Seattle Snow

We don't have quite any of the snow they are predicting just yet, but today shortly after lunch we had a brief snow shower that had people leaving work in droves, and the news was reporting that the local authorities had urged everyone to get home early. I left at my regular time, on perfectly clean roads, with no scraping of the windows as the snow had already melted, and managed to get home quicker than normal, so the advisory must have worked, since traffic seemed light.

This is one of the final pieces I did in my glass fusing class, mixing glass painting, copper inclusions, and good old fashioned slumping. It is sort of a companion piece to the other square dish, but with brighter colors. I think it turned out well, and I was much happier with the glass painting after the project was done than with the initial view of what I had painted. Crudely painted flowers in my normal sketch/doodle style seem to look much better under glass, as the painting is now fused between two layers. I may play with glass paint a bit more, but don't think it will be in any curriculum until Fusing 2, which is a Spring class, but one I am already signed up for. I have also been forewarned that there will be more circles too.

The class I started last night is a pattern bar class, and there will be a lull in new work to post pictures of since it is a bit more process intensive than this class. Last night we applied kiln wash to kiln furniture, a process that should keep the bars from sticking to the furniture, and built our initial pattern bars. The piece I am envisioning will combine my two pattern bars with two of the coasters I made to build a larger piece where each quadrant will be different, though two will be very similar in their pattern. I can't say whether it will work and be pretty or not, but it gives me a direction right now, and gives me a good excuse to play with green and orange glass.