A day playing with glass :D

I had an amazing day on Monday spending a whole day (6 hours) with the very lovely Nicky of creative glass fusion learning who to put together glass for glass fusing. I had a completely blank canvas and could let my imagination and creativity flow.

There were lots of examples to get inspiration from. I decided to make coasters and try out a variety of different techniques. 

I had a go using wire and foil, cutting some glass, frit and some kind of glass balls. I need to wait a couple of weeks for them to all go in the kiln and then I can see what the finished articles will look like but for now this is what they looked like before firing....

I was really inspired by the way the wire examples looked that Nicky had. They were flowers but there was something about the way the lines looked that made me think of fish fins. There is no better fish in my mind to show off fins and to be able to use any colours than Siamese fighting fish. So I have tried to make the kind of out line of the body and fins from the wire and then cover in frit that blends several colours. I made the second coaster without the wire to see what difference the wire makes to the finished design and I used the glass beads/ balls in the corners. 

Third I made a floral scene using some strands of glass for the stems and various sizes of frit and more of the glass beads to make some abstract petals.

Lastly I stayed with the abstract idea and used a couple of colours of metal foil cut into rough leaf shapes to make a back ground. I also used a kind of blue glass as the back piece for this one rather than the clear glass I had used on all the others. Then I topped that with strips of white glass to look kind of like silver birch trunks and topped it with a mix of a couple of colours and sizes of frit.

I really hope these look as nice as they did in my imagination. It is hard to tell as the colours will change in the kiln and the colours should all mix more and show through each other to varying degrees. I will keep you updated :)