271/365 september 28

hmmm we seem to have one missing someone may have picked it up by accident. oh well. can you figure out which one it was?? Metals and glass react differently in the kiln and these were experiments with them. not very happy with the results. actually I think I like the before pieces better. live and learn



Experiment with making an impression in the glass. these actually turned out better then we expected them to

well except for a few bubbles.

that is it for the pictures from our class. it was a lot of fun we learned a lot and want to play with it more.

270/365 September 27

Firing of metals they take on whole new colors. we were probably the least happy with these pieces but then they are experiments and you have to do this to understand what they are going to look like and how they react with each other.


Bronze foil turns blue when foiled. coper wire turns pinkish and silver wire turns blue.

my least favorite. Note when working with the paints what you see is what you get. I was hoping for some meltage but no such luck.




it is the same piece only just before firing I took the hanger out and put it inside. the copper looking metal in the above piece is actually bronze and it turns blue.

A large bubble formed near the copper because it was not pound down flat enough.

269/365 September 26 River clean up day.

The 7Th annual Friends of Spokane Falls river clean up. Reportedly by the world rivers conference to be one of the biggest in the world. Last year 8 tons of trashed was cleared from the rivers and nearby banks and trails. 2 tons of which was recycled. Hopefully this year we did just as well.

With hundreds of volunteers spread out along the river banks and in boats we cleared away trash. There was even judging of the most interesting, most Spokane like, most beautiful and even the most useful items.

Still have no idea what this is. but it is interesting.

Judging area with the recycle crew in action.


From the low parts of the river the boaters took out trash while others combed the banks and floated big items back to the command center to be hauled away.

picture of me?? yeah right. no this is recycle man. ok enough said.

268/365 September 25

you have seen the before firing pictures of our vases before but showing them again for easy comparison. Dave's above and below Notice the white in the vase above that is fiber paper and notice how it is used to slump the glass over it.

this does not photograph well the green sparkles were a devil to get right especially with the point and shoot. i really really like this piece it looks way better in person

Above sample of frit work. some powders which he thought would turn darker and did not. and there was suppose to be some gold in the out edges which did not. sometimes you never know what you will get. I actually really like it but hubby of course does not.


Well now previously I wished I would be have some blue int he sky on this. but really I am ok with how it is. I did think the purple scared in the grass would show up better but it didn't. And the red really looks more like apples instead of fall trees but I do like the piece.


well only a few more pieces to share but that will be later.

267/365 September24

Remember this piece?? its my unfired plate I made last weekend. Well we picked up the finished plates and here it is.










(darn reflection sorry)


this is to show how it was slumped to come up on the ends a bit.









Do I like it?? yeah but I would have made some changes. for one I didn't realize that there was brown glass, I thought I had black. for a second the greens I thought would turn out darker. and lastly I have 3 pieces of the sparkly blue and one purple how the heck did that happen?? lol


It was a great learning tool though. everything we did was.


Here is Dave's before piece that he absolutely hated.












And here it is finished. I LOVE it. he did a great job on it.

266/365 September 23

my goodie box arrived today. yahoo. inside all kinds of close to my heart goodies. I am now an official demo. well sorta I don't really plan on pursing a career of this. Gish when the heck do I have time. Really seriously when do I ?? you have seen my blog I am all over the place this year I can't even actually post here on a daily basis. So I am not fooling myself with thoughts of grandeur.

265/365 September 22

There is our new toy. A mini kiln to fire fused glass in. We have only started it up once it will need about 5 more time before we can really start to make something out of glass. They need a break in period. the mini kiln will only be able to do coasters or maybe a little bigger no large glass plates but we plan to use it mostly for that and jewelry.

We had a devil of time trying to figure out just where we would put it. finally decided that it would go in a spot next to the washer and dryer. we found a great rolling tool cart at harbor freight tools that worked perfect for us too.

264/365 September 21 removing the beast

Since we have moved into this house around 7 years ago this large chest freezer that has to be at least 30 years old (covered in that old contact paper haha) has been in the storage area under the stairs. It still works and we used it at first but its a huge energy hog and with just the three of us its silly and hard to stock it. So it stayed in its hole and was used as below like a storage center.
Well our wonderful utility company has come up with a plan to remove these good working freezers and in turn they will even credit you $30. Great plan so they were to come and pick it up on Sunday.

well since I am so late with posting to my blog I can tell you this. I had planned to take a picture of the storage are that was redone but I can't get to the room. Why you ask???

well they came to take the freezer and decided they couldn't remove it from the basement. EVEN though I explained where it was, how big it was and everything to them before they came to pick it up. So NOW what. well we wait to get a couple more hands over here to drag it from the dungeon to daylight and then call in the trash department to remove it.

SAD I know I hate to not recycle it and I hate that it wont be used but at this point if it isn't removed soon from the house I will be disowned. so speak up soon if you want it. lol

263/365 sept 20

Last day of glass. I think the hardest part of the class was trying to come up with an idea for what we want to do. After I did my Frit piece above and placed it to be fired I wished I would have added some blue for the sky oh well wait and see it might turn out better then i thought. this was a piece using different small sizes of small bits of glass. I chose not to use the fine powder on mine. this will not come up to a full fuse so it will be interesting to see what happens.

My husband chose a design with some deep purple powder and the glass bits will actually turn purple. I think it will turn out awesome.
the next few pieces are experimenting with different metals. Like this piece of mine with copper wire black (hopefully) confetti glass (very thin) and some gold foil.

this is another piece of mine done with confetti, bronze leafing (very thin) the confetti should create some different colors mixed with the bronze leafing.
My husbands piece he chose to use gold foil, wire and I think he has some bronze in there too.



bronze leaving, silver leaving, silver wire and glass stringers
fun with metallic paints, mica flakes and powder.


Not sure how my paint piece will ever turn out I don't really like the look of it right now.


this is the last we saw of these pieces until next week sometime.

We really loved the class. So much so we are getting a mini kiln ourselves and will hope to work on some stuff together. It will be nice to have a hobby we can do together.