Rabbits, kittens and kiln casting

It is the start of the September Festival fortnight in St. Ives and it has been a beautiful sunny day.  We have been to the Golf Club this evening for the Captain`s buffet, a yearly event and the food was wonderful, and with friends, who are great company.

Thought I would start including some photos of the family so here is the youngest:

above is Tinks who is a girl but when she arrived about three months ago was a boy called Wilson

and below is Marley when he first arrived over a year ago

back to glass, here is some I made earlier, which I made on the expensive week long residential course.  It was a marvellous course with so much packed in,  from the basics up to advanced stuff like the one below, which is a kiln casting, and I actually made the mould for this.  It is called the `lost wax method` and I was so pleased with it.

and below a wonderful solid block which consists of 5 layers 3mm Bullseye glass with metal, copper leaf, bubble powder and green glass, sandwiched between the layers.  We then used a special saw to cut the edges, and the hardest bit was handworking the edges, by circular motion with different, grades of carborundum powder.  Basically sanding it forever!  then we used another machine to polish the edges (cannot remember the name).

 unfortunately it has been knocked over a few times and the edges got broken! (cry).  It was such an amazing course at The Liquid Glass Centre near Bristol but alas it has gone into liquidation now.  Watch this space because I am told that it will be up and running again soon, with the original owners.  Below is some of the jewellery I did there too.

 The shiny bits on the pieces below are Dichroic glass which is very popular but extremely expensive.

most of the pendants below have a channel to put the chain through but one has a bail stuck on.  Not always reliable as sometimes the glue fails!  So I intend to teach only putting the channels in on my pendant course, there will be courses before Christmas and these make wonderful gifts.

I promised results of the Fragment pieces, shown below after they are slumped into a mould.  They are fired first to fuse the glass together then fired again on top of a mould, using a different programme to gently slump them into the shape of the mould.

 

I will be selling these, with a tea light in a little drawstring bag in the future.  Also there will be a course before Christmas, for students to make these and other small  items for gifts.

 for those of you who wanted to make comments but did not know how to, just click on the pencil, or `comment` word below and you should be able to enter it there, let me know if you have problems.  I would love to hear what you think.