Glass Trailerwhere stained glass art is made

Sometimes I’m so proud when a design does so well. It can become a bit of a mixed blessing when it does.

I personally like this piece but I’m kind of tired making it over and over again. At some point I’m sure I’ll just have to cut it off and say it’s done and take no more orders. I may make one giant run of these and then be done with it. If you want to order one of these you should speak now or forever hold your peace.

I’ve been totally slacking off. My birthday is tomorrow and I’ve been trying to push things out of the trailer and get them shipped so I can have the option of just relaxing. A bear paw is somewhere on it’s way to Finland. A few necklace orders are at home and glue is setting on them, so those need to go out. And that wizard is still staring at me. He has been sitting there waiting to be ground down and put together for a few weeks now. That poor guy…

I think the problem with the wizard is that it is the only thing I have going on that isn’t for an order. So it’s always shoved aside for something of a higher priority. Maybe that’s what I’ll have to work on with my birthday time off!

In other news, I finally got around to try and recreate the rainbowish striped dish. This time I went with a candy dish shape and it’s currently in the trailer slumping… I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that it’ll come out all right.  I can’t wait to get home and check on it!

Seems like all I write about are these bear paw, right? Yeah, well I totally agree. It’s hard to take time to design something when people keep ordering them though!

The first one I showed was the prototype, here’s another slightly improved model. I’m pretty happy with it.

If you’re wanting one, you should speak up and order it now, I’m gearing up to start moving on to other projects… it’ll be nice to have some variety in the trailer

For purchase or ordering, please leave a comment or email me at daniel@glasstrailer.com

I ran out to the trailer last night, scored another circle for the paw from a sheet of thin clear System 96 glass.  I placed the newly fused paw on top of the new circle and placed them into the kiln.  After re-leveling the kiln from the last fusing, I quickly noticed the size difference between the two pieces I just put in.  The original fused piece shrunk significantly from the circle I created.   I had never used such thin glass before, I guess I should be getting a thicker piece out next time because my 6″ circle was more like 5″!

This morning I ran out to the trailer, having left it cookin’ away all night, to see if it was cool enough to open the kiln lid and take a look at the results.  It was still at about 450°.  So no peeking for me!  I’ve peeked before and nothing has ever happened, but why chance it?  They say you can’t open the lid until it hits 200°.

Aside from the paw I also snuck a few marbles in that I found and thought were super cool.  I plan on taking turning them into some fridge magnets.

I can’t wait till I arrive home again to see if I was successful or not!  I’m just hoping the paw fused well with the new clear disc and doesn’t look like 2 discs slapped together.  It shouldn’t, but I worry.

Once upon a time I made some paw print suncatchers.  At the time I did it strictly in a tiffany method, scoring glass for every little nook and cranny between paw print pieces.  It was a pain, but was pretty popular.  I ended up making several and then had to start turning down some requests because I just plain out got sick of making them.  Who wants to keep staring at the same thing and scoring the same pieces over and over again, right?

Well these days I have a kiln and decided to try and make one by fusing some glass.

This isn’t the whole piece, I still plan on soldering pieces around it.  However in creating this center piece I realized one of the dangers of working out of my trailer… it’s not very level.   I had taken the time to place the kiln, level it by adjusting the bricks under the kiln, but evidently it wasn’t as level as I thought.  That and the fact that the floor is wood and bends when you walk slightly isn’t helping

Here is the fused piece.  The image doesn’t really do the problem justice.  However if you look closely the left side isn’t very round.  I’m assuming the kiln is tilted to the right and the glass flowed slightly in that direction.  I plan on trying to level the kiln again, cutting another circle and fusing this piece on top of the circle and hopefully get a nice round piece.  The clear I used what pretty thin, so adding another thin shouldn’t make it too thick for my purposes.

Lesson learned on taking extra time leveling things out.  I still think it turned out super cute though.