Glass!

My BFF Mary and I look forward to Tuesday every week now, because Tuesday is Glass Class! Each week we are let loose in the candy store as we learn new techniques in fused glass in a workshop-style setting at In Fused With Love, under the guidance of mother-daughter team Lynette and Alison Neeld.

Here is what I've been working on over the past weeks:

Some early experiments using silver foil, "liquid stringer" and frits (don't look too closely!)

On this one I used dichroic glass under clear and opal frit (frit is powdered glass) for some of the squares, glass "stringers" for the whiskers and glass chips for the daffodil petals:

 

"Daffodil Cat" before firing

Daffodil Cat after several firings.  The dichroic squares came out looking like opals!

This was my most ambitious one so far, trying out lots of different techniques with frits, glass stringers. liquid "stringer", and something called "flexi-glass".

Calico Cat before firing

On the second firing I added some green enamel on top of the white squares to tone the bright white down a bit. I also forgot to add whiskers the first time around, so I painted some on with enamels before the last firing.  I'm thinking about having this one "slumped" into a shallow dish.

"Calico Cat" after several firings

This is my latest experiment-- I wanted to see if I could "paint" with frits to get a watercolor effect.  I used to do something similar with powdered enamels when I was learning cloisonne enamel techniques twenty years ago...

"Cactus Blossom" finished

It took an extra firing to do some touch-ups with enamels, but I was pleased with the final result and learned a lot in the process...

"Cactus Blossom" close-up

I have lots of ideas to try and can hardly wait until next Tuesday!