Sandblasting Glass

I recently took a class at Pratt that taught a particular technique for transferring images onto glass.  It allowed me to finally get this particular idea out of my head and DONE.

This is a window from the nose of a B-17.  It's about 1 foot wide at the widest part by about 2 feet tall.  It was going to meet with an uncertain fate, so it was given to me when I said I'd do something with it.

Back side

 I had this idea to put the image of a B-17 onto it, maybe an image that looks as it would have if you were flying in one B-17 and looking out of this window at another B-17.

I started with an archival photo of a B-17 that I edited the heck out of to have a very high-contrast image that I liked.

I had to decide whether I wanted the black or the white parts of the image to be the sandblasted areas, so I did a couple of test pieces -

I decided that the shadows/dark areas would be the masked parts and the white would be sandblasted.  I made this masking stencil by processing my image on UV sensitive masking film, then placed the sticky masking film image where I wanted it on the window and masked off the frame and back of the window to protect those areas from being blasted.

And into the sandblaster -

This is the sandblasted image, with the masking film still on.

And a couple of detail shots with the mask washed off -

I was super excited to give this to my dad for his birthday.  It's now HIS job to figure out how to mount it for display.

In the future I will share pictures of a couple other experiments that took my sandblasting on glass in totally different directions...

Still working towards selling on Etsy....

This has been my ongoing project for, oh, 2+ years - to actually list some things to sell in my Etsy online shop.  Looks like I may be a little late to take advantage of Valentine's Day gift shopping (oops! second year in a row!), but hearts aren't only for V-day?!

Today I worked on mastering the art of the adjustable knotted cord necklace.  That's what I've decided upon for for turning my pendants into necklaces to sell.  I think I worked out a length that adjusts from choker length (16"-ish) to approximately 32".  I'm using a faux-leather cord - 

I found the most helpful tutorial with excellent photographs of the steps here - http://www.ejrbeads.co.uk/adjustable%20page%201.htm

I read somewhere that the best lighting for taking photos of your items is daylight on a bright, cloudy day.  Here are a few photos taken in the sun the other day - 

I like the shadows myself.  I'll experiment with more photos on the next "bright, cloudy day"....

www.etsy.com/shop/studiowhimsy

Just try it, already!

Bwaaahaha! That's what I told myself, "Just try it, already!", and look what happened!  I really can't believe that this worked out as well as it did.  

Because I save broken glass stuff  (I can hear you, Eric!), I had two broken wine glasses from the set that belonged to my parents, one glass with a broken base, and one with a broken top.  It occurred to me that maybe, just possibly, I could use the torch to combine the good parts to make a new glass.  I figured I really didn't have anything to lose.  

I couldn't believe that the glass didn't fracture while heating up or cooling down.  And I can't believe how well the junction turned out.  I hoped to do something besides a lump where I melted them together, but I didn't expect to be so happy with the connection.  This "crystal" glass seems to have a fairly low melting point, but not the sensitivity to thermal shock that the "soft glass" rods that I have for bead making have.  Score!

Before you start bringing me broken wine glasses to fix, keep in mind that I think this was beginner's luck!  A martini glass that I tried to re-attach to its base did not work.  So it goes back in the garden.

Uh, those weren't the only glasses to break.  This is one that I slumped in the kiln until it was flat.  I did this a while ago.

Rain Wind Chime

The rain has obviously returned.  Maybe I brought it back by finally finishing this idea that was stuck in my head. I was thinking of slow-motion raindrops.  

glass, a chunk of corkscrew willow, copper wire and fishing line

approximately 12" x 5"

residing at Carol's house

Resolution

Ok, ok, I am brushing away the cobwebs on this ol' blog and I'm determined to post more frequently this year than last year, which  *ahem*  won't be too hard to do.  So I guess that's my New Year's resolution, if I'm pushed to state one.  

Two above-and-beyond-amazing events occurred in my studio in 2010.  First, I have incredible new workbenches/organized storage space. I guess I lost the "before" pictures of the studio that I had taken, but here are a couple shots taken today.  Some other time I'll post pictures of the lengths of bowling alley that Eric's co-worker turned into these incredible, bullet-proof counter tops...

The second monumental thing to happen in the studio was that I finally got a bench-mounted torch for working with glass.  I'm so excited to be able to work with glass in 3-D.  I took a Flameworking class at Pratt Art Center this fall that gave me the final nudge to get set up in my own studio.  Pictures from that class later.  

Meanwhile, here are more pictures of my little vessel creature.  It just makes me smile.  I can't wait to do more.

Happy New Year!

Oh, just playing with glass in the kiln...

I think that my favorite artistic creations are probably the things that make me smile or outright laugh when I see them. I have to humbly admit that I cracked myself up with the results of this little slumping experiment. I slumped a broken wine glass in the kiln, just to see what would happen. Hee hee - I loved the results, and I'm pretty sure that if I did it again it would never turn out as well!

Here are a couple of funky shots of the flat glass compared to a normal one -

I have a martini glass that needs to be slumped standing up, I do believe. So stay tuned for that.

