Getting A Creative Fix

Last week I did a silver and glass course which ran over two mornings at a place called Creative Escape. It's a shop house which has been converted into an artist's studio, and you can follow courses in everything from glass fusion, silver working and painting to paper making, quilting and everything in between.

Never having done anything remotely like this I wasn't terribly confident that I'd actually end up with anything I'd want to keep, let alone wear, but I have to admit I was pretty pleased with the result.

Creating cool pieces with glass fusion is ridiculously easy. You simply cut bits of coloured glass into pieces, layer them up on a base piece to make a nice pattern until the final result is 6 mm thick, then fire in a kiln. We returned the next day to work with the fired glass pieces by adding silver. This was way, way more difficult.

For this part we used silver clay which feels just like normal clay except of course it's quite pricey so you use as little of it as possible. It's incredibly fiddly trying to make small bits to go on jewellery and I'm not planning to do this again, although I'd definitely have another go at glass fusion. After you make your clay pieces you dry them briefly with a hair dryer, then fire them for a short time - only about 10 minutes - at 700 degrees. When you remove the pieces from teh kiln they are pure white, which is a little disconcerting. You then attack them with wire brushes and hey presto, the silver is hiding under the white outer layer.

Here you can see the final results: a rectangular piece with metalic green stripes on a black background, with silver threads wrapped over the top. I was trying to get an effect a bit like tree roots but a couple of them broke off as the silver is too thin.

The second piece is a metillic blue blob with gold flakes in the centre, cupped in what is supposed to be a silver leaf.

...And finally a simple pendant which I attached to a bezel I bought at the workshop as mine was way too ugly, then strung on a silver string I already had.

So there you go, if I can do it anyone can. Give it a go!