Frit and Hairspray

We had two Weekend Workshops in January, one Fusing and one Stained Glass, and we're finally getting around to posting about them.   Due to a mishap involving dates the two workshops actually occurred on  three separate weekends, but now that they've been completed we can share what happened during these 3 weekends.  The Fusing Workshop was full with four students Showing up for two days.   Barbara, Jan, Lindsey, and Tanya all arrived on Saturday morning and each put in a full days work.  Not only was it fun but the time actually flew by very quickly.  Although no one was able to take home all of their projects when class ended on Sunday afternoon, they were ready to go on Monday morning.  Pictured below are some of their completed works of art.

 

Making jewelry is a very free-form art and it's a great way to show our students that design and placement skills are not required to make a stunning piece.  Here are all of the small yet complex pieces sitting in our small kiln ready for firing.

 

Here are the same pieces the next day.  The sharp corners have softened and all the glass that was stacked together has fused down to one piece.  We added earring posts and bails after they cooled and they were ready to be worn the next day.

 

One of my favorite projects is the checkerboard platter.  Here you can see all four of our students busy assembling the 180 precision cut pieces. There are only three colors along with a clear glass used in this project.  Overlapping colors make the forth color which gives these finished platters their unique woven look. 

 

There are actually three layers of glass in this piece. After each of the square layers have been assembled they are held in place with dots of hairspray.  This is one of the platters ready to enter the kiln.
  

 

Everyone loves the flower bowl and this is another project where there's no right or wrong to worry about while assembling it.  You just lay out chips of glass to form the outline of the flowers and then add streamers to the mix.  From here on out we just fill in the outlines with various colors of crushed glass.

 

Once the flowers look good the top is liberally coated with large clear frit which looked a lot like crushed ice.  After that we move along to the next project

 

Fritography is the art of painting with powdered glass.  For our Birch Tree Dishes we start with a square of yellow glass.  We then anchor a border piece along each edge of the glass once again using hairspray to anchor the borders down.  Four small strips of white glass are used to form the tree trunks and as you can see below someone was feeling creative and gave one of the birch trees a smaller branch as well.  

 

Using brushes, bent spoons, and even an earwax vacuum(!) other colors are added layer by layer until we get the autumn scene pictured below.

 

There was so much going on that I couldn't possibly cover it all so hopefully this was enough to whet your appetite.  Here's a final closer look at some of the finished pieces (click it to see an enlarged view).

If you're interested in taking a Fusing Workshop just call us at 337-836-2945 to find out about openings and dates.  We do have vacancies yet in April. It's a fun class and in two days you end up with not one, two or even three, but five projects!   Whoever thought that playing with glass could be so fun?

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks