Yet Another Learning Experience: Using Copper Foil In Fused Glass

After fusing but before slumping.

It's hot here in Oregon, so it seemed like the thing to do was to work with some hot colors! I also wanted to play with some copper foil we bought on one of our first trips to Bullseye Glass.

I used a paper punch to make little flower cut-outs from the copper foil, first sandwiching the foil within two pieces of scrap paper. (And hey, that scrap paper didn't go to waste either -- Ellie claimed the paper flowers for an art project!)

I then chose Bullseye Compatible glass that contains sulphur in hopes of getting a chemical reaction. And I think I did!

The copper foil turned dark, almost black, but in places turned a metallic light blue, that looks super cool. I have plans to try using snowflake-shaped copper foil next time!

So that's what went right. What went wrong, you ask? Two things:

First, I had a couple half-flowers that had been punched with the foil not quite where I thought it was in its paper sandwich. No problem, I thought! I'll just put them on the edges and it'll look like they were done intentionally!

Good idea, right?

Well, the one I put on the edge of red and orange looks great. It's the one I put on the outer edge that's the problem. I apparently left it sticking out slightly when I put the clear glass on top of it. It's also possible that when the glass fused, the top layer of clear glass moved the flower slightly. Sigh. However it happened, it's not only unsightly, but it left a sharp edge.

This close up actually shows BOTH flaws! Can you spot them both?

The second flaw is that I apparently failed to get the foil flowers fully pressed down or something. They were tricky since the petals curled a bit, and I was worried that they would tear if I handled them too much.

But see that ginormous bubble on the left-most flower in the above photo? I'm sure I should consider myself lucky that it didn't burst and leave a major crater, but ... and now that I look at the photo, I see several more big-ish bubbles.

When working with layers of glass, you're always going to have some bubbles. There's just no way around it. But there's a difference between the normal little bubbles and these.

So what do I need to do differently next time?

I'll keep my foil shapes farther from the outer edges. And I'll use GlassTac to glue down my shapes and try using a wooden skewer to burnish them a little to make sure they're not trapping air bubbles.

In the meantime, I plan to visit Bullseye and ask if there's any way to fix the edge where the foil pokes out on this piece. If so, I'll slump it. If not, I'm pondering slicing the piece up and using the smaller pieces as accents in future work.

Got any other tips for me to help me avoid these problems in the future? Leave me a comment here on the blog or on our Facebook page. Thanks!
 

Making Puddles Into Cabochons

So pretty! I still need to do some work on them to take care of devitrification (looks kind of like soap scum but won't wash off with water) on some of them but I'm so excited at how well they turned out!

Scott sent me a cool link from a site run by a glass artist (Paul Tarlow) we both admire explaining how to make glass "puddles" and showcasing some of the things you can do with them.

I immediately knew I had to make some and see if I'd end up with something I could use as centers for my fabric flower brooches.

See the link above for the real tutorial, but here are photos of the steps I went through.

First, I made stacks of seven different colors of 3-inch-square pieces of glass.

I was trying for colors that would give some good contrast and eye-popping colors.

Then they went into the kiln for their first full fuse. Because the stacks were more than two layers (6mm) of glass, I had to give them plenty of space to flow out.

When they came out, they didn't look like much from the top because all you could see was the color of the glass that was on the top of the stack. (Although a couple of my fused stacks had small dots of colors underneath that must have been brought to the surface by bubbles that popped while the glass was liquid. Kind of cool, isn't it?

On the bottom of the fused stacks, though, you could see the concentric colors in rings. I didn't remember to take a photo until the next step though -- breaking the glass!

It took me several tries to break the darn things, even following the instructions on the FusedGlass.org tutorial! The first one I did was the one in the back of this photo. I have to say that I am very, very happy that I was following protocol and wearing safety glasses because when it finally broke into pieces, it kind of exploded and shards hit my safety glasses before bouncing to the floor. Always wear safety glasses if you're playing with or around glass!!

Aren't the striated layers gorgeous?

Even looking at the layers here, the colors make me smile!

I started out using a glass/tile nipper to make smaller pieces from the larger pieces. But oh, that wasn't going to work very well because it hurt my hands too much, so Scott helped me out and made it all look easy.

Then it was time to put them back into the kiln again and see what would happen.

We put them in standing on edge in hopes of encouraging them to melt into puddles again, this time showing the ripples of color on the top. It worked better for some of them than others ...

On the kiln shelf when it was removed from the kiln after firing. My puddles were all in one corner, and then Scott filled the rest of the shelf up with frit balls that he's hoping to mix up and then tack fuse together into a bowl.

Soaking them in a vinegar bath helped remove the primer we use on our kiln shelf. The little bits of white stuff in the container are primer that has already soaked off, but it took 4+ hours to get it all removed.

Now I'm looking forward to making the perfect brooches to use them on!