Raku-Fired Pendants .... Finally!

Remember the clay heart-shaped pendants I made .... way back in November?!! Today I finally got three posted into my RoseMarysClay Etsy shop. I can't explain why I don't have enough time in the day to do everything on my list (... I know ... it's because my list is several pages long). But I had a very productive day yesterday. I fired a batch of dichroic glass pendants that I'll have to reshape and then fire polish in the next few days, AND I got the three raku pendants done this morning. My bails are kind of funky, but then so are the pendants. They are made with copper wire which I dunked in liver of sulfur this morning. And instead of chains, I decided to use black leather cord with a lobster clasp closure.

Here are the three pendants close up. The last photo shows a photo of a pendant with the leather cord.

I also listed this dichroic fused glass heart in my RoseMarysGlassArt Etsy shop today. It's a winner!

New Dichroic Fused Glass Pillow Pendants

I've had a few new ceramic molds for a few weeks that were designed to make fused glass pendants. Each mold makes 5 or 6 pieces and they were originally to be used with glass frit. The latest instruction from the company showed you could cut dichroic glass pieces according to the templates provided and use them instead. Here's a photo of the mold. You can see there is a little "nipple" in each depression.

You put the cut dichroic pieces in each depression and fire the kiln according to instructions. What happens is that because of the "nipple", your glass now has a little "mountain" on it that has to be ground off.

The grinding was easy and worked out well. So then pieces were cleaned, placed back in their places in the mold, and covered with clear frit. But WAIT! First each piece was weighed on a gram scale, and that weight was recorded. Then enough frit was weighed separately to meet the weight specifications on the instructions. Carefully the frit was poured over each piece and leveled. Then the second firing was done.

I finished these three pieces with leather cords, sterling silver beads and sterling silver clasps. I added them to my Etsy shop this morning and am anxious to see how much attention they get!