Jul 01
I liked my other beetles, but they really needed dichroic class. Dichroic glass looks like beetle’s wings, one of the most beautiful things in nature, and I had to combine them. First, I made the legs by cutting masking tape, lifting the positive, spraying with hairspray, and dusting it with mica pigments. When I lifted …
Jun 27
Now that I’d done a few beetles, I decided to see if I could make a butterfly that looked okay. Butterflies are easy to do poorly, and hard to do well. I find that if I stray too far from a photograph or good drawing of a butterfly, it doesn’t look as real as I’d …
Jun 21
For this dragonfly, I used a clear sheet over amber. The instructor suggested it for greater visibility. She didn’t quite understand that I was a skinflint who didn’t want to buy more clear glass, I guess. This was before I had tested the mica pigments to see which ones worked (bright gold) and which …
Jun 18
This technique was something I kind of made up, because the other students in the class just did their own, straightforward projects. I saw that someone was using mica pigments on her glass work, and I have a bunch of those that I use for mixed media. Naturally, the ones made for glass are expensive. …
Jun 15
I took a fused glass class this spring. I hadn’t been terribly inspired by anything I’d seen in fused glass, but I figured that it was one of the few types of glassworking I hadn’t tried yet, so I ought to give it a go. My first couple of pieces are really ugly. So ugly …
