Wish me luck!

[lorrainelee]

The piccies were worth the suspense - they look lovely
Lorraine

[Rockpooljewels]

Aw thanks Lorraine, I am a bit of a technophobe when it comes to the dreaded insert piccies thing!!!! lol, took me a while but I got there in the end 

Might have another little go with the kiln today, yesterday it took 9 hours tho!!!! seems a long time for one teeny bit of glass, but will just keep on messin about till I get it right.

M x

[Steampunkglass]

I like it, bubbles and all! In fact, I think it looks more interesting with the bubbles!
I think you can get around bubbles by the way things are laid down so it melts in away that doesn't trap it - but I've never fused so have no idea how that works either! I did read somewhere about deliberately trapping them to make patterns, but again I'm really not sure how that works either!?!

[GlassOcean]

I love it!  Now I have to try!  Can you use old picture fram glass from the charity shop?  With COE104 frit?  I NEED TO TRY THIS!!!!!!

Well done you, it's fantastic!

Can you put a bit of metal in as a hanger loop before it is fired?

[Margram]

I love your piece, bubbles and all, in fact I like bubbles, the more the merrier.   It's so much fun isn't it!?! I've recently done my first bits of fusing in my bead kiln, with Bullseye glass - will probably show and tell when I'm not feeling so lazy.  And I did some float glass stuff at a local college - you can shove all sorts of things in between the layers of glass!!! Hessian, dried leaves, stringer...Great fun.

Marg x

[June]

Lovely piece - well done on your first kiln firing - and may there be many more !   

[Rockpooljewels]

Thanks for all the positive comments folks!!

My limited knowledge of this is that float glass cannot be succesfully fused with 104coe frit...it has to be 82-85 frit I think! Ask an expert though cos I am the furthest thing from it  

I have spent many hours though researching fusing and beadmaking whilst I frantically saved money to begin my endevours, SO I have picked up snippets of useful info here and there. I think all float glass ie: window, piccie frame etc is 82 coe.

Happy to share what little bit I am picking up though, just put another more complex piece in the kiln, it's meant to be a rockpool!!! which incidentally is the name I have always used to make my jewellery...Rockpooljewels! Until I forgot to renew my domain at Xmas, and some git from america bought it and now wants $1800 for it!!!!  jeez..i am gutted!

Ah well off on a strange tangent here ( nothing new there for me lol)
So anything else I can help with I am happy to including my fusing schedule for my old clay kiln!

Mandyx

[bluefairy]

Yay, that's lovely Mandy, well done!!  I really like it, bubbles an all, although, as others have said, if you make a way for air to get out (maybe putting a few little chunks of frit round the edge), you can minimize bubbles, although, tbh, there's usually some little ones, all part of the glass, and so long as they're not so big that they make the glass unstable I think bubbles are great!  And I love the colours (bit of a blue freak, me  )

Another way to minimize bubbles is to stack 2 x 2/3mm glass, then place all your elements (frit, other bits of glass) on TOP, that way you're not trapping any air inside!!  Gets a different effect too, more "floaty" (dead technical, me  )

And Kerensa - I think you can get flat Effetre 104 sheet glass, so that would be fine for fusing with your 104 frit!!  Just need COE to be the same, it's more important in bigger pieces of glass that the COE is as close as possible. xx

[Pegasus]

HEY!
I think it's fab, it looks totally handmade and unique, I'm not a fan of perfectly looking machine made stuff cause you can get that anywhere!
Well done, now I want a go!!!

Bev
XX

[Pat from Canvey]

Martin stocks 104 COE clear sheet or he did a year or so ago. If you want to use float glass, 2 x 2 ft sheets of "agricultural glass" such as is used for greenhouses will do and it's very cheap. To stop bubbles forming under the glass, use a few glass props, say 1/2 inch around the perimeter. This keeps the outer edge of the glass propped up for longer so allowing air to be released and not get trapped. If money is a problem, experiment with bottle glass. When the kids were small, I used to get them to raid bottle banks, shush don't tell anyone. With all the recycling now, you could just pinch a few bottles from household refuse.

[Pat from Canvey]

Next step is to put a stencil on the base glass and put frit on top. Fuse and you have a picture