Glass notes - making little squares

I spent quite a while making the squares I needed for the block I had chosen from my design book. I needed some distraction so I found a couple of cute animals to make.

The first is a cat face. I will paint the face on with black glass paint. The second is a bird. I will put little block dots on the eyes with glass paint. I have tried something similar with a dog face. With just one background layer of glass they are quite thin but will probably make good buttons or brooches to put in the Glass Applique shop. I plan to try to put some dangly legs on the bird. Will have to see how that goes. I will fire these two on a soft fuse. Maybe 760 for 5 mins. I am still deciding. I may go a bit hotter but I don't want them to shrink in too much.

The blocks I made are made up of 16 little squares. Since 3cm square is a good size I cut off a 3cm x 1.5 cm piece first,

then I cut that in half,

then I cut each little square into 4 smaller squares.

I am still struggling with colours. I have always had to work on getting my quilt colours right. It is just the same with the glass but even harder because they can change when they are fired.

This is what I settled on. I still have to wipe each piece and glue them to a background layer.

These two I will do on a full fuse 804 for 5 mins. I usually do 10 mins soak but I don't want the corners to round too much.

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Cheers,
Val

Making buttons

We seem to have a good firing schedule with a bubble squeeze, an equalizing step and after forming a fast cool and a slow cool before turning off to cool completely overnight. It is the same as the original program 1 but we turn off at 371 C.

We did another batch of buttons once we decided we liked them.

I have started making some designs to fit on small pieces without getting too small. Though my sailing boat was pretty tiny. It is 2cm square.

It is in the kiln now, cooling down. I am very excited that it seems to have kept all its details after fusing.

I made this cat using glue to hold it in place and some glassline paint for the face. I will fuse it tomorrow. I am experimenting with the heart on top of the overlay layer. I am hoping it won't cause too much distortion  on the vertical edges. The bit of extra volume in that one place may cause a bit of a bulge to the left and right of the heart.

Here are some drawings I made.