3D identity broken glass and new ideas 25th November

Broken glass and new ideas   25th November

With only three days left of 3D and nothing to show for it, I had to work hard to get my test piece finished and ready to go in the kiln by the end of the day. With that in mind, as soon as the lesson started I got my hands on some glass so I could start to find out exactly how my necklace would work. My first problem arose when I was told that the glass when heated using the slump technique would just fall off the plaster mould I had made and be useless. This was terrible. I had spent a day on making the mould after being told it would work, and now not only had I wasted a day on that, I had to rethink how I could make my necklace out of glass.

I tried hand cutting the shape of the design out from a sheet of glass with a glass cutter, a funny little tool that looks like a pen, but with oil that comes out of the wheel on the end. I started by mapping out my design on the glass with a pen. I made it a little larger so it would be easier to cut out. As I was working on the glass I could see that this wasn't going to be practical. No matter how much I tried I couldn't get the glass to cut the shapes I needed for my necklace. I had to rethink the way I was working. After a talk with the tutor, I started cutting out shapes that I could then reconstruct and assemble into my design before it went into the kiln to fuse. Even that wasn't working for me, no matter how I tried. I decided I would change my design instead and cut more rectangular shapes out of the glass and use copper wire to fix the pieces together.

After collecting the copper wirer and cutting out the pieces of glass, I only had a short time to sort out a way to arrange them. After a long day of testing I was left with not much to show for it. The glass wasn't working the way I wanted it to. The copper wire and glass piece not only looked ugly, but sharp and dangerous. It wasn't a successful day. My next idea was to use a copper sheet, cut out my design and have the glass fused to that. It might work. With only two days left I was hopeful.

I set myself a difficult task. I wanted to work with a new material and learn how to use it. I have learnt a lot about different ways of working with glass, but none that can help me with the tools that are at my disposal. I'm hoping I can make my next attempt work tomorrow.