Getting Glassy

This week, Mr L and I tried out a glass fusion taster workshop with local artist, Sue Watson at Wat’s On Glass. I spotted the workshop advert on a post in a local Facebook group and we were on a day off, so I booked it. Neither of us had done anything glassy before so we complete novices and had no idea what to expect. 

To begin, Sue explained about the tools and demonstrated how to cut some greenhouse glass. This is cheap (a lot of it donated from local allotments) and just for practice. We started by learning how to do straight cuts and then moved on to wavy cuts. 

After this, we stopped for a cuppa, a slice of cake and a moment to decide what we wanted to make. The advert was to make a sun catcher or similar. Mr L and I each opted for a decorative panel that would stand in a wooden plinth.

Mr L chose to make a circular design featuring beach huts and an aeroplane. I was inspired by one of Sue’s works of art on display that featured a wave.  We started by selecting our various shades of Bullseye glass and setting out the basic framework of the design, cutting shapes as required.

The next stage was not especially interesting but critical: all the pieces of glass had to be cleaned to ensure that the finished item was beautifully clear.  Then the last part was adding the fancy bits, using glass particles called frit.  This is ground up glass which comes in different textures, from coarse to super-fine, like icing sugar.  I used this to make the splashes on my wave.

Sue then loaded our creations into the kiln and they were fired on a tack fuse schedule so that they would still have texture.  We collected them a couple of days later and were very happy with our results.  First, here are Mr L’s happy little beach huts with a fly by.

And here’s my wave, photographed with a white wall behind to show the colours.

Here it is in situ on my craft room windowsill which catches a lot of sun.  It’s amazing how different the panel looks as the sun changes position and the glass is lit from a different angle.

We both really enjoyed the process of building our fused glass creations as well as the finished projects and will definitely be going back for another play.