Fusing Glass – make your own dichroic glass jewellery

Description

There is nothing better for overcoming the winter blues than making something amazing with your own hands in a relaxing gallery environment surrounded by beautiful art and craft objects. Learn to make your own jewellery with our Collectivist, Irina Stancheva of 523 Glass Studio.

Kilnformed or fused glass is an approach that enables individual pieces of glass to be transformed into a single object when heated to high temperature in a kiln. There are different kinds of fuseable glass, but dichroic glass, which incorporates colourful metal oxides is perfect for making unique sparkling jewellery.

In this evening workshop you will learn:

• the basics of fused glass
• how to cut glass and assemble simple geometrical shapes
• how to fuse glass in a microwave kiln
• how to attach jewellery findings to glass

At the end of the evening you should be able to take home a finished pendant (or two) and a pair of earrings of your own design. You can also follow a predesigned project.

The workshop is suitable for beginners and improvers as well as children above 14 if accompanied by a parent. Tools, materials and refreshments will be provided, but please bring an apron with you.
Places are limited to three participants.

What is dichroic glass?

Dichroic glass can be purchased from several suppliers and is made by placing glass in a vacuum chamber where quartz crystal and metal oxide are evaporised so that they adhere to the glass surface. This process is repeated many times to produce an extremely thin coating. In spite of the thinness of this coating, dichroic glass is brightly coloured and its reflected light colour is completely different from its colour in transmitted light. For example, the glass may appear red if you look through it or straight on, but brilliant yellow when you view it from an angle. These effects make dichroic glass perfect for making interesting jewellery.