Favorite color - right time of year

Red
Yup . . . my favorite color is red and I especially love red glass. When visiting the big city w/ a glass shop this past weekend I was able to pick up a sheet of my very favorite, lickable, red glass.

Guess which color went into the kiln first?

I do love red glass and this simple dish will be a great holiday gift w/ some homemade chocolates.

:-)

Another pic from the weekend in the big city -

Listening to TubaChristmas under the dome of the capital was awesome.

Christmas Trees for Decorations

The kiln has been cool lately. It has gotten pushed out of my life by other stuff at the end of this week. The only good news is that we are traveling this weekend to a large city w/ a glass shop. Yeah!

I thought I would share some trees that I made last year to decorate for the season -

I created them out of scrap glass and had forgotten about them until I opened the ornament boxes this year.

~Julz

Holiday Lights

Prior to the snow coming this week I was able to get out and put up some Christmas lights. I love the celebration of the season - if only to brighten the long, dark eves.

Tonight we are in the midst of a blizzard and this is the view out my front window. I was pleasantly surprised that my new camera (gift to me . . . Yea!) was able to capture the image through the window glass. The reflection of the lights on the snow, along with the swirling wind blown ice crystals in the air create a vision of wonderment.

~ Julz

PS. I am so glad that I left this structure (art?) in the garden over winter and at the last minute decided it would be a grand place to attach lights.  :-)

Amber Box Love

This is a box to love . . . 

I really like how the simple tack fused frit decoration turned out.

It is so nice to have a success come out of the kiln. :-)

I can't wait to place this on my dresser and employ it to enclose some lovelies.

~ Julz

Monday's glass

Today I fire polished a glass box base. . . it now has a nice shine. I like the amber color, but really had a hard time deciding how I wanted to embellish this one. It really needed a decoration. I decided today to tack fuse some frit on the top. Simple - yes, but I hope it will be just the addition this box needs.

In the kiln tonight is the top - a tack fuse for the decorations.

Another dish out of the kiln this weekend -

This one is a nice, basic dish w/ good colors.

Happy Monday! Snow on the way tomorrow . . . a mid-week snow break would give me some good glass time. :-)

~Julz

Moving forward

Some glass projects turn out, and some are just great learning experiences. Here is a good project from this week.

This dish was made with a purple iridized glass. The pics don't really show how special this one is. It has a gold tint to the surface and when held up to the light it is purple. Very cool.

Then there is this project. My bad. 

I thought I had cleaned the glass enough between fuse and slump ~ boy was I wrong. The bowl slump actually worked better, but the kiln schedule needs to be tweaked a bit more. The problem is that the glass has a film of kiln wash on it. Yuck. Now I have to figure out how to get it clean and then polish the piece. Cleaning suggestions?

~ Julz

High Hopes

Okay - I needed to flip this and fire it again tonight prior to slumping, but I did take a pic for you to see.

I have high hopes . . .
~Julz

Tuesday - new glass

I peeked into the kiln this morning before leaving for work and there were no large bubbles (my greatest fear) in my 12" circle for the bowl slump. I didn't get any pics yet, but I will take pics prior to slumping tonight.
Yea!
~Julz