Adventures in adventurine
27 Oct 2014Here are some more of the projects I've been working on as I venture into the world of glass fusing.
My idea for this first one was to use some white/black spirit glass and create windows that would have some shadow effects. The shadow effects didn't work out, but I still like the look of it.
Adventurine is a beautiful dark green glass that shimmers and sparkles in the light. Pictures do not do it justice at all. I bought some green adventurine and wanted to make some pieces with it next to black. I'm making a large black plate with a stripe, and a smaller black shallow bowl with a green center.
Lastly, I cut up some swirly red/white/orange glass into little blocks and lined them up on a white base. Not sure what it's going to be yet.
Originally, when I was cutting the green stripe a bad break left the piece too short, so I just put another piece in. My thinking was that the pieces would just fuse together and you wouldn't be able to tell. Unfortunately, when it came out there was a black line between the pieces. I think that the black glass melted at a lower temperature, so it flowed into the space between the green pieces before they had a chance to melt together. I'll have to keep in mind that different glasses melt and flow differently. It doesn't look too bad, but it's a lesson learned.
As a bonus of the bad break, I had some small scraps that I put on the kiln shelf (You can see them two pictures up). The little gems that came out look fantastic! This definitely has potential for jewelry or adding flair to other projects.
The smaller piece with a green square turned out great. Seriously, pictures do not do this glass justice.
The red swirls didn't come out as crisp as I would have liked, but it still looks good.
Getting ready to drape the green piece onto a bowl mold as well as slump the window piece into a plate mold.
And here they are - many hours later - after being slumped!
The "window" plate came out well! It's about 8 inches square with a gentle slope on it.
However, the real beauty here was the bowl. I can not say enough about how pretty the adventurine is. This bowl is just under 5 inches across, which feels like a really good size. One thing I noticed though is that the mold left a bit of a rough texture in a couple places on the inside of this piece. Perhaps my slumping temperature was too high. I'll have to research to determine how to avoid that.
