Sunday, November 13, 2011

Basket weave plate


 I'm trying my hand at a basket weave. This one is a simple layer on layer with spaces in between built in. I've tried .5 inch strips with .5 inch chips to fill in between on the ends. To make it work out, the end chips are .25 by .5 inch, all other chips are square.

I can't wait to see how this one turns out.

UPDATE: It turned out wonderfully! nice round circles inside with negative space. This is a very cool project that I'm sure I will need to do again and again.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Layered Pattern Final

The layered plate is finished, for now. I am not happy with the edge on one side of the plate. If you noticed from the previous post there was some hangover that I should have trimmed before fusing. Call it laziness, call it low blood sugar, but in the end I had to do something about that edge. So I ground away the part that I didn't want and then slumped it. I figured that it would also fire polish my grinding away. Well it did, to a certain extent, but not enough for my taste. It was glossy but not rounded. My mistake was that to properly fire polish. it should be done while flat and at much higher temperatures than a slump.So next time around it is full fuse, cold working (if needed), fire polishing (if needed), then slumping. I am going to ask at my local store about doing a fire polish and then re-slumping. My fear is that re-slumping it will have it deform. I will post an update with a final decision, once I know.

I hope you like the plate, I know I do, even with the lessons learned. Remember everything is an experiment.