Bottles, bottles everywhere.......

As well as telling you all what is happening now, I suppose I should tell you how I eventually got started.  As I said before, the first time I saw fused glass was at college, after that I noticed quite a bit of jewellery around at craft fairs.  We have a lovely glass gallery in St. Ives – Jo Downs Glass – http://www.jodownsglass.co.uk which was really inspiring and when I asked in there if they knew anyone teaching fused glass techniques, they put me on to Frank at Helston.  This was an evening glass for beginners and ran once a week for two hours.  We had projects for the first few weeks and then made whatever we wanted.

One of the things I have seen around are items made with bottles that have been flattened in the kiln.  I have been collecting bottles for a while.  Not any old bottles though, I want unusual shapes or coloured glass other than the norm.  

However, my first experiment, indeed the first ever firing in my kiln was with Grolsch beer bottles

and I was delighted with the results

the next experiment with wine bottles was not completely successful!

the problem was that the bottles were rolling together in the kiln, so I thought I would put a little stopper there so it wouldn`t roll.  I had the sense to use proper kiln furniture that is designed to be used in the kiln

but didn`t have the sense to realise that the glass would just flow around it!

This is why we experiment though, isn`t it?  I tend to learn by my mistakes so will not make this one again.  The rest of the wine bottles were fine though

I had a problem with my next load though, as I was preparing to fire some baileys bottles that my daughter Jeni had kindly emptied for me.  I didn`t take photos because I was a bit upset when my kiln lid would not close on them.  As you will notice from the photos at the beginning the kiln is quite shallow and even more so when the lid is closed as the elements protrude from the lid.  Never mind, I can do lots of other things and when I start making a fortune selling all these items I can buy a bigger kiln!