New Glass Jewelry

So. here's my newest jewelry "blanks" from start to finish. Well, mostly. Left out a few steps as I was busy DOING the steps. Like the wet saw, grinding, and sandblasting. I was working on 2 at the same time so the pics kind of go back and forth between the two.


These were some pieces I made to incorporate into the blank. (the blank is the big chunk of glass I made and then cut up into smaller pieces that became the jewelry)

This was a puddle of glass that I broke up to also put in the blank.

Here's the green and blue piece coming along. Added a bunch of different pieces and LOTS of clear glass to add depth and interest.

Ready for its first firing. It goes through many firings all together and I didn't document each one. From start to finish it took a couple months to get finished pieces out of it.

The finished blank.

All marked up and ready for the tile saw and drill!

The pink piece ready for firing. Added a lot of clear and dichroic to this one. Dichroic is the sparkly stuff. :0) Dichroic is glass that reflects and refracts two different colors of light or something like that.


Pink one all marked up.


A chunk on the drill. The glass has to be drilled in water or else it will crack. And the drilling takes a while as you have to go fairly slow. Special thanks to David for letting me borrow his quik-grip clamps and for cutting me some scrap wood to fit in my water containers. The grips held well. In the past I've had other grips come loose and then I get soaked with water as the glass goes flying (ok, thats a little dramatic - the glass COULD go flying but I've never had that happen as I let up on the drill as soon as the clamps come off)

Some drilled and shaped pieces. The drill does the perfectly round ones. The others were done on the tile saw and lapidary grinder. All the pieces spend atleast SOME time on the grinder, some pieces much longer than others. I sometimes end up with multi-faceted fingernails after using the grinder.

Once they went through another firing to round off the edges a little I sand blasted them and then put them back in for another firing to polish them. You'll notice a few pieces with little holes on them. Those are airbubbles that have come to the top - thats always disappointing as it makes the piece a "2nd" in my mind but sometimes the final firing smooths the little holes back down.

This is a kindof crazy piece that I probably can't duplicate! I drilled a hole and realized the glass was still too thick to make jewelry so I put a piece of the blank with the hole in it back in the kiln for a firing to thin it out and the hole started to close in but not all the way so I drilled another circle incorporating the hole into the piece.

Some finished pieces off the blue/green blank. Looks like a ocean scene with little fish and coral. And maybe a mermaid or two :0)

A few from the pink blank. I really like the top one that isn't a full circle, and the bottom right one. So pink and pretty :0)

So, there you have it. Altogether I got about 40 pieces from the two blanks together and then a bunch of little pieces I will put in another blank or piece one day. Very little glass is ever wasted. I still need to put backings (bails) on the pieces so they can be worn as pendents. I also ended up with about 4 pair of earrings. I normally don't make earrings but was asked by my mom to make some.

Now I am working on a new piece that is quite rainbow-y. (ok, technically I guess they are two pieces) Here is the start of them :0)

Glass Artist

I was at the glass studio Saturday and one of the regulars (Kim) was also in the studio working on some of her "blocks". And then people started talking about her being featured on Bulleye's (major glass company's) website. Check it out: http://www.bullseyeglass.com/weblog/2011/01/19/the-designer-in-the-woods/

She is working on a series of glass letters and punctuation marks and she puts paper behind the letters of things that are going away in the digital age - like checkbooks, maps, dictionary, etc. It's a pretty cool project.