Playng with glass

I'm definitely an absent blogger at the moment, too much to do, not enough hours in the day, you know how it is.  Here is a sneak peak at what I'm working on at the moment...

It's a complicated process involving much mould making; this one only worked in part so we cut off the bits that didn't.  It's now about the size of a soap dish and rather lovely, though I say it myself!  Just need to polish up those edges now, without chipping it...

A decision?

As you probably know, the degree course I am on requires you to choose a specialism - the choice is Ceramics, Jewellery/Metalwork or Glass.  Very very difficult!  When I started I was fairly sure that I would choose metalwork and go on to combine it with my textile work.

But then I discovered that working in glass can give you all the elements of texture and layering that I love to play with in my textile work, and I was hooked!

This week we have been doing low-relief casting in the kiln, creating moulds by cutting up pieces of fibre blanket to give form and texture.  We layered cut pieces of fibre blanket and sheets of float (window) glass - if the pieces of blanket go right to the edge you can put them between the sheets of glass  to create gaps too.

My design all layered up and nearly ready to go - the edges just need to be trimmed.

In the kiln, surrounded by pieces of kiln shelf to keep it in place.

And this is how it came out!

Now, I didn't have this in mind when I designed the piece, but isn't it perfect?

Warm Glass

I know I have absolutely failed in my aim to keep people up to date with what I am doing at Uni via this blog - I am sorry!  My only excuse is that I have been madly busy... of course... what did I expect?

Anyway, today I have finally managed to take the all important photographs of what I've been up to so I can bring you up to date. 

We have been divided into groups and each group has spent 2 weeks in each of the 3 departments; glass, ceramics and jewellery/metalwork.  My first 2 weeks were spent in the glass department.  We mainly looked at casting glass and the various ways of making moulds for this - it's a pretty slow process!  Here are my cast pieces... they are still a bit rough around the edges and need a bit more smoothing and polishing up.  They don't have the lovely shiny surface you get with hot glass, the effect is more like sea glass - which of course is a favourite of mine!

This piece was made from recycled broken pieces of blown glass - I carefully selected mostly clear pieces and just a few pieces with the odd flash of colour, and I'm really pleased with the effect I got.  I was worried that the colours might all mix together and give me a lump of brown glass...

This next piece was made by layering purple and then clear casting glass into the mould.

These last pieces were made from smashed up window glass - a different effect entirely.

I also got to have a go at sandblasting - that was great fun and the results much more immediate.