friend bought copper washers at a local hardware store and paid over a dollar each!

These may not be the best quality, but there are 80 copper washers for about $4.00!!! Someone on one of my Facebook groups said they don't enamel well, but I haven't tried that yet. But I like what I have made so far.

I made four sets of different sizes and ran them through the rolling mill several times, tightening the rollers each time, until I got the thickness I wanted.

Then I annealed them to soften the metal and ran them through the rolling mill again with a brass texture plate.

Next they were domed and now I'll have to decide how to use them. Liver of sulphur or other patina? Ear wires ... attachments .... maybe small turquoise pieces or white pearls dangling in the center? Or below the ear wires? I'll be sure to post pictures later ...

MORE EXPERIMENTS WITH POWDERS ON FIBER

It's been a couple of weeks since I fused glass ... and I'm sure my electric bill this month will reflect that fact! This time I experimented with different powder combinations and made smaller pieces out of my scraps of glass ... four squares and four rounds.

The first step was to layer the powder combinations onto 1mm fiber. This photo shows the pieces after the first firing. The powder has turned into little "puddles".

Kind of interesting ... but not very impressive ... right?

Here are a few close-ups of the pieces at this stage.

I really worried about the piece on the right ...

At this point, I added a contrasting powder to the top of each piece. A long process, as the powder had to be removed from the top of every "puddle"! Crazy. These pieces were then fired a second time and here is the result.

A little more interesting, aren't they? Next, the edges were finished and another piece of glass was added to the bottom of the pieces. All got a piece of black, except for one clear (bottom center). Here they are after the THIRD firing.

A close-up of the round pieces.

And the square ones.

These were great test pieces. Keepers, for sure!