Patience, no shortcuts

I'm not a particularly patient person.  I like to see results of my efforts immediately, an odd trait for someone who fuses glass.  Most sessions in my studio end with an 18-70 hour wait (thankfully way more 18 than 70) before I can find out if I created what I wanted to.  The final assembly for many pieces happens in the kiln so my kiln space limits how much work I can do in a studio session. 

This is my big kiln, I also have one smaller kiln that does a single piece at a time

People ask me if I know what I will get when I open the kiln.  When I started fusing that was a very real question.   My results were similar to what I hoped for 80% of the time and 20 % of the time I was surprised, and rarely in a good way.  After 8 years of fusing I can say that I am accurate (instead of similar) probably 95% of the time and when I get surprised it is almost always because I tried a shortcut.

So now I'm on a fusing marathon to get ready for One of a Kind.  Prepping for this show is stressful, I'm always afraid I won't have enough stock, or I will have the wrong stock.  I make spreadsheets to figure out how to maximize my fusing cycles and I plan to work at least a few hours EVERY DAY between now and the show.  44 fusing days until I load the car and it feels way too short.

So what is the most effective way to maximize my kilns?  Patience!  As I loaded the kilns tonight I considered putting one extra piece in.  It would make the fit a little tight, but I am fairly sure that the pieces wouldn't have ended up touching while they fired.  I put the extra piece on the kiln shelf, I started to walk away and I stopped.  If I misjudged this I would be reworking a 15" bowl, an 8" bowl and possibly scraping/refinishing a kiln shelf.  I considered the risk and decided to be patient.

Hopefully this new attitude actually nets more successful pieces in December.  I'll never know but that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

Success, or Opportunity realized!

In July I had what appeared to be a disaster (read about it here) - that resulted in a lot of broken fused glass.

I've spent the last two months trying to figure out a way to salvage the glass without creating things just to consume the lost glass.  Many wonderful people have given me suggestions but as is typical for me I had to just meander until I found my way.

In my attempts to reuse the glass I become progressively more convinced that it should not be identifiable as a scrap once I had a finished product.  For my quilt pieces that is a goal,

 but these needed an entirely new life.   After many directions and several more blog posts I have found the formula, and it's good enough that I am quite proud of the result.  And best of all, even I have trouble identifying which of the broken pieced contributed to the new one.

Here is my favorite to date.  It's a dish that stands about 4" high and 6" in diameter.  I had one other that stuck to the mold so it had to be shattered to remove it.  This no longer feels like a bad thing, it will just go back into the pile of glass that gets used for my new line of Tie Dye dishes!

Right now I am busy trying to get enough pieces ready to justify my fees for One of A Kind in Chicago. I hope to have enough of these to make them a focal point of my display!  Stay tuned and see if I do it...

The lemonade stand

I'm back on the horse, last weekend was the first show since the big crash .  Some of the pieces that resulted from the crash came to this show in their new "improved" form and one even sold!

 This one got lots of attention ...

The frit in this one came from the great smashing.  It turns out that if you don't dilute frit like this with a lot of clear you get muddy colors (see the glass lace in the middle)

The piece on the left sold!  

The Lemonade is getting better!

 So I am still trying to combine my broken pieces with the fuser saying "Never refuse to re-fuse".  My first few attempts were not good but I learned as I went and I have a few pieces in their final firing that incorporate my newly found scrap.

 

Turns out that layering it with clear scrap gives it some nice depth.  

The two on the bottom left are also scraps layered with clear scraps.  These will be draped into bowls.  The piece on the top right is embellished with glass lace made from the frit that was produced when shattering the scrap.

The top left in this picture incorporates the blue scrap from the top of this post. The piece on the right is the glass lace piece.  The bottom left (pink/yellow) was made with the same clear/scrap technique as the blue one.  All the pieces in this shot are about to slumped.  I'll update this post when the final results are available.