Building a Pyramid

 

To demonstrate and learn a little about simple casting we made “pyramid shaped paper weights.

we were very lucky to have setup for us the mold lined with kiln paper, and glass cut into triangles and resting in mold.

we then filled the mold with bits n pieces of glass, coloured  clear and dichroic.  I continued my blue, green theme with litle pieces of dichro.  we filled to a bit over the top and then laid a glass square over for the base.

My Pyramid in the kiln after firing. 

To make the edges nice and sharp we used the flat lap grinder with finer and finer diamond grit ending with a polishing wheel.   

till our pyramids were smooth and shiny with “sharp” corners and tip!

side viewbottom view

unfortunately the dichroic does not show very well but u can get the idea.   You can also see the small bubbles .

One of the others filled their pyramid with frit,  this created amazing tiny bubbles.

More New Things

RAKING!!!

 

I have long wanted to try raking glass, but didn’t know where to start!   and Patty showed us!!  we cut strips in the colours we liked and made a 15cm square with strips on their sides

then we pinned a dam around it.  as you can see I stuck with my favourite colours, blues, greens aqua and almond.  

Sorry the pic is blurry.

Once it was in the kiln and hot enough I donned gloves, “jacket” and eyewear, (kiln was at approx 900degrees C) I raked a metal stick through the molten glass.  I chose to do the classic up and down.

This is t out of the kiln.

 

Other students rakings, we all chose different colours and ways, some smarty (Anthony G) did a fabulous spiral!!!  

I t was interesting to note that some colours “took over” Yellow , Red and black were main culprits.

I learnt something about pinning dams……

make sure you don’t pin too close to glass!!!  sadly I could not just pull these  pins out (a few I could) but had to resort to slicing each side of a so as to not damage diamond grinding blades….

 

AH thankfully it still looks great ……and I learnt heaps!! 

Learning More

 

 

Last weekend I spent 3 days doing a course with the Amazing Patty Gray.

I learnt new techniques, refined a few old ones, and was inspired to get creating…

These are the items I came home with, but I also come home with a head full of knowledge.   I got to use a lap grinder, diamond  saw and vitrigraph kiln , i learnt how to dam a piece, and also what not to do!  lol …

 

First up was a Strip Bowl

we cut strips of glass , using a strip cutter, and having a go at using the Mortons cutting system.  We could chose any colour combo and lay them out in any pattern.  as this piece was going to be at least 1/2 inch thick we were encourage to think of ways of showing depth,  I chose to place 3 “windows” with streaky glass placed at different levels .  I love the colour combo of blue and green and have used it b4, i interspersed it with some almond and clear.

To provide some contrast and focal points i placed rectangles of orange,  and layed some black stringers that had been made with the vitrigraph.

 

 

THis was then fused, the edges ground and polished on the flat lap grinder and by hand, then slumped into a bowl mold.

 

I love the result ….

Wonder what you think!???