The Planet Neptune ~~ Embellished

It's done and even if I do say so myself, I think it is beautiful. The piece, formerly known as the blue bowl, is finished. I kept thinking it looked like a planet and after some discussion with my husband, he said it was blue like the planet Neptune. So now it has a title..."The Planet Neptune ~~ Embellished". The reason I added the embellished part of this is, with the copper inclusions and rust colored squiggles, there were some artistic liberties taken on my part. I almost think I may be finding that abstract part of my creativity! :)

I thought I should include a picture of Neptune as reference. I like the similarities.

As a footnote, during the coldworking process, I did expose one of the trapped air bubbles. That happened on the edge that I worked so hard to define. Hopefully it won't be viewed as a flaw, as it isn't, it's just part of the piece.

Now I'm working on Hues of Nature. That one is 1/2" thick. Neptune is 3/8" thick. I just love the weight to these bowls.

The Continued Evolution

The blue bowl continues to evolve. I'm happy with the results. I like the addition of the rust colored stringers...they compliment the copper mesh inclusions.

The offending chip has disappeared and the edges are nice too. Now I will start the coldworking process again. I'll have to see how things look when I'm done coldworking the edge; at that point I'll have to decide if I want to do a fire polish. Once all of that is done, then it can be slumped into the bowl mold and then it should be done!

I'm thinking about calling this 'A Crazy Blue World'....or something like that. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Greetings and here's wishing all of you a very Happy Valentine's Day.

This morning I prepared the blue bowl for its second fusing. Here it is, in the kiln, ready for firing. Taking it back up to full fuse temperature may mean that I will not be able to see the results until later tomorrow afternoon.

I had great fun arranging all the curls on top of it. I believe I have made the right decision and I want to thank Deborah and Karen for their words of encouragement as I re-work this piece to become (hopefully) even better than the original design.

I took a profile view to show how these curls 'stand up' on top of the surface. During the fusing process they will drop and become part of the glass surface. They will retain their circles and curls, but become part of the piece in the fusing process.



The dam, to maintain its 3/8" thickness, is held in place with steel pins. A technique I picked up in Patty Gray's November class at D & L. I couldn't believe that I could use steel pins in my kiln, but I can. As an added safeguard I used some kiln blocks as additional reinforcements to the dam.

Last, but certainly not least, is a picture of two of our three bassets. As I worked on this piece this morning, they kept me company....sleeping on their beds. Newton is on the left, Bueller is the one on the right. As an added bonus, today we went to the big dog show up in Denver and saw lots of our basset friends. Couldn't ask for a better day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Evolution of the Blue Bowl

You may recall that in my last post about the blue bowl, I stopped working on it as I was getting tired and started to make mistakes. One of the things that happened was the bowl slipped from my rubber gloves and hit the edge of the sink. A small chip occurred and I thought with the right amount of coldworking, I could eliminated it. Well, sadly the chip went too far into the surface and I don't want to cut down the diameter of the bowl that far. So I've decided to take another approach and the bowl is evolving.


The top picture shows my latest idea. I'm going to take some of the curled stringers I made this past weekend and add them to the surface of the bowl. I like the contrast of the straight lines and these curly stringers. This is just my initial pass tonight and I want to search through the stringers I created to find the best ones suited for what I want to do next. I believe that fusing this piece again will eliminate the chip and provide a nice surface. Of course, this means that I will have to create another dam for the fusing process, to hold the glass at the 3/8" thickness it has now. I'll take a pre-fuse picture to show how this will work. And I will lose all of the coldworking efforts I have put into this piece, but I think that is ok because I should be able to salvage the piece and the accident may cause this to turn into a much more interesting end product! I hope.

I tried to take a picture of the offending chip. It doesn't show up very well, but the yellow arrow is pointing to it. It's an imperfection that is just unacceptable and I will hope my attempt at fusing again will remedy it.




I also took a picture of the edge after I had completed some of the coldworking. It's much smoother, and has started to take on a nice mat finish. I will still have to redo this after the fuse, but that's ok too. I had planned on a fire polish to shine things up after the coldworking anyway.

So, as all of us have done, we learn from our mistakes and can sometimes turn them into something better. I certainly hope that will be the case for this blue bowl. I'm becoming rather fond of it. The more I look at it, I'm reminded of a beautiful blue planet with swirling clouds.