Glass Art

I found some of the pictures I had tucked away from last years glass plates the kids made.  There are only a few...I can't really remember why I didn't take more pictures of these!

This plate was made with black glass and red glass.  I tried to tell him that he probably wouldn't be able to see the red after fusing, but he wanted to try!

This one used cut glass shapes, noodles and frit.

I loved this one!  Since glass art is new to me, I looked up a bunch of pictures to print off to give the kids ideas of what they could create with glass.  A few of them did a little copying from the examples to get what they wanted, but I figured since it was new to me and they were having a hard time seeing how the little random shapes could create a picture, I let them as long as it wasn't a direct copy.  (Blogger won't let me rotate the picture!)

Another picture I can't get to rotate...this girl came up with the idea of kissing fish on her own after seeing fish examples.

This one was a creation by one girl...all on her own!  I loved it!  

I had meant to auction these plates off, but last year was a lot of trial and error with my glass kiln and we kind of wasted a lot of glass.  If you don't use kiln paper under the glass, you have to chip off and reapply the kiln wash after every fuse and slump you do!  It's A LOT of work, even if you only have one shelf!  Plus, you need to wait for the kiln wash to completely dry or it will cause air bubbles to rise in your glass as you fuse it and then you will have swiss cheese holes!  It was very frustrating to lose all that glass as it is very expensive, but luckily I was able to use grant money this year again to really stock up on the glass!  Annnnd on kiln paper, as that seems to be the safest route to go with fusing!

This year I hope to do a little experimenting with glass cuff bracelets.  I also bought some nice jewelry kits to use in the big kiln.  Can't wait to start up art club to dive into this stuff!