New fused glass photos

I have updated some photos in my fused glass album on Flickr. You can go to see them by clicking on the title of this post or by clicking on one of the photos to the right under 'fused glass photos'.

Hope you like them!

I thought I would add a photo of some of the glass that Natsprat has given me when I visited her a couple of weeks ago. This is all 104COE which isn't what I usually use but I have read up a couple of techniques I can use this rod offcuts to make jewellery. I have had a little play with it but just melting it down and seeing what temps and times I have to use it at.

Loads of glass!!

On Saturday I was visiting one of the ladies from the Beading Forum, Natsprat as she said she had some 96 glass which she had that she cannot use. Sheesh, by the time I got out of there I had had a mini lampworking demo, given tonnes and tonnes of glass, given silver bits, glow in the dark dust, and lots and lots of other stuff! Not only this but Nat also has offered to anneal my pieces for me in her kiln as I am unable to do it myself. Very very generous lady! Oh and also to add she gave us a dozen eggs! I haven't had one yet because I was very crook over the weekend and didn't wanna mess with my stomach but I'll be having one soon!

Can't wait to get my pieces back so that I can start taking some decent photos of them to put up on my flickr.

My Steps in Fusing Glass

Since starting this new venture I thought I would do a mini step by step process to show how some of the fused glass pieces are made.

Step 1

Here you can see that I have already cut out my glass that I have wanted to use. I have a plain black base, three odd pieces of dichroic glass and then a clear glass over the top. This is slightly bigger then then the black to stop the bottom from melting up the sides.

This is just a side on view for you to see how the glass is stacked. Unless you want to try and get an exactly perfect pattern then the glass doesn't have to be even. Sometimes I like to melt different things just to see what effect I get.

Step 2

I have put my piece into the microwave on the kiln base. I do have a piece of thin kiln fire paper down underneath the glass pieces so that no sticking occures.

Step 3

This is after I have started melting/fusing the glass. This was right at the end once I was happy with the outcome. You can see that its glowing a really bright red. It is very important that when looking at this stage not to stare at the glass for too long as it can do some damage to your eyes.

Step 4

From here I let the glass set for approximately an hour or so. I find that if I leave the glass in the microwave to cool then it can take up to 90minutes for it to be cool enough to take out of the kiln. If I leave the glass in the microwave for approximately 30minutes and then take it out and place it somewhere to cool then I can generally take it out of the kiln at around the 60minute mark.

Step 5


This is my final product. You can see that a little air bubble got trapped in the middle of the cab.

I have been slack

Well I thought I would check up on this blog and turns out I haven't posted on it for a year! Well over a year in fact!! I am fidning it really hard to get time to taek decent photos and then post them up along with working long hours and also studying. Anywho I am going to try my best to try and get this going again.

I have started a new venture of beading and doing fused glass. I need to get some good photos of some of my pieces to post them on here. It is really funky and I love doing it. I have started a Flickr account to post all the photos up on so I will have that linked to this blog so you can all check out my photos which I don't post up.

Hope you are all keeping well. Sorry for the delayed post :P

Bree

Photo Editing

I have finally worked out how to get my photos the way I want them! Perfect white background! It might not work on other pieces which are majority white or lighter colours as it might blend in a little bit. Anyway here is a before and after pic of one of the photos I took the other day.

BEFORE

AFTER












If you would like to know how I did it just follow my directions below.

First you need photoshop for this. I use Photoshop CS (i think). You need the photo to have a solid background so either take the photo on a piece of paper or in a photo tent or something.

Next open your photo in photoshop and resize/crop to what you like or want. Next click on Image -> Adjustments -> Levels. A little box should pop up with a weird looking graph thing. If you look on the right hand side above where is sayis 'preview' there should be some eyedropper icons. Pick the one on the far right which should be the 'Set white point' eyedropped. Next click on the background of your photo where it should be white, and voila!

You may get some shadows or colours around the edges on the photo. This is fine, just either erase it or over it with a white spray paint, which is what I do.