Silk painting - Pennsic Vigil tent

This project was 100% Fortune St. Keyne's brain child.  The bulk of the planning, work, sleep deprivation, and effort was done by Fortune and House Strangewayes.  I came along for a few night to help paint and add my special brand of humor to the crew.

Fortune's other works can be found on her blog "Fortune Favors".

By the time I joined the painting party, all the resist work was done so I just "colored inside the lines" as it were.  I helped with the Chivalry, Pelican, and Defense banners along with the Rose window.

Lampwork Glass - Imbedded Opal Class (05May2018)

This was our first level 2 class that pigged backed off the information we learned in the intro pendant making class.  The focus here was learning about encasing opals in glass and using them in pendants.


This followed the same process as making pendants.  The initial pendant glass used this time was a follow borocilicate glass.  The end was sealed then heated so the tube slowly filled up with liquid glass.  The opal was then dropped in carefully and the glass heated and rotated to prevent air bubbles forming in the tip of the pendant.  A contrasting color was added to the back of the pendants to better show off the opal.

This was the handout provided in the class.  It gives a quick background on Gilson opals and describes the embedding process with some neat pictures.

Gilson opals are commercially available at Profound Glassworks (http://www.profoundglass.com/store/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=2) and where the class supply was from.

Lampwork Glass - Pendant Making (21Apr2018)

This intro class was taken at Fiamma Glass again.

This class differed from the bead making in a few different ways.  The glass used here was borosilicate glass (~30 COE) in solid rods.  No mandrels were used this time around.  Glass was manipulated on the rod of origin or using a glass punty (a glass rod used to transfer your work).  Borosilicate or boro glass isn't as "soft" as moretti glass so you don't have to worry as much about gravity until you have a large "glob" of melted glass.  Glass is then flattened by using either a press or by touching the heated glass to a metal plate and pressing down.

To create a two color swirl effect, a blob of a secondary color is added to the main piece (after securing a punty to one end).  The glass is heated and then the punty and main rod are twisted in opposite directions.  To get a tapered effect, heat one end of the glass blob and gently pull both rods apart.

Cold seal - Adding a non-heated end of glass to a hot piece of glass.  This created a brittle, temporary "joint" to manipulate the glass you are working with.  The finished piece can be detahed by hitting the glass sharply at the joint.

Chill-marks - A fingerprint-like impression in the glass caused by touching hot glass to a cold surface such as a press plate.  These can be removed by gently heating the piece.

These were our two pendants created in the class. The leaf shape was done by the stretching process described above and then a leaf impression press was used to get the veining.

Feilinn's pendants:

The light blue glass looks more clear after firing and setting in the kiln.  The "dots" of color in the leaf pendant didn't stretch as much as I had hoped either.


Sergei's pendants:

He had one of his "dots" on the flat pendant break off during firing.  When added raised dots, you use the same process as described in the bead making class but just do a gentle firing to even the dots to nice half circles sitting on the pendant flat.  If the dots are not partially melted on correctly, they can pop off or set oddly when firing.