Glass Leaf Coasters

 At the begining of the year I joined my local Arts and Crafts Society so I could start to build my community of creative people in real life.

 

I also joined with the aim of putting something in their summer exhibition.  

As the year progressed I had a fair idea of what I wanted to include.  However it had other ideas, and as the deadline for entry got closer I'd pretty much given up on the idea.

 

But in the mean time I'd been playing with making glass leaves out of glass powder.  I'd taken an online class and although it takes a little set up the leaves themselves are stunning.  I've been fascinated by leaves for as long as I can remember, so when I found out you could make them out of glass I just had to have a go.

 

The leaves can look amazing when I get the colour combos right, but are quite fragile.  As I was thinking about what I could do with them I had the idea to make a set of coasters, and with that the idea that I could enter them into the exhibition.

With this decided, I submited my entry form, then got going.  I hadn't left myself very much time especially with a trip to Yorkshire for Franks class in the middle. 

 

I only have a small bead kiln, which is perfect when I am making beads, but a little small if I want to do fusing projects.  However, it's big enough to fuse 4 leaves at a time or one coaster at a time!  I set to work.  Every evening I would set up the kiln with a coaster to fuse, then leave it until the morning and hope it came out ok.

With a limit on time and on materials, I couldn't be fussy.  Where normally I would have said at least half weren't good enough to display let alone sell, I didn't have any option but to use them all.  A great way to get over my perfectionism!

Come the Sunday hand-in, I had two sets of coasters ready to go.  An autumn set on black and a summer set on white.  I learnt masses making them, but now I'm used to their imperfections I quite like them.

 

I also spent that weekend helping to set the exhibition up.  It was fun to see the big hall change from an empty theater to an art venue with plenty of white screens and plinths for all the art work.  Going to the preview night was magic - seeing the change from an empty room to an art gallery.

It was nice to see my work out with everyone's elses, although I'm not sure I agree with which way up some of the leaves have been displayed!

 

So I achieved my objective - to display some work at the summer exhibishion.  I'm slightly disappointed they didn't sell, but that's not really why I put them in.  And it's probably not the right place to try and sell this sort of work anyway. But another skill learnt.