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Here are some more things that I've been doing in the kiln lately:

Snowflakes in the kiln, ready to fuse

Icicles made from roughly-matched scraps of art glass

Those icicles, after fusing

Just one little icicle, with a penny for scale

I was pretty happy with the look of the hammered copper wire for a hook. I made hooks like that for all of the icicles and hung them in a vine maple in our yard, along with a couple glass snowflakes and the wine glass.

And finally, I made a bunch of glass stars to sell at a very small craft fair (but only sold a few) -

These are a fundraiser for my P.E.O. chapter. All of the proceeds go to our scholarship fund for local women pursuing post-high school education. My intentions were to try to sell the stars from my Etsy store, but I just didn't have time to get that all set up. So NEXT year I will!

Spring Wind Chime Redux

This is obviously very similar to the wind chime that I featured in my last post, but with one little change that I loved.  Instead of grabbing one of the heart pendants that I had lying around the studio to hang at the bottom, I made a little flower pendant in clear glass to match the main body of the piece.  The little flower is quite cute, and it is another potential jewelry item to market.  The fact that it matches the main part of the piece in both image and clear-ness was a detail I was very happy that I tried.  Here is a goofy shot, but it makes it obvious which parts are all clear glass -

This project was a donation to the fund raising auction for The Attic Learning Community.  

And speaking of goofy pictures, here is last minute one of an idea that popped into my head for still another pendant idea to work on....

I'll be working on the size and/or proportions of the recycling symbol, but I think that would be a good necklace pendant AND an especially a fun thing to potentially hang on my recycled-plastic-bag bags as a cool little token to emphasize that they are made of recycled materials.

Working on Glass Wind Chimes

I was asked recently if I would be willing to donate items to a couple of fund raising auctions.  I am a sucker for making stuff for a good cause.  Plus, having a concrete reason to create something (and having a deadline!) gets me working in the studio.  For each auction I decided to make a fused-glass wind chime and a knitted bag of some sort.  I'm posting pictures of my work so far on these two wind chimes to show-and-tell how I make them...

This is my beloved kiln, by the way.  I bought it from the man who owned the jewelry studio where I worked before Nick was born.  I spent HOURS making beads in it for the jewelry studio.  I just realized this week that it might be 30 years old, but I'll have to check with my buddy Carolyn, who was the studio manager and worked there way before me.  Nowadays you can buy kilns to use to fuse glass that are totally programmable.  Luckily I'm an old school kind of gal.  

For these two pieces I decided to make flower shapes out of copper wire and fuse them between clear glass for the body of the pieces.  For the hanging/chiming parts I planned on scavenging spring-ish colors from the miscellaneous glass that I have.  

My layout plan:

This is a shelf full of finished hanging parts for two wind chimes.  I fused a strip of clear glass on top of the strips of colored glass and included copper-wire rings at the top for hanging.  This picture shows you the size limitation that I have to work with in the kiln... the kiln shelf that I use is about 8"x9" - 

I divided up the parts  for the two pieces - 

While the hanging parts were in the kiln I figured out the layout of the flowers and the ring placement for the main part...

 

Ready to go in the kiln...

And the body of the piece after fusing in the kiln -  

I had to take a picture when I saw the late afternoon sun shining on it.  This is a good shot of the kiln paper that I use to keep the glass from sticking to the shelf.  The paper basically turns to powder after being in the kiln.  Nasty-for-your-lungs powder.  Maybe someday I'll try kiln wash on the shelf instead, but for now I'm careful not to breath this stuff.

This final shot shows the clear glass better than the first picture.  I decided that I wanted to hang an additional something from the bottom of one of the hanging parts , so I used a heart pendant that I already had.  For the second wind chime I will fuse a little copper wire flower in clear glass to use instead....

Playing around with glass stars

  I have quite of few of these glass stars left over from the holidays.  I made them to raise money for my PEO chapter's scholarship fund, and we made about $500 in December, which was a fabulous surprise for everyone, most of all me.  

I've been very curious what it would look like to fuse a star onto a piece of flat glass in order to end up with a coaster/trivet kind of thing, and I finally got around to trying it out.  I used a smaller and a larger star, each on 4" squares of glass. 

I used two layers of flat glass in order for the pieces to have a decent thickness - 

I kept the pieces in the kiln until the stars melted down enough to be quite flat.  The shape of the star kind of ballooned out as it flattened.  I was sorry to realize that the transparent yellow gets a bit lost in the clear glass, visually.  And the square needs to be larger than 4" in order for the star to melt in without pushing out the edges near the points - 

  

I made a second attempt, this time using white glass and making the square slightly larger.  The star obviously is more visible in this one.  And the star fits within the square better - 

Here are the four pieces from this experiment - 

I only had enough white glass for one square, so for a second one I used a thick strip of white glass with thin strips of clear at the top and the bottom to make a full square.  I like that one better, I do believe.  But I'm biased - I like anything with clear glass. 

I'm not sure whether we will want to pursue this idea much or not.  The stars take such a small amount of glass, so they have a small materials cost.  The double layer of flat glass increases that quite a bit, relatively speaking.  But it was a good way to use up some stars that were a little funky.