Snakes, Gin bottles, and a busy week!

New snakes with the eyes painted on, waiting for them to dry. The bright orange ones are a lovely soft glass called 'Clockwork' that I couldn't resist making some non-glow ones in too.

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Well it's hardly been a quiet week, amongst everything else I need to do I've been filling up the kiln to bursting point!

I got a quick photo of some of the latest batch, excuse the wobbly photo as I had to peak through the kiln door to get this shot and I don't think the auto focus liked it much!

One of these new things I've been making are some glow-in-the-dark glass snakes. I got a batch of unknown glass rods a little while ago, and they don't seem to be compatible with any glass that I have. Rather than waste it I found that the glow-in-the-park pigment that I have (non-toxic non-radioactive I am pleased to say!) mixes very well into it. I ended up doing a separate kiln load just for these. Normally I would dot on some eyes with a different colour, but since they might crack and fall off I've used some bake on olive green glass paint. They glow really well, the pigment remains much stronger than when I tried mixing it into boro, and work especially well under UV blacklights too!

Before having the eyes added, in normal daylight (the blue one and leaves are from the Bombay Saphirre bottle)

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Exposed to UV light, even with a little shade in daylight these little fellows really glow!

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At the same time I decided to make use of a Bombay Sapphire gin bottle that's been laying around the workshop for ages. (I didn't drink any of it either, the bottle came from a friend!) If you've not seen it, the bottle is made of a stunning pale blue glass. Almost all the lampworkers I know covet these bottles, and often make them into earrings and beads. However I didn't realise how tough the glass was!

I wrapped the bottle in a plastic bag, and gave it a sharp tap with a hammer. Nothing happened expect a shrill perfect note that left my ears ringing! A finger in one ear, I tried again a little harder. Same result, and when the ringing in my ear had stopped I tired again. After a few attempts, tinnitus, and the worry I was going to damage my hearing I stopped and wondered about putting a call out on he Frit Happens glass forum to see how other people tackled this indestructible bottle! I then thought of glass cutters, and put a pair on the opening of the bottle, and within seconds had turned it into nice tidy shards of glass!

It wasn't too bad to work, and made a few test leaves and a nice snake out of some of the shards, I'll certainly get around to melting down the rest of the bottle now. Ontop of all of this I've even been working on a new display stand. This one has solid shelves rather than the fiddly dowel ones that people had trouble putting boxes back onto, and also takes a lot more boxes. I'm still not 100% sure where I'll be, but I hope to be at large in London next weekend if all goes well. In the meantime I'll be filling and emptying the kiln as much as I can ready!

Glow in the Dark Adventures continued!

I've been trying to take some photos of some of the pendants I've made with glow in the dark and UV reactive materials, but it seems my camera didn't like it! While I was struggling to get the UV light in position to show maximum 'glow', the auto-focus and light sensors got rather confused and wandered around! I got better results with the 'firework' setting, but the camera then decided fireworks would be a long way away, so everything went blurry! Anyway, here are the pictures!
Before.....





and with the UV! I've tried to keep the effect subtle in this one. that way it doesn't glow during the day and only when it's hit by UV light so the wearer won't look like a glowing neon sign when walking around during the day!




Sory about the duff pictures on this one, the normal one is a bit washed out, but it shows how the pink UV reactive glass changes so dramatically under the blacklight. It's normally clear so I put some white underneath it to help reflect up more light and colour. When the light is more distant to the UV tube it looks much more pink, but my camera has made it look purple!


It's been great fun to play with, and I've been trying to keep the effects subtle so they don't come across like cheap halloween jewellery! I've already listed the first one on Etsy, but I need to find the best way of using the very rare pink one before I use more of that.

Artist Of The Month Award!

I was very surprised and delighted to be contacted a few weeks ago to be invited to accept a rather prestigious award! Frit Happens, a flameworkers forum I’m a member of, invited me to be July 2010 Artist of The Month! My first reaction was ‘are you sure!’ Looking back at some of the previous recipients has some amazing glass artists, so it’s quite an honour to be included in such fantastic company and to get such recognition from my peers. If you’d like to read the full article it can be found at http://www.frit-happens.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=21804.0

Meanwhile I’ve been prowling around the workshop in the dark! Not because I’ve had a power cut, but as I’ve been playing with black-lights and glass! Black-lights (for anyone who doesn’t know) are those deep blue UV fluorescent lights that are used alot in nightclubs. Various special plastics really react and glow vividly under their light, whites reflect them very intensely, and they show up any dust on you like your covered in flour! They are often used by stamp collectors to check imperfections and marks on stamps, when I was playing the light it even showed where I’d missed tiny bits when the walls were painted!

I’ve found that a few soft glasses do reflect back the UV, but I really wanted boro colours that worked with it. I wasn’t surprised to see that the purples became so much more intense, but they still didn’t have that glow. I had tried glow in the dark powders which can be mixed into glass, but had trouble with them burning out, but a few questions on the forum and more research and found that the glow-in-the-dark colours I had tried didn’t like the higher temperatures that boro needs to melt. I got a great ‘aqua’ colour and it works a treat! Not only does it literally ‘glow-in-the-dark’ but like most of these pigments it reacts really strongly to the UV and looks radioactive!

Whilst searching out boro colours I discovered one factory used to make a reactive colour that is normally clear and vivid pink when lit by blacklight. It hasn’t been made for 8 years, but I found someone who had just 7 sticks left! Sadly they said they had none of a related colour with the fabulous name of ‘Atomic Kumquat’ but when I got the rods noticed one was slightly lighter in colour. When I popped my blacklight on it glowed orange! Yes, I am now the owner of 6 rods of ‘Electric Flamingo’ and one precious rod of ‘Atomic Kumquat!’ I’m really going to be careful how I use these, although I must say I’m finding the effect from the glow powers much more effective. I’m still experimenting to get the most out of these, but I hope to have some made ‘club-wear’ pendants ready soon, along with some new versions of Gilson Opal pendants too! It’s exciting times here, and great to be working with such unusual materials, I hope to be able to share the fruits of this with you soon!