Diary of a Demented Store Owner

Thursday 25 September 2014

Why Not?

There always comes a time when you need to lay down a crisp clean line somewhere when doing a fused piece. You know, like a cat whisker, or I don't know you think of something up yourself. 
Last time we let that happen, the Flowering Lotus Blossom (commonly referred to as Zenia) came up with the most complicated and intense project that required hundreds of crisp lines.
Now, you could try stringer but they only come straight and are tough to bend in gradual arcs. 
You could try liquid stringer but that really doesn't give crisp enough a line as such as a project like this requires.
So, how about a pair of groziers on either end of a piece of black glass, put in the flame of a plumber's torch (I prefer my Creme Brûlée torch myself... Pedantic Pat) and then melted, pulled and randomly twisted until you have gathered enough variety to start-


We then fish through this selection looking for pieces that will match the curvature and thickness of the lines required by the artwork. Laying them out on a piece of clear glass on top of our art is the way to go and makes transport into the kiln a snap-


 Here Zenia is getting ready to lay it out on our base glass (note the different whites used here to better define the hands, yes and hat separate from the body- dense SP200 and translucent SP209)-  


And here's the final result with great crisp clean and permanent fully fused black lines-


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