Rocket Rose Art

Posted on April 25, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — Leave a comment

Rescue Fire Polish of Coasters

In an earlier post this month I talked about a set of coasters we tried that were deliberately made thin to see how the glass behaved. The project was 2 layers, the base 3mm and the top 2mm made it under 6mm and hence subject to surface tension stress to conform to the 6mm rule.

After firing, the sides of the coasters did pull in as expected, but worse, the iridised glass unexpectedly resulted in rough edges.

In this firing we decided to try to rescue the coasters, as well as fire polish a few jewellery sets we made from a fused glass slab.

Posted on April 19, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — 2 Comments

Slumping a Glass Tray on Fibreboard

In a previous post I talked about making a fibreboard mold for slumping a fused glass tray. The post was all about the process I followed making the mold.

In this post I will cover fusing the rectangular piece for the tray and then slumping it to form the tray.

Posted on April 13, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — 1 Comment

Fibreboard Molds

Molds for glass slumping can get a bit expensive and a bit limiting in just what you can do. You can, of course, make you own molds using plaster, clay and fibre products such as board and mat.

The fibreboard product seemed to me to be a good alternative at a reasonable price. Looking at a few videos and tutorials it didn’t look that hard to do, but I found the information a bit sketchy.

Not to be deterred I decided to buy some fibreboard and give it a go.

Posted on April 1, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — Leave a comment

Layered Fused Glass Cabochons and More

Hope you are enjoying this journey and I sincerely hope that I haven’t bored you into saying goodbye. Please hang in there, things will get more interesting.

This was another full fuse for cabochons, some dots and a puddle. You may ask why another test. Well, I firmly believe that testing to see what happens is a great way to learn. The mistakes and the surprising wins all are great teachers.

In this firing we are trying different numbers of layers all together to see how they work together in a firing schedule really set for the bigger pieces.

Posted on March 28, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — Leave a comment

First Slumped Fused Glass Bowl

Hey, I’m getting game now. Time to try making a fused glass slumped bowl.

In our first purchase of materials we did purchase a couple of ceramic molds for bowls. As usual, we don’t do things by halves so we purchased the largest bowl that would fit in our Paragon Fusion 14 kiln. The kiln is square, so a square bowl seemed logical. To be honest, we did purchase 2 other molds that are smaller, so I do have moments of being reasonable.

The final design was the result of looking at what offcuts I had. We decided not to start using the large sheets we purchased initially, not until my skills improved, so I continue to try and use offcuts where possible. The design is a little geometric, but that’s the Rocketman in me. I develop software for a living so guess what, I tend to be logical and geometric designs are natural for me.

So how did it go?

Posted on March 23, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — Leave a comment

Fused Glass Coasters for My Son

My son recently purchased and moved into a new apartment, his first, so thoughts turned to an ‘apartment warming’ gift. I thought about making a clock to match his décor, but the last clock I made didn’t work that well so I decided not to test my luck.

After a little thought and discussion with Ann a set of coasters seemed a good idea. I had made a set previously and they worked okay, so I felt confident.

His décor is basically black and white, with a few blue highlights. So I decided to try and do something similar. Not knowing the exact colour of blue meant a bit of a guesswork was needed.

I decided on a design that is a little geometric to also match what I think is his style, plus it wasn’t to challenging.

But, as usual, it didn’t all go as planned.

Posted on March 16, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — Leave a comment

Full Fuse for Dots

My apologies, again, I forgot to take an ‘after’ photo of the firing, but you should get the idea from my comments.

This firing was just to create a stack of clear and black dots, as well as rescue a few that didn’t work in a previous firing.

My plan for the dots is to use them in other items as decoration. Clear dots on a colour, when fully fused, give the appearance of a hole in the item. Many together give a sort of honeycomb appearance. The black dots will make great decoration as well, resulting in a nice defined point of reference for the eye. Mind you, being really new at this I can imagine a lot more uses and I am keen to experiment with these.

Anyway, on with the firing.

Posted on March 11, 2013July 11, 2020 by Jeff — 2 Comments

Clear Capped Cabochons

In this firing I tried making cabochons with three layers of glass. This probably is a more normal method, capping with clear glass, so I expected this to work well and with few issues. As usual, I added a few other bits to see what happened.

This probably going to be my approach always; adding extra bits to fill in space and for testing. Making good use of the space in a kiln is surely much more economical and a good practice to adopt, but thinking of what to include does take a bit of thought.