I like to make components for my glass work, sometimes it’s dots and sometimes other things like glass puddles. Glass puddles are where you layer pieces of glass into a stack and then full fuse them. No matter how high the stack, if you use a full fuse schedule in your kiln and don’t dam the piece, the glass evens out to 6mm high. I layered several pieces of bullseye’s blue and french vanilla glass together because I know these colours react together and create wonderful effects. I forgot to take a picture of my fused stack until it had fused and I’d already started chopping it. You can see the layers of glass below. The first piece shows the bottom of the glass whereas the second piece is top facing upwards. It has a rounded surface.
Once you have a single piece of glass, you then chop it up and lay the glass on its edge. I used mosaic nippers to chop my glass into small pieces. It took quick a bit of effort as 6mm glass is thick and hard to chop. The pieces are then returned to the kiln to fuse again, creating puddles of colour.
The photo below shows the same pieces once they have been fully fused. Now you can see why they are called puddles. You can see how the blues and french vanilla reacted together, creating dark lines where they meet. There are also lots of random wavy lines throughout and each piece has nicely rounded edges.
Now it’s time to layout my piece. I used a clear based completely covered with a piece of transparent turquoise glass. I then proceeded to lay down my puddles until I was happy with their placement. French vanilla dots were placed in between the waves of puddles. The piece then went back into my kiln on a full fuse temperature to make it into one smooth piece.
Once fully fused, I washed the piece before placing it on a mold and returning it to my kiln for a slump firing at a slightly lower temperature. The glass slumped into the mold creating a plate.
You can see all the lovely reactions between all the glass. If I ever did this sort of design again, it would be totally different as all puddles are slightly different. There are so many possibilities too. You can take two similar size puddles and turn them into earrings. You can make bigger puddles by chopping larger pieces from your piece and turn them into pendants. You can make puddles in lots of other colours.
