Glass Synchronicity: Slumpfest Project 1: Promising start, unwanted results

Glass picked out

To start off Erica Biery's class we had a bit of a warm up on the Morton portable glass system. I did learn that my kit is missing a number of newer items that make life a bit easier when cutting geometrical shapes. No worries, I had ordered the beetle bits system the week before. I can use either at this point.

The project was to be a salad bowl using some stamped glass that she and Jen Walkovich had prepared the day before. We were due to learn stamping later in the day.

So I picked out a couple stamped pieces and a matching glass that Spectrum Glass had kindly donated to the class and started cutting away. I just went ahead and did various sizes. The salad bowl project works as a mosaic analog. After cutting my pieces I cut a black border for my 12" X 12" glass and started to place my pieces on it upside down.

The reason to place everything upside down was that it would keep the stamped glass pieces looking a bit sharper. We were working at a hectic pace, everyone was sharing a cutting system and there were a lot of pieces to cut. As they said, "This isn't your masterpiece, its just to show the technique." Once I arranged everything as best as I could we tacked it down with some cheap hairspray in drops.

Next we took some fine black frit and filled in the empty spaces. This took a little work to make sure we didn't have any stray pieces where we didn't want them. Then to preserve it all we sprayed the hairspray over the whole piece.

I transported mine home to fuse. I had to fix a few areas that shifted, but it worked well enough. I did a full fuse, then flipped the piece and did another full fuse. I had some really nice results. I little spare frit where I didn't want it, but it was nice enough.

Then I did my slump fuse. I'd not slumped something with such sharp sides before so I thought I was doing a good thing adjusting my slump schedule. As you can see in the last picture, it slumpped itself down the sides of the mold. *Sigh*. I'm not sure if there is any saving grace here, but I may try to do a full fuse to flatten it and see what comes out of it. Here is the disastrous schedule I used.

My Schedule: