Cold working

Such a busy afternoon, literally if I had to move from one spot to another I ran...
Lene is going to pick up the graal embryo/egg she made the other week, though she needed it engraving. Friday is a quiet day in the studio so I decided to do it..I am after all making graals for my Extension class. Nadine and I tried to remember what colours Lene had used....black with an unknown pinky colour we had dubbed as 'Nipple'...hmmmm. So with limited time, after imagining complex patterns, I told myself to keep it simple.

I made a few cuts on my first bubble overlay..which is a torturous process if there ever was one and of course put the image on upside down, well we live and learn.

I also started roughing out my design for our cameo on the flat skills project....4 layers of bullseye fused.
Off white
Medium blue
Black
Clear

At the end of the day, I switched on kiln 6, with the open faced tree cast.

In line....for the engraver

Last night I finalised the foetus drawing and made a plan for the engraving I had tested out yesterday. In the library this morning I resized the image to transfer onto the bubbles.

There was a queue for the engraver..I got to it at about 4pm..as it was all my marked lines washed off. huh some permanent marker!

Alasdair and Rish Gordon: Engraving at Canberra Glassworks

Last week I spent 7 days at the Canberra Glassworks doing a Copper wheel engraving workshop.



I really wish that I could rotate pics in blogger

A merrie silly season to you all

Some loot from christmas day. I have been eyeing up this revised edition for a while..thankyou!

mermaid's a'hoy!

Ok, so plan B or is it S by now? The express parcel hasn't arrived yet from ceramaglas so I have embarked on another idea... I have engraved the image of the mermaid on the blown piece which I will then fill with the enamel mix.


After I have used my blown inclusion with the engraving, Andrew walks past.."package for you"
Ah I think well a bit to late really, nothing to be done I've just used up my blank.

Kate however wasn't going to let this go by..no says she "I have some blown pieces you can use".. So we sort through some pieces and i choose one which seems the right shape (it has a few bobbles on..but i can work around those ..right!). I go and saw off the bit I need give the other half in for much needed cullet. Then off to screen print the decal emulsion over my enamel screen print. I wave it beside the furnace waiting for it to dry. So in the mold room I have basin of tepid water, decal and glass. The decal comes off like pressed noodles impossible to handle and all flibberly flobberly..hmm throw that in the bin SOOOO not going to work. What did I do wrong..OH YES of course what a ninny I am..the stress is obviously effecting my reasoning capabilities and probably my spelling too. For reasons that will be too hard to explain here for the final layer you need to make another scrren print that encompasses the whole area of te design not just the lines...which of course i haven't done. Oh well nothing to lose i'll just slather some on with the squeegee any way..more time spent at the furnace drying a much thicker layer of overcoat...drying dryING DRYING. So again I am in the mould room with a basin of warm water, the Decal, glass AND Howie and Kate. Soaking the decal works, it is still all floppy but slightly more manageable with helpful instruction from Howie. Remember the bobbly glass I mentioned earlier? well I thought it would be easy to avoid but hadn't counted on the decal being to floppy...it basically got put on where it ended up. Much to Howie's amusement the only bobble ended up under the mermaids now rather ample breasts! So now I have two inclusions to choose from. they will both go in the hot box tonight to warm up to 600 for sandcasting tomorrow.