A Fortuitous Mistake

Working on a Dick Tracy plate last week, required two small bandsaw cuts for the eye in profile and Mr. Tracy's hair.

I, of course, had used up all my Bert’s Bees lip balm (the perfect thing to cover a marker line to prevent it from being washed off when being bandsaw cut) and as other even more embarrassing alternatives were not at hand, I had to scramble. Seeing a dusty old BIC Whiteout marker (I make so few errors is it any surprise that this mistake coverup device is so unused?) I thought why not? And went ahead, made my marks and found it the perfect way to mark my glass when bandsaw cutting. 

While being careful to steel wool off any remnants of the white out and giving the pieces a cursory cleaning I threw them in the kiln all high and almighty proud of myself for being so clever.

That was until I pulled the pieces out of the kiln. Oh the humanity! There was a thin white line around most of the pieces. Seems BIC Whiteout (and others but not all) contain titanium dioxide to get the bright white colour. 

So, the next obvious thing is to check out how good it might be as a design element. I can see billowing clouds, simulating snowstorms and other endless possibilities, all making impossible or difficult cuts/effects no longer the case. 

I had my able bodied staff creative- VooVoo- doodle up a little flying pineapple piece that we plated in between two pieces of clear and then added ‘flight’ marks around it on the top surface and fired it to 1460F.

Take a look- it’s perfect! Colour remains just as intense as the original and is safely encased. The flight marks however while again just as bright, can be scratched off so are not permanent.

So, what’s to learn?

Don’t use liquid paper as a means to put a cutline on your glass.

Don’t use it to to add white lines if on top of your piece of glass

Do use it as a creative embellishment when encased in between glass. It will be permanent and stay just as bright after firing as before!