(Mis)Adventures In Glass Fusing and More!

(Disclaimer: This evening's post is filled with sarcasm. Read at your own risk.)

Before I show off my "fantastic" glass cabochons I thought we'd start off with my project from last night. I made "Stitches" completely by free-hand (like you couldn't tell, hehe). I drew out a pattern on some cardstock and went from there. I love stuffies and I had the urge to make one. I had no intention of finishing him right then and there but once I started I couldn't stop. "Stitches" took about two hours and was a ton of fun to make. If I have time tonight I'm going to work on another bunny but this time with a slightly different shape. If you want to make a "Stitches"-like bunny, all you need is felt, buttons, embroidery floss, a needle and some stuffing. Now on to the fusing!

Colin and I have been playing with our kiln for a few weeks trying to find out the magic formula that will allow us to have fantastic fused cabochons. The horror that originally came out of the kiln has now been replaced by pieces that cant be used but are very encouraging.

We have learned over the last couple weeks that firing at too high a temperature and for too long causes the glass to come out with sharp or uneven edges. This first batch you can clearly how some have strange edges (not to mention the horrible color combinations).

During another of our kiln runs Colin managed to make the dichroic glass inside shatter. It looks cool but the cabochon is useless. We keep all these rejects as examples so we can learn from them (it's a what-not-to-do show and tell).

After all these uglies, we finally started to see a major improvement. Now don't get me wrong, you wont see these "beauties" for sale in my Etsy site...ever. But after all the disappointment we were quite pleased to see round edges. Who would think a person could get so excited over round edges?!?

So tonight's lesson is that imperfect handcrafted bunny's are cute and if your projects aren't coming out how you expected, practice practice practice!