Fused Glass Wind Chime Class @ Eden Prairie Art Center

I often learn as much in my classes as the students do. When there are hundreds of colors, shapes, textures and other additives you literally could never do all the combinations yourself. Then of course there is your personal preferences which would limit you to what YOU like. I get a chance to see so many combinations that I would never try myself.

Doing these little color and shape studies is one the best techniques to learn what particular glass combinations do. Glass changes shape, color, and texture when heated. Consequently, the end result is very often not what you would expect. It takes years, after seeing a lot of projects done, to be able to reliably predict what will occur with particular combinations. By doing a whole series of small studies you can significantly reduce your learning curve.

I always take a picture before and after firing as a reliable record of what was done. Your memory really isn't good enough. In the closeup below you can see some of the glass elements the students used.

I bring a lot of choices to the class including: 100 samples of frit and powder, mica dust and chips, glass shards, rods, stringer, over 50 differ colored sheets and at least 20 different types of iridescent glass in black and clear.

All of the glass in the pictures are individual chimes for the wind chime they will make. There are few rules. You really just put combinations of glass together that you find pleasing. The size and shape of each chime will make a unique sound when struck by the other chimes, resulting in a cacoffiny of ringing.

In each class I also learn a few things to fine tune future classes. This time I realized that the little metal loops used to hang the glass needs to be fused into a small glass strip by me before class. This will enable a student to add a prefused loop to each chime simplifying that step. It was too confusing and tedious for the students to put the hanging loops in place themselves.

I also learned that students can optionally make between 10 and 14 chimes. They don't have to make 14 just because there are 14 holes in the metal support bar. As you can see in the picture to the right 12 chimes is fine. They are close enough to each other to perform their clanging best. Eight chimes would probably be OK too.

In my last class each student made 14 chimes and I think that was too many. But options are always good. Now with 14 they can choose to keep a few as backups in case the chime meets a tornado!

Scott County Art Craw - Oct 9th

I'll be participating in the first ever Scott County Art Crawl. Read all about it and see some of the work at http://bit.ly/bRQ7Dh.

Come by for a feast for the eyes, mind and tummy... I'll have great beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres.

Glass Weaving @ Bloomington Art Center

These are small 5 by 5 inch bowls made using the glass weaving approach. This is a great project that teaches the basics of glass cutting. In this case learning to cut exact strips is pretty basic, but can be really intimidating to the beginner. After all, how many people have experience cutting a whole series of exact 10 inch by 1/2 inch strips?

It is a great sense of accomplishment when building your confidence to cut glass to exacting measures. In one of my classes one person was seriously struggling and gave up at one point. After some encouragement and watching others having success she was determined to do it. I watched her carefully, and caught her mistake in the process, then before you knew it she exclaimed "I got it"!... and I was relieved she did.

Glass weaving is a bit of a trick. The Warp is created by placing glass strips on a mold that is nothing but a series of 'hills' and 'troughs'. When you turn the heat on in the kiln the glass slumps (bends) down into the troughs, and the glass strips are bend into a series of  "S" or sine wave shapes. The Weft is simply straight pieces of glass that you slip between the hills and valleys of the warp. After 'weaving' straight strips through all of the warp strips you then place the assembly back into the kiln to fuse it all together.

It is a bit of technical curiosity that many students find gratifying on multiple levels. For one, they learn the trick, secondly they learn to cut class, and lastly they begin to see the design potential of altering the colors and thicknesses of the weave patterns just as a cloth weaver would.

If you want to see glass weaving gone mad just take a look at the site by  Eric & Marrlow. This is one great example of a good idea taken to new heights.

I will be teaching glass weaving both at the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center and at the Bloomington Art Center this fall.

Fossil Flora : Letting Nature Speak For Herself

I've been intrigued by some recent activity in the glass fusing world of people incorporating natural objects like plants into their fusing projects. The image above was my first attempt and I was pleased with the simplicity and the delicate look of the results.Of course fossils don't come in color, but if they did they might look like these images.

So far I don't offer making fossil flora in any of my classes, but the process is simple enough so I will probably incorporate it soon. This project also uses glass paste (see prior blog posts), but this time the paste is created by sifting multiple layers of powder onto a plant.Between each sifting layer you spray the plant with just enough hair spray to wet the powder but not wash it away. With each subsequent layer the powders become thicker, and with each layer you should add different colors, tints and tones to create a complex naturalistic mixture.

What is really interesting is that the ash of the actual plant is left behind as a ghost image. You can rub it off to reveal more color or leave it.

I started experimenting with this process because I may use it in my fine art powder painting series. Maybe I'll let nature speak for herself instead of me faking it by drawing in foliage.

Drawing with Glass: Fused Glass Flower Vase

This series of images show the steps in decorating the front panel of the flower vase project using glass paste. This process is only one of many ways to decorate the front of your vase. Some may  not like this approach and may opt for other methods some of which I will show in future blog posts.

If you look closely you a piece of clear glass and been seen coving the design to the left. It is shaped like a pocket and is more pronounced in the second image where the design has been traced onto the glass with black glass paste.

The tracing process can be done in just a few minutes and does not have to be exact, because it will be partly covered in later steps. A few posts back I explained how the paste was made. For this project only the outline cartoon is created with the paste mixture and applied using a squeeze bottle. If I had all of my colors ready to go in bottles, then it would be simple to fill in the design with whatever color I wanted directly from the bottles. However, there are advantages to using straight powders instead such as ease of application, ability to mix colors, and create gradations, tints and tones.

In the third image all of the base colors have been applied using powders and a very small sifter.You can see now that some of the outline is beginning to be covered. This not only narrows the lines, but also helps tie the powder to the wet paste so that during firing they don't separate.

In the fourth image the powder is now turned to paste by applying glue through another squeeze bottle. This enables packing the powder to increase its density/opacity. The outline is now considerably thinner and the colors are fully integrated with the outline.

You can see in the green I applied two colors of green. The base layer may or may not show through depending on how thickly you apply the final layer. It helps in color blending and creating rich color interactions if you use multiple colors on both the base layer and the final layer.

One drawback however is that some colors do not mix well resulting is brown instead of a color you see when you mix the powders. This occurs mostly when you mix warm and cold colors like yellow some blues. If you want green, then you should use green powder, and then use white or black to create shades and tints, or, use other greens in combination to create a rich palette of greens.


The process including this step takes around fifteen to thirty minutes depending on the complexity of your design.

In the final image a top layer of colors has been added and pressed into the paste. Some #2 frit was randomly applied and now the 'pocket' is ready for fusing onto the back of the vase creating the pocket vase.

Design Patterns for Stained Glass & Flower Vase Projects

These are four of many patterns which will be available for use for both the Introduction to Stained Glass and Fused Glass Flower Vase classes. The complete set can be found at the "Information Links" in the left hand blog column. The patterns for the vase are size appropriately to fit on the shape of the vase.

For the vase class the pattern will be used to trace onto the glass using glass paste as explained in a prior post. Once you have the outline done then you can fill it in with whatever colored glass powder you wish. It is really easy to do and fun, because you can make any changes easily or even just draw your own design.

This is just one design approaches. There will be other options and a lot of glass to choose from to decorate the front of the vase.

The patterns for the stained glass class are all around 5 by 5 inches, and most will require less than 20 pieces of glass. That doesn't sound like much, but it is an intro class. Leaning to cut glass, grind it to shape, foil it (copper foil) and learning how to solder is a lot to absorb in one afternoon.

Getting the basics down will enable you to do more advanced work, and maybe even create your own patterns from scratch.

Download the PDF files and pick out your pattern and bring it to class!

Jewelry Designs

These are examples of some of the design options you have when you attend the Fused Glass Jewelry class. All of these techniques and a lot more will be explained in class. There is a PDF available for you to read before attending the class which will help you to understand how these are other designs are created. Click here for the PDF or find it in the list of "Information Links" in the left hand column.

You will be amazed and pleasantly surprised just how easy it is to create glass art jewelry that you will be proud to wear or give as gifts.

Take for example the bracelet. You will see during class through a little viewing port in the kiln that as glass is heated it tends to gather itself into a rounded shape. The round pieces in the bracelet where actually little squares, but when heated to a high temperature the glass will gather itself into a rounded shape. If you start with a rectangle then the glass gathers into a rounded oval.

Print out the PDF and bring it to class. You will be amazed at all the options you will have in glass selection, techniques, tools, and how much you will learn by sharing everyone's ideas during the class.