August 09, 2011

What do you mean I don't have Cobalt Blue frit????



Well, what's a gal to do when she doesn't have the color frit that she fell asleep thinking about using? I have Cobalt confetti glass (really thin pieces of broken up blown glass) and a smasher thingie from the kitchen dept...and if you look in the bowl there you'll see it.... FRIT! Frit is really just smushed up glass... I can do that!
So, instead of playing with the frit lace one color at a time, I used some ceramic fiber paper to make 3 channels...then weighted it down with pieces of old kiln shelf. Not ideal, and I have an idea what I need to make a more permanent mold...but I didn't want to spend the 2 hour drive out to Pacific Art Glass to get it, I wanted this in the kiln NOW.

From top to bottom, Cobalt on Lemon Yellow, Cobalt on iridized clear and Cobalt on Reactive Cloud (this one I'm really looking forward to seeing).

I weighted down the top layer of fiber paper so that I had a chance of each color staying in its own place...we'll see how that worked. If these three pieces are at all what I'm hoping for, I think tonight I'll be firing the big kiln!


Frit lace

I've been playing with this for a couple days now...and it's fun. The results are sometimes unexpected and a few have already hit the scrap heap.

This one is a violet and irridized clear frit mix. You can't see the iridescence in the pictures..but it's there. I was going to fuse it onto a piece of clear or white glass so that I could work with it...
But then I set it down on a piece of black cardstock....yeppers...this one is destined for black.
This is just a simple pile of large French Vanilla frit. I wasn't anticipating the marbling...and I LOVE it!!! I'm going to simply fuse it onto a strip of French Vanilla to work with it...and put a couple of pieces of frit in that hole to fill it in. I'm totally in love with the way this experiement turned out.

So much so that I thought I'd start playing with topping the large French Vanilla with some colored frit...in this case Olive Green. I love how it looks... And then I turned it over... and THIS is what I was really hoping for. Sometimes you just have to look at things differently, right? I'm going to break off some of those fragile edge pieces to fill in the holes and again, fuse it onto a piece of French Vanilla glass so I can work with it.


There's another experiment in the kiln now... I can't wait to see how they come out!!!