Here's my first fairly successful glass cast. I made the model out of clay and then poured a 50/50 mix of pottery plaster and silica flour over it. Once the mold mix sets the still-wet clay peels right out of the mold.

The silica protects the plaster against the high temperature necessary to melt the glass but it also makes the mix pretty crumbly, which is part of the reason the mold cracked in the kiln. The glass in contact with the mold came out kind of matte so I fired the snake a second time for polish.

I used every kind of green glass scrap I had around, including a bunch of scrap murrini, which make the patterns should its spine. Also I used boron nitride as a mold release, and thanks to @nora for telling me how well this stuff works!

It's also possible to make glass molds from fired clay rather than plaster. These are much more durable but it's necessary to press the original into the wet clay. This means the original must be hard, e.g. fired clay. I first tried to use this method for the snake but it's hard to press something that big without distortion.

#KilnCasting #Snakes #CastGlass #Glass #GlassFusing #FusedGlass #Art #Sculpture

I did another test run the day before renovation chaos started. I wanted the parallel mini-prisms to retain their shape, with the milky opaline being the topping. I realized there was one more option and happily it worked. TL;DR Casting sand.

Test pieces were pressed prism-side down into dry casting sand and topped with opaline. A blue piece of a finicky glass was added for a different test. All was held inside a small dam mold. The casting sand is no longer available in the retail market, but I have my stash. The test worked as desired, except there is a volume problem. Fused glass wants to be 6 mm thick and trapping the prisms prevented both the 6 mm stack and the 7 mm stack from topping out cleanly. I hope to get back to testing in a few days.
#FusedGlass

This is the "I saw it for 3 seconds on FB this morning and then the page refreshed" - it was a votive candle holder and I am 99% sure it was all done with ribbons, and it was really cool looking.

So, I'm doing a small test run - made two of these, one will be full fused, one will be tack fused.

Of course now that i am thinking more about it - there was probably a piece of tekta in the middle - still will be fun to see what comes out of this.

#FusedGlass

The puddles with the dichro frit that I smashed up (and forgot to get pics of the "before") - didn't really turn out the way I wanted, but I am pretty sure they have a future as components in something Christmas themed next semester.

But, because I cannot let this go, I had another idea, next post.

#FusedGlass