Eventually, I'll get around to blogging about the my official "learn something new" for this year, but in the meantime, I'm going to share about a "mini" one that came along. One side effect of intentionally trying to learn something new every year has been a great willingness to make a fool of myself put myself out there when other new opportunities come along. Take a painting class? Sure. Try something potentially hazardous sounding like glass fusing? Why not? So here's the glass fusing story -
A friend at work (of Bumble Bee cake ball fame) organized a group of us to go glass fusing. It was at one of those paint some pottery places. You can make all kinds of really cool things with glass fusing - bowls, plates, jewelry, decorative wall stuff. As Christmas was coming up, I opted for a Christmas tree ornament. This was a pretty basic way to go as it didn't involve very much measuring or breaking glass ourselves. They give you a triangle shape and you decorate it.
Ok, so I can't figure out how to rotate this picture, but we started with a base, a green (sparkle!) triangle, and then I added fettucini glass to make my strings of lights. And I added a special piece of fancy glass to the top for a sparkly star. Initially, you just work on placing everything where you want it to go and then later on your glue it down before it goes in the kiln.
There were lots of pieces of glass that were already broken that I looked through initially for my lights and decorations. And then, if I didn't find what I was looking for, I could break the noodles or rods of colored glass to the shapes that I wanted.
Next, I used tweezers to place the little ornaments where I wanted them to go on the tree.
Here's my tree!! The colors here are very distinctly yellow for the lights (I straightened up that bottom one) and orange, but after being fired they kind of ended up the same color. That was a little disappointing.
But all in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. You can see where I added a little trunk at the bottom. And the star at the top actually has a little gap in it so that you can put a wire hook through it.
I took a quick picture of it on the tree, although I haven't left it up there permanently yet. The cats still haven't been convinced that the tree and ornaments aren't a giant play toy for them. I think my $22 hand-made ornament will be safer on an ornament stand for the time being. It is a bit of a pricey activity, but I opted for the larger tree, sparkle glass, and a fancy piece of glass for my star (that's a $2 star!), so my choices led to several up-charges. You can make smaller ones for $8-12 or so.
Here's most of our group at our Creative Clayhouse. You can see Kris (in orange) has a square piece, that will end up being "draped" over a mold and as it's fired it will melt into the shape of a plate with slightly raised edges. Pretty cool!!
And Cheryl made an awesome snow flake where she did a lot of the glass cutting/breaking herself. It turned out great!!!
A friend at work (of Bumble Bee cake ball fame) organized a group of us to go glass fusing. It was at one of those paint some pottery places. You can make all kinds of really cool things with glass fusing - bowls, plates, jewelry, decorative wall stuff. As Christmas was coming up, I opted for a Christmas tree ornament. This was a pretty basic way to go as it didn't involve very much measuring or breaking glass ourselves. They give you a triangle shape and you decorate it.
Ok, so I can't figure out how to rotate this picture, but we started with a base, a green (sparkle!) triangle, and then I added fettucini glass to make my strings of lights. And I added a special piece of fancy glass to the top for a sparkly star. Initially, you just work on placing everything where you want it to go and then later on your glue it down before it goes in the kiln.
There were lots of pieces of glass that were already broken that I looked through initially for my lights and decorations. And then, if I didn't find what I was looking for, I could break the noodles or rods of colored glass to the shapes that I wanted.
Next, I used tweezers to place the little ornaments where I wanted them to go on the tree.
Here's my tree!! The colors here are very distinctly yellow for the lights (I straightened up that bottom one) and orange, but after being fired they kind of ended up the same color. That was a little disappointing.
But all in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. You can see where I added a little trunk at the bottom. And the star at the top actually has a little gap in it so that you can put a wire hook through it.
I took a quick picture of it on the tree, although I haven't left it up there permanently yet. The cats still haven't been convinced that the tree and ornaments aren't a giant play toy for them. I think my $22 hand-made ornament will be safer on an ornament stand for the time being. It is a bit of a pricey activity, but I opted for the larger tree, sparkle glass, and a fancy piece of glass for my star (that's a $2 star!), so my choices led to several up-charges. You can make smaller ones for $8-12 or so.
Here's most of our group at our Creative Clayhouse. You can see Kris (in orange) has a square piece, that will end up being "draped" over a mold and as it's fired it will melt into the shape of a plate with slightly raised edges. Pretty cool!!
And Cheryl made an awesome snow flake where she did a lot of the glass cutting/breaking herself. It turned out great!!!
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