Aspen Branch - Painted Bowl

This is the largest of my Aspen Branch Series. It's a bowl, approximately 13" in diameter and about 2" deep.

I used Peter McGrain's Vitri-Fusaille technique to paint the branch and leaf stems. I just loved Karen's earlier comment on the beginning of this piece when I mentioned how I felt less timid painting this one! I really did feel more free to let myself paint what I pictured. Now I know this is just simple line drawing stuff...I just think it adds so much to a piece. It's great fun and I plan on doing more painting on glass.

For my next go round on this design, I think I'm going to use green leaves. It's so hard to tell how pretty the glass is for the leaves here. I used a very colorful Bullseye streaky that had reds, rusts, greens, and even some blues. That glass reminded me of autumn colors. I still find it very pretty, just too dark in the photo to show how everything turned out.

One of Today's Projects

Sometimes I think I have too many irons in the fire. It was a busy day of creativity and I felt totally immersed at times. LOVE IT!

One of today's projects was the painting of the branches and the leaf outlines for the big bowl in my Aspen Branch Series. I took a picture of it after the painting was complete and I was getting ready to fire the kiln so the paint would fuse to the glass. I found myself being less timid with the painting process and the effects that I added to the leaves. I'm happy with the results and hope they look good when the firing is complete. If I like the results, then tomorrow I will do the slump of this into the mold and it will become part of my update portfolio. I've considered that I may need to tweak the lines some if I'm not satisfied with how they look, and that would mean another firing...delaying the slumping part for a day.

I'm continuing to work on hearts. I'm focusing on wire wrapping them at this time and they will go out to my Esty store. Next weekend, I purchased a spot for their Valentine's showcase. This is the first time I've tried this avenue to get noticed on Etsy and I've read mixed results from people who have done that. So, I will see how it works and do my best to have plenty of hearts if there is a big demand for them.

And I even managed to do some house work today; not one of my favorite activities, but I love the results.

The Good News....The Bad News

The Good News is my Aspen Branch plate turned out so well. The definition I was able to create with outlines is exactly what I've wanted in my fused pieces. Peter McGrain's techniques are fun and I think have brought my work up a notch or two.




The bad news is the fuego bowl turned out 'ok', but somehow, I mistook some of the main glass as fusible and it was not. I'm just thankful that nothing happened to cause more kiln problems. I discovered that some of the glass wasn't fusible as I was looking at the tag to re-order some. Much to my dismay, it was normal stained glass...not fusible.

At least I can incorporate the non-fusible glass into a stained glass piece in the future.

For now, I'm glad I can pursue the Aspen Branch series and do more glass painting!

Progress Reports

When I opened the kiln this morning, I was greeted by this beauty! I'm happy with the result and it confirmed why this glass is expensive too. Nice rich colors. The picture doesn't show how well the accents compliment the streaky parts of the glass, but they do. Several of them are iridized, which really adds a nice effect. Given this result, I will proceed with making the next two larger sizes. This piece is so 'fiery' that I think I may call this series Fuego.

As a mentioned a few days ago, I want to try Peter McGrain's glass painting techniques. I now have my design....an aspen branch, of course.


This is my design template I used for cutting out the glass.

And I'm also posting a picture of the actual piece that just went in the kiln this morning. What I've done here is place the template underneath the glass circle and it becomes my guide for leaf placement. Once fused, I'll go back and paint in lines and other washes to create some of the effect I'm going for with this piece.



In my opinion, the cool thing about fusing is you can do things with glass (shapes, lines or lack of lines) that you just can't do in the traditional stained glass method. If all goes well, the fused blank will be ready for painting in the branches and creating some shading for the leaves. You probably noticed some other items with this piece. I'm working on some new pendant designs so I added them to this batch for the fuse.

If I'm happy with the outcome of this small plate (about 9" in diameter), I have two others in larger sizes that I will use for this series. I imagine I'll name this series The Aspen Branch.

Happy Creating All!