Time to refill my Etsy store

Slowly but surely I am working on adding some more pieces to my Etsy store. It’s about time too!

The first piece I added was the deep pendant from the last post. But I also finished two more pendants that are now available:

Photo Update of a Matching Art Glass Pendant

I finished a pendant that matches the cocktail ring I posted a little while ago.
Here are some pictures:

The glass is cold worked and very deep. So, the view from the side is quite dimensional, especially since some of the glass is perfectly clear.

Once I have a little time to spare, this pendant will likely end up in my Etsy store.

Brand New Handmade Cocktail Ring

I finally managed to finish a new jewelry piece recently.
It’s been much too long since I had the time and motivation to make anything truly new.
I have a couple more pieces that came out of the kiln along with this one but they all still need a little work and so I cannot show them to you yet.
It is not very often that I make rings and this cold-worked fused art glass cocktail ring is quite the rarity for me.
The colorful and very eye-catching glass piece sits on top of a sterling silver ring, which is adjustable to many different sizes.
I am now working on a matching pendant and I am pretty sure that both will end up in my personal jewelry box rather than in my Etsy store. But there will probably be more like this piece in the near future.

My new Glass-Fancy.com Website

I have been spending some time updating my website.
The old one was looking a bit patchy and I really wanted something smoother looking.

Well, … here is a sneak peek!

It may or may not be fully functional yet, so if you do run into any problem, please check back in a few days and everything should be up and running.

Let me know what you think, please!

One of these things is not like the others

Recently, I have finished 4 new cold worked fused glass pendants.
Actually, none of them are very new at all.

I tend to keep one or two fused pieces from most of the batches I fire and put them into a box for safe keeping. They usually remain there until there comes a time when I have too much other stuff going on and don’t have any time for fusing. At that point, I grab one here and there and finish them.

When I looked at the 4 finished pieces, what popped in my mind was the Sesame Street game and song “One of these Things is not like the Others” and it’s basically been stuck there ever since.

So, let’s line ’em up and see if you can figure out which one is not like the others:

… ♫ … before I finish this song. =)

Mixed message

The way I create my fused glass pieces is sometimes a bit odd.
At times, I fuse a whole lot of pieces to fill up the kiln and then about half of them go into a box and I don’t look at them again until a couple of week or months later, depending how much time I have.
It mixes things up a little bit and a lot of times I totally forget about the pieces in the box and it’s fun to rummage through it and rediscover them.

So, I rediscovered one piece this way and it’s sending me a bit of a mixed message.
It’s a large piece because I intended it to be cold worked so that it has distinct edges and a perfect rectangular form.

I make a lot of pendants because pendants are an easy piece of jewelry to wear and because a lot of my designs have a vertical tendency. Brooches, on the other hand, have a more horizontal tendency in my opinion and somehow that doesn’t come natural to me.
This piece, however, could really be both, a pendant or a brooch and I have trouble deciding.

So, what do you think: vertical pendant like in the first photo or horizontal brooch like in the second photo?
Which one is it?

Pure retro-ness right out of the kiln

At the moment, I am very much lacking in the time department. Between work, my husband’s business and the college class I am taking, I am spread very thin.
The little bit of time I spend in my “dungeon of glass” is stolen from my college class and I have trouble really enjoying it because the whole time I am thinking: “I should really be writing my lab journal right now.”

Nevertheless, I finally managed to fuse the load of glass that has been very slowly accumulating in my kiln for more than 3 weeks.

I was trying to develop something like a line of retro-looking fused glass pendants. The idea is taken from a pendant that I made a couple of years ago and that really stuck in my mind.
The design has fine silver geometrical patterns at two different depths and, in my opinion, it looks great no matter what color you put around it.
Below you can see the deep layer of fine silver circles peeking through.

I have to apologize but I am showing you the pieces exactly how they came out of the kiln because I am honestly not quiet sure when I will have the time to finish them.

And now I will finish writing my lab journal! =)

My first run-in with glue-on

I wanted to show you my new glue-on bails!

From now on, I am going to create a number of my pendants with these nifty glue-ons instead of drilling and then working sterling wire to connect a bail.
I still think that the drilled pendants are probably more sturdy but eliminating one whole firing and also some additional costs for the diamond drill bits and the sterling wire is a good argument to give it a try.

A few of these pendants are already listed on eBay. I meant to try selling on eBay for a while now but never really got going with it. It seems to be the time for firsts!

Experimenting with a new earring design; photo update

In the earlier post Experimenting with a new earring design; a post about posts, I mentioned a few more fused glass pieces that I needed to finish and take some photos of.
So I have done just that and I can now show you some more earrings.

Experimenting with a new earring design; a post about posts

 

The very obvious way to create fused glass earrings is to simply hang the glass by some kind of bail from a type of ear piece like a french hook, for example.
I have these kinds of dangle earring designs in my Etsy store as well.
I am not sure what prompted my recent quest for a different earring design. Maybe it’s because I get bored easily and then I have trouble continuing to do what I have been doing the way I have been doing it.
The dangle earrings had to make way to ear posts and since my fused glass style requires more room than just a small little glass knob, I decided to elongate the glass piece. That creates an earring that is more stationary on the ear but at the same time gives a hanging impression.

On the back side, sterling silver ear posts are soldered onto a piece of sterling silver sheet, which in turn creates a larger contact area so that the glue can create a strong bond.
I have fused a couple of glass pieces with a few different lengths to see what works best. There will be more pictures once they are all finished.