It's not often that I try something truly new, or even sort of new, when I work with glass. Oh, I try new designs or objects, but for the most part I stick with fusing safe ol' Bullseye glass or soldering small projects. I'm starting a project that's going to push me and make me think just a wee bit, however, and I'm very excited about it.
A local Valdez business commissioned me to create a 35" square window for their stairwell. They gave me no ideas to work with, so I got to start with the initial design. Given where the window will be placed, I decided something bright, colorful, and fun would be in order. I made up a few sketches for them to look at, and they chose one with an assortment of kites. I haven't finished the final design yet; I'm still waiting on a photo from them to work from for one of the kites. In the meantime, I'm playing with glass to decide on what techniques I want to use.
Although I didn't mention it before, one of things I was thankful for yesterday (Thanksgiving) was having a bit of time to play in my studio before I had to start cooking. I had previously decided I'd make a mock-up of the design in miniature (12" square) to test construction methods. Yesterday, I cut out all of the pieces for the small design and ran them through my kiln to round up the edges. In theory, it should have worked. In reality, not so successful.
For starters, because I wasn't planning to fuse the pieces together, and therefore wasn't worried about compatability, I wasn't using Bullseye fusible glass. Instead, I took advantage of the greater variety in my stained glass stash. Unfortunately, the glasses gave me very mixed results in the kiln.
The bright orange glass in the photo above started out bright yellow, and the amber glass started out bright orange. The color change was not what I wanted, nor was the pronounced drawing in of the edges when the glass melted.
In the lower kite above, the iridized glass in the center rounded its edges like I wanted, but it lost some of its iridizing (the shiny rainbow effect on the surface). The four purple pieces were completely unchanged. Their edges were just as sharp as when I'd first cut them. Crazy!
The glasses in all of the other kites gave me equally inconsistent results. I guess it's back to the cutting board for me, figuratively and literally. I'll figure out something that works before I start on the full-size window. And I'll have fun doing it.
