Photo Friday: Works In Progress

Currently in the kiln:

Making frit balls, fusing to smooth edges on Scott's striped piece, and using some clear powder on a couple of my pieces in hopes of avoiding sandblasting and improving the glossy look.

Meanwhile, here are some other photos from the past week:

Scott does the cutting, but Ellie chose the glass, washed all 218 pieces and assembled it into a 7-inch round..

Hard to get the lighting just right, but here it is after fusing before the slump. The center is a deep royal purple (that unfortunately looks black unless you hold it up to the light), surrounded by petal pink, light cyan blue, and neo lavender.

The miracle here is that I broke the 6-inch circle of red glass while trying to cut it. A lot of colors of glass would show a line where the break had been, but the red healed like it had never been broken! The hearts and flower shapes are copper foil. In person, the copper foil turned a metallic blue. So cool looking! Scott coldworked the glass on a wet-belt sander to smooth the edges, and after it's sandblasted, we'll fire polish it and slump it. I think it will be pretty!  

Isn't Rosie pretty with her borders? Can't wait to see her slumped after sandblasting gets rid of the devit on the lavender.
 



That's all for today! Happy Friday, and l'shana tova to those who celebrate!

Photo Friday: How I Work

I do almost all my crafting in our family room, usually sitting on the couch with my feet up. I have this tray with a vintage Coca-Cola ad on it that I bought a million years ago at a garage sale, never imagining it would become my crafting station. (Heck, back then, I never expected to be crafty.)

Since I've been playing with beading, that's what was left out on my tray. I'm using the pink silicone pad that's intended for using underneath a hot glue gun because it helps keep the beads from rolling away from me.

In the upper left corner are my bifocals, which are helpful while beading but absolutely, completely necessary for threading a beading needle. (Sigh. When did I turn middle aged?) Also some Nymo beading thread. The tubes and baggies of beads are pretty self evident, as is the scissors. The funny looking metal circles are a half-ball cover button kit (in case I'm not the only one who had never seen one before).

So there you go -- a peek into how/where I'm working. :)