01.
Spare Shelf Space
As an experiment–and after seeing YouTube videos of fused glass jewelry–I cut some small squares of Tekta clear glass and put little strips of dichroic glass (Bullseye SizzleStix) underneath them. I’ll show the results of the fuse further down (they come out round).
02.
Pendants
As above, when space permitted, I cut various small pieces of dichroic glass (top and middle), murinne (upper left), regular glass, stringer (bottom left), rod (two on the right) and clear glass to experiment (capping or underlaying all).
03.
Murrine
I bought 90 COE (coefficient of expansion; 90 is compatible with Bullseye glass) cane murrine from Clayton Hill Studios on Etsy. Here are a few pieces that I nipped off with tile nippers.
04.
More Murrine
I bought four different murrine colors and these are the other three. Below you can see that the murrine are sandwiched between two clear pieces of glass.
05.
Display Cards
Using some online tutorials, I created some display cards in Illustrator, printed them on white card stock, and then cut and hole-punched them to hold the pendants and earrings.
06.
How the Cards Work
There’s a small plastic bag taped to the back of the card that holds the remainder of the necklace. When the card is folded up, showing the logo on the back, you can’t see it.
07.
Finally a Result
The blue murrine pendant on its display card with another pendant beside it so I can show the back.
08.
Another Pendant
The orange murrine pendant. I used silver-plated bails in an oak leaf design from which to hang the pendant. The cords are black satin silk (24″ with a 2″ extension chain).
09.
Dichroic Earrings and Pendant
These are the only pieces that I coldworked (with diamond hand laps), in order to get the straight edges. For the earrings I used silver plated earring bails with an oak leaf design (the design is hidden behind the pendant) combined with hypoallergenic niobium hooks as the hardware. All the bails are glued to the pendants using E6000 glue. For the stud earrings seen below, I used titanium earrings posts.
Results
Final Result
These are fun projects that I include on the kiln shelf when space permits. They’re quick and easy to do and yet have a finished quality to them. I’m glad I went the extra step with the display cards because it made the photograph quite a bit easier.
