Kaplan Creations Jewelry and Glass Design

While I’ve had a lot of experience fusing pendants and earrings, I’ve never tried to fuse anything larger….mostly because my kiln was too small.  So, wanting to try out larger things I took a fusing class at a local studio. We did both full fusing (leaves a smooth finish)  and tack fusing (leaves a textured finish since the glass isn’t melted in all the way).  The first project was coasters, and below you can see my coasters before they were fused and afterward.

I also made a sun catcher which was tack fused. Since I love hearts, I decided to put pieces of glass together in heart shapes for this hanging. The clear bumpy surface is made of small pieces of clear glass frit that is sprinkled on the glass base.  Here are the before and after pictures, although it looks like I hung it up backwards. Notice how some of the colors are different after fusing. Glass that is orange before fusing often turns red after fusing.

The third item was a tack fused plate. This was done a in a 2-part process.  First the plate was fused at about 1350-1400 degrees F. Then, in a separate firing, it was placed in a ceramic plate mold and slumped at about 1300 degrees F.  Just like the sun catcher, the plate had clear frit sprinkled on it, resulting in a bumpy texture.

It was a lot of fun to fuse these larger items and to learn about how to properly slump glass. Of course I still don’t have a kiln large enough, but luckily the glass shop will rent out kiln time at a reasonable rate.

I’m not sure that this is exactly the same pattern as the piece I showed yesterday, but it is close (and from the same batch). I had fused it on top of a black base.

The last time I bought some dichroic glass, I bought it from a different source (online). It had really pretty patterns that I hadn’t seen before so I thought I’d try it out. Thankfully I didn’t buy too much of it because there seems to be a problem with the dichroic coating disappearing at a lower temperature than you’d expect. This happened to me twice. I thought the first time was my  mistake and maybe I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the kiln (I wasn’t using a digital controller, but usually don’t for fusing small pieces). The second time I watched it carefully, and turned off the kiln at exactly the right point….and here are my results:

You can barely see any dichroic coating…it all burned off.

 I didn’t complain to the seller, just decided to stick with my usual sources from now on. Dichroic glass is too expensive to be throwing out….

I’ve been busy setting up my new studio, which is currently just a big mess. Waiting to get the propane line plumbed in so I can hook up my oxygen concentrator and new torch (Carlisle Mini CC). Will be putting up some better pictures real soon.

Hello and welcome to my blog! I have been designing and creating jewelry pieces since 2003 using fused dichroic glass, lampworked beads, sterling silver, and a variety of other materials. I live in Alaska (the south central portion–near Anchorage) and my artistic endeavors are clearly influenced by the beauty of the gorgeous scenery. Join me in my passion for jewelry design and glasswork.