Fusing Adventures
While I’ve had a lot of experience fusing pendants and earrings, I’ve never tried to fuse anything larger….mostly because my kiln was too small. So, wanting to try out larger things I took a fusing class at a local studio. We did both full fusing (leaves a smooth finish) and tack fusing (leaves a textured finish since the glass isn’t melted in all the way). The first project was coasters, and below you can see my coasters before they were fused and afterward.
I also made a sun catcher which was tack fused. Since I love hearts, I decided to put pieces of glass together in heart shapes for this hanging. The clear bumpy surface is made of small pieces of clear glass frit that is sprinkled on the glass base. Here are the before and after pictures, although it looks like I hung it up backwards. Notice how some of the colors are different after fusing. Glass that is orange before fusing often turns red after fusing.
The third item was a tack fused plate. This was done a in a 2-part process. First the plate was fused at about 1350-1400 degrees F. Then, in a separate firing, it was placed in a ceramic plate mold and slumped at about 1300 degrees F. Just like the sun catcher, the plate had clear frit sprinkled on it, resulting in a bumpy texture.
It was a lot of fun to fuse these larger items and to learn about how to properly slump glass. Of course I still don’t have a kiln large enough, but luckily the glass shop will rent out kiln time at a reasonable rate.
