A few of my latest pieces got photographed and listed today!

It's a beautiful and very windy day in Southern California today. And with the winds come the allergies. I wanted to photograph a few of my pieces and get them listed in my Etsy shop. It's always fun to do that, but with the sneezing, watering eyes and runny nose .... I did take my allergy tablet this morning.

Here are three pieces I got finished. The first being one of the Picasso pendants, and then two wonderful dichroic pieces.

Fired Picasso Pieces

I'm soooo pleased with these pieces. I was not expecting them to have this beautiful shine. I'll add bails now ... and start another batch soon!

Picasso Pieces -- Ready for the Kiln!

It was hard cutting up those pieces! But it had to be done. I wanted to post a photo before I fire them tomorrow. Wow, aren't they bright and perky?!

Another photo to come in a couple of days. This was a super fun project and I want to make another batch.

Picasso Pieces -- Engraving Finshed

I had so much fun engraving these pieces today ... I wish I had more to do. Both Tanya Veit and Deborah Read said it would be addicting ... they were absolutely correct! My portable Dremel was disappointing, as it kept losing its charge. I finally got out my electric Dremel and was happy to learn it was just as comfortable to hold.

Remember the BEFORE picture when the glass pieces had been engraved around the edges only ....

Here is the AFTER photo with all my engraving ... What a difference a day makes!

I especially like this piece:

The next step will be to get out my jewelry templates and decide how to cut these pieces into pendants. I've ordered a new fine blade for my tile saw, so I may wait for it to arrive. More to share later.

Picasso Webinar with Tanya Veit

I have been following Deborah Read's blog http://deborahreadcom.blogspot.com for a long time and am amazed with all the wonderful work she does. And she does it all! She downloaded a Webinar a while back that featured the work of Tanya Veit of AAEGlass.com. I have been wanted to try it, so over the weekend I bought a copy of the webinar through AAE. It's called, "Picasso and Creme Etching Engraving Technique Instruction". The price $59. It has extra project ideas too and am so excited about doing everything! I noticed Tanya will be featuring another Picasso Webinar in December through GlassPatterns.com.

This morning I got out several small pieces of black glass (Bullseye 3mm) and decided to try this project in my little Paragon kiln. The shelf is like 6" x 7" (I'm guessing), but when you are fusing small jewelry pendants, it holds a lot. So onto the black glass you layer and glue dichroic glass pieces with the dichroic side up so they are touching. This is the hardest part. I had odds and ends of all kinds of pieces. And you stay away from patterned and textured dichroic. Then on top you can add (glue) strips and pieces of contrasting colors here and there, again with the dichroic side facing up. Now the reason you glue everything together is that you will fire the pieces upside down on the shelf. That way the dichroic surface will fire flat.

And why do you want the dichroic surface flat? That's the next step. I can't show you until my pieces are fired. Here is a photo of the pieces on the kiln shelf, glued and ready to go. I'm keeping my fingers crossed ... probably won't sleep tonight wondering how they will look in the morning ...

Remember, we have to fire these pieces upside down. Here they are on the shelf ready to be placed in the kiln.

Can't wait to show you the next step!