The results are in

Okay, so here are the last batch of pendants I posted about after they came out of the kiln. Personally, I think that they turned out pretty cool, but I’d love to hear what all of you think about them. There are a few problems with them, so they happen to be back in the kiln already and I’m waiting for it to cool down enough for me to open the door and check them out.

I really enjoyed making these pendants and I like the way that the copper changes color in the kiln. However, there are very practical problems with 2 of them that really did need to be fixed. The sun pendant lost most of the clear glass that was supposed to fuse the nuts and bolt to make a bail. If the glass doesn’t enclose the hardware, the piece can’t be hung as a pendant.

The bird pendant has a big air bubble hole just above the bird. Not only are the edges of the hole extremely sharp (I don’t want anyone getting hurt wearing my pieces :-), but the glass is really thin there and could shatter during wearing. Not cool. So I’ve put a small shard of clear glass in the hole to even it out during the next firing.

Since the rest of the pendants were going back in the kiln anyway, I thought I’d even out the clear glass covering the star pendant, since it had a few spots that were either too low or too high. And, since I had all of those pieces to fuse, I made a few more. I didn’t take pictures of those before they went it, which is a shame. One of them uses the Swiss Cheese technique I posted a video of earlier here and that would have made a pretty cool before shot. Another of the new pieces is a red pendant with a copper mesh chili pepper and two pieces of millefiore flower cane slices.

In the meanwhile, here are the pics of the previous pieces:

Please leave a note in the comments telling me what you think of these pieces – I’d really appreciate the feedback. As usual, if you click on the images, it will take you to a larger version.

Opportunity knocked!

Something very interesting happened this weekend.  I had promised myself a reward for hitting a target some months back, but I never actually delivered on giving myself that reward.  So, this weekend, I decided to "stand and deliver."  I had agreed to attend a 2 hour training session on Saturday morning down in Scottsdale, so after the training was over I went shopping.

Yes, my reward was a shopping trip.  I'm not that much into shopping, but I had lost some weight recently and wanted to celebrate the win by getting some new clothes.  I was over at Fashion Square and had stopped in a department store to pick up something.  As I was walking past the jewelry counter, a particular piece caught my eye and I stopped to study it, thinking that I might be able to create something similar in glass.

One of the sales staff came up and started chatting with me about the current jewelry trends and I noticed that he was wearing a wooden ring.  When I asked him about it, he shared that he creates jewelry out of wood.  In turn, I shared a little taste of my own fused glass work.  As we continued to chat I found out that he's creating a new jewelry line of his own that will be debuted in February.  As part of his new line, he's looking for other artist's work to add to his own work and fill out his Rock Star Jewelry line.

As the conversation progressed, he shared that he was really familiar with fused glass and asked what makes my work unique.  I shared that I was really having fun incorporating copper into my pieces because the heat of the kiln changes the copper in ways that can't be predicted.  As I play with copper washers, mesh, and thick wire in the pieces, it adds new dimension to my work.  He was really intrigued, and suggested having bolts sticking out of the pieces.  I wasn't sure how to do that, but was open to the suggestion.  Bottom line, he now wants me to create AT LEAST 2 new pieces to be part of the show and his line!  Whoo Hoo!

This week, I spent some thinking about how to create pieces for the line and came up with lots of ideas.  I turned his suggestion for bolts sticking out of the pieces into an idea for using nuts and bolts as the bails for the pendants.  Here are my first tries at some pieces before they got fired:

By the way, you can click on each of the images above to see more detail and information about each of them.  The pieces should be almost ready to come out of the kiln and I'm really looking forward to how they'll turn out!  I promise to share whatever happens - good or bad...