Dropouts and Glass Slumping

 

This week I spent a day at Warm Glass, near Bristol.

As their name implies if you need anything for fusing glass, these are the people to speak to.

 

I've bought lots of materials from them and attended a couple of their online courses, but they've just started to run in-person sessions again and when I saw they were doing one on dropouts I had to sign up.

When fusing glass you can get different effects depending on the temperature you set your kiln to.  You can do a full fuse which will make everything melt down into a flat sheet.  You can do a tack fuse so that things stick to each other but don't loose their shape.  And you can slump your glass, by putting a sheet into a mould and heating it just enough that it slumps into the mould and takes its shape. 

 

With dropouts your mould has a hole in which the glass can melt through, giving all sorts of effects and creating vases and bowls.

On the day we actually did the process backwards.  We started with a dropout which had already been made, so we could practice cutting it and then coldworking the cut edge.  You can do this by hand or with a machine, so it was great to have a go at a few different techniques.

 

 The glass is also quite fragile.  So while I started with a tall vase, while cold working it, cracks appeared and so it got shorter.  I'm still very happy with it though.

Next we designed our slabs for dropping.  They need to be a certain size to fit the mould and at least 12mm of glass in the middle.  These were later fired for us and posted to use ready to try dropping in our own kilns.

 

While all this was happening the big kiln had been heating up in the other room.  This already had 4 slabs set up and as the afternoon progressed we got to watch as the glass melted and dropped.  This gave us a really good understanding of what we should be looking out for when dropping our own slabs. 

 

We also had one of these posted out to use, so we could practice cutting and cold working at home.

I really enjoyed this course.  It's one of those things that isn't quite as difficult as you fear it might be.  And it was lovely to spend time with other like-minded people.  I learnt lots from them too.

 

And I love the fact that you can used off cuts to make your slab.  Another way to save waste in the studio.  I'm looking forward to playing with this technique. 

 

Hollow Glass Bead Necklace - Teal

 

 I attended my little sisters wedding this year, and made and wore a beautiful hollow glass bead necklace from rose glass.

But before I made the rose necklace, I'd started with the aim to make a similar necklace in teal glass.  It was only when I changed my mind about my outfit earlier this year, that the glass also changed, from teal to rose.

 

Back in the UK after the wedding, I realised there was no reason why I couldn't still make the teal necklace, and so I went about putting it together.

I had plenty of hollow beads to choose from.

I'd also been playing with some silver clay to make spacer beads.  I'm sure I did a workshop on silver clay years ago, and I don't remember it being this tricky!  The clay was sticky and kept sticking to the tools I was using.  And it was really hard to make it smooth.  But I put them all in my baby kiln anyway and they didn't come out too bad, although I did have to do some work to polish them up to a shine.

 

Lastly I made a clasp out of silver wire, then put the whole thing together with a pale green ribbon.

Not bad.  The spacers do make it a little heavier than the rose necklace, but it's still pretty comfortable to wear.  

So there you go, two necklaces for the price of one!  Think I might take a break from hollow beads for a bit though.

 

The Poppy Pin

 I have to come out and say this straight away.  This has been one of the hardest projects I've completed in a while.  But now it's done I am pretty happy with how it came out.

So I found the pattern for The Poppy Pin from Lemon Pepper Studio right at the beginning of the year.  It looked like a lovely project and I'm aways looking for something better than the paper poppies you get at this time of year.  (10% of each pattern sold goes to Help for Heros.)

So I bought the pattern - all 42 pages! And checked the material list - some of which I had at home and some of which I had to purchase.  It's a very detailed pattern with lots of photos.

 

Then I made my first attempt.  From this I learnt you need really good light for a project this detailed, which made it a day time only project.  This restricted when I could work on it quite a lot and it got put to one side.

At some point I had a second attempt and realised I'm getting old and my eyes just can't deal with this fine detail.  A trip to Boots and some reading glasses (+1.50) sorted that issue.  Wow what a difference they made!  This isn't the only project they will be useful on.

So now I could see what I was doing I needed to work on my techniques.  This and getting my colour combination right took several more attempts (I've never been the best at sewing) and if I was going to have the pin ready to wear for Rememberance 2025, I would need to get a move on. 

 

So I got on with it and while I think I could still improve my technique, I think it's actually come out pretty well, although it really was only as I finished sewing it together that I decided this.  Right up to the last stitch it was 50/50 whether I'd be wearing it or not. 

If I could bring myself to try this again, I think the pattern could be modified to make some cheerful winter pansy pins.  Thinking yellow and purple.  But with many other things on my list, I'm not in any rush to try this out just yet.