fused glass

Last weekend I got a call from a friend who was over at this glass place in town (I don’t know the name yet). A couple of friends were there working on fused glass and invited me to join them. I’ve never really been huge into fused glass before, so I wasn’t sure about it at first.

I had actually been in the store before, because I wanted to see if they offered classes in hot glass. That is an area I am really interested in and have wanted to do for so long, but alas, they do not do hot glasswork there.

Anyway, my friends were putting together these pieces, shown above, that consist of layers of all types and sorts of glass. There is big sheets of different colors, patterns and textures, rods of glass and all the way down to almost sandlike pieces. You assemble pieces however large you want on the tile. The entire tile is put in an oven or kiln and then fired to meld the layers together. Once I got to see how it worked and the samples that my friends were making, I realized how limitless it is, and how each piece is like it’s very own little canvas, only dimensional. They let me make a couple, and I’m officially hooked. I can’t wait to go back and work on more. Here are what my finished pieces looked like, below.

They also do stained glass at this place. By luck, a coworker of mine was there at the time working on a stained glass piece and I got to watch her soldering it together. It looked pretty fun as well.