Just beachy

I've used beach glass several times before I took Barbara Becker Simon's class.

My first beach glass piece was done early on and incorporated a piece of beach "ceramic" that my husband found. I followed Tim McCreight's directions in one of his early books and carved a plaster piece to match the size and shape of the glass. (That was not fun!) Then I made the backing and a bezel out of the lump clay. Since the directions did not specify how thick to make the bezel I think I over did it. After firing the plaster stand-in inside the bezel, chopping the wet plaster out (that was not fun either) and trying for hours to get the too thick bezel bent over the piece, it was done. It wasn't as level as I thought it should be (I do think this was mentioned in an earlier post) and I just couldn't leave well enough alone. After two taps with the hammer the third was the charm; the piece broke. It's not really that visible and it just makes it look like an antique.

The second attempt at working with beach glass came after reading a book by Louise Duhammel (again not sure this is right as I'm not at home to check.) She rolled coils of clay and wrapped them around a piece of beach glass. So, I tried her method. The beach glass was a beautiful turquoise color when it went in the kiln and was an olive green when it came out. It was not a bad color, but I really liked the turquoise.

My last attempt was following the presentation by Simon on how to combine metal clay and glass. This time I took a very ordinary piece of frosted white beach glass (yes I know, all beach glass is frosted) just to see what would happen. I loved the results. Barbara said the silver can affect the color of the glass. It can turn it amber. (So I guess turquoise and amber make olive.)

The white glass turned totally amber and also cleared up. I fired at 1470 degrees for 45 minutes and took an hour to ramp up to that temperature. And as with other glass, when the firing was done, I opened the kiln door until the temperature got below 1000 degrees and then shut the door. (Had to do this about five times to get the temperature to stay below 1000.) Once the temperature got below 300 I was able to open the door, finish cooling the pieces so I could see what happened. We also learned that glass and metal clay will fuse together at 1470, so I did not need to incorporate any kind of mechanical hold to hold the glass in place. This piece was also fired on a thin sheet of paper made for firing glass. Didn't use it on the turquoise piece. I really liked the way this piece turned out. It doesn't have a patina on it yet, but I do think a patina would look good on it. (Will show it again when it does.)

For common types of beach glass, this is a viable method of design. If I had a unique piece of beach glass that I did not want to change the color, there are other methods of design that would be better. I've got a few of those pieces and when I try the other methods I'll be sure to share.