Arrow In The Forest

Arrow in the Forest
12" square

I finished piece this weekend. You may recall that I did a step by step on the construction of this piece in a May post.

Once I completed coldworking the edges of the plate it was ready for the next step...slumping.

The square sushi plate mold that I used for this piece is one of my favorites. The shape and the way it slopes when the slump is complete seems so elegant to me. I thought you might enjoy seeing the mold, shown in the picture below. The pink on it is the kiln wash that I've applied. This is a necessary step in the slumping process as the wash prevents the glass from sticking to the mold when it slumps.


This is how the fused blank looks as it sets on top of the mold, prior to being put in the kiln for slumping. Once the correct slumping temperature is reached, the glass 'drops', ok it slumps, into the mold and takes on the shape of the mold.



I used some of my favorite Bullseye glasses for this. I've become quite fond of the richness the mineral green opal shade. It lends itself so well as a compliment to the dark green streakie. And I had a lot of fun with the wine colored 'arrow' accented with yellow and clear glass.

Here's wishing all of you a great week of creativity.

Arrow In the Forest - Work in Progress

I started work on this design a couple of days ago. It just came out of the kiln yesterday and I will start coldworking the edges next, prior to the final slump in the square dish mold.

For this design, I used one of Beverly Ash Gilbert's color wheel schemas and I really like the way the colors came together for me on this piece. I had the rich cranberry stringer that I think stands out with the yellow confetti pieces as a back drop.


I started with the vertical section using 3 pieces of Bullseye canary yellow confetti. Then I picked out one of the cranberry stringers I had made a while ago, that had a nice string of navy running through it. The navy was twisted around inside of this stringer as part of what I did when I made these. I decided to outline the vertical with more yellow and I wanted a dark green border for the entire piece. I tried several pattern variations for the greens and ultimately, this was my final choice.



This is the completed design, before I packed the vertical area with clear frit.








And now the clear frit is in place, just before fusing. I created fiber dams to hold the glass in place once it becomes molten. And reinforced those with pins and a couple of kiln posts.

The top picture shows the result to date.

I thought I would call this one, Arrow in the Forest.