Merry Christmas! New Fused Glass Ornaments

Merry Christmas! By now, I'm sure those who of you who put up a Christmas tree already have it decorated - mine's been up since just after Thanksgiving.  But, in the spirit of the holiday, I just wanted to share with you some of the new fused glass Christmas ornaments that I made this year.

Two of the new ornaments involve wire wrapping.  The first is a take off on my wire-wrapped Christmas tree pendants.

The base is made from bits of green glass and the balls are made from pieces of glass rod that have been fired at a high temperature to become round.  I played around with the wire wrapping a bit to get a design that I liked -- keeping in mind that the challenge with wire wrapping glass is how to get the wire to stay firmly in place.  Unlike the pendant, which has grooves around the outside, the ornament uses two holes at the top and the bottom to anchor the wire, while the wire embellishes the ornament as garland and decor at the top and bottom.

The next set of ornaments are two different versions of hearts - one wire wrapped and the other not.  Like with the tree, I needed to play around with the wire-wrapping of the curved heart.  I found that the hole at the top did the trick to help anchor the wire in place.  The base of the speckled heart is simply clear glass that's been sprinkled with red, pink and white frit to create a marbled effect.  This also helps keep the glass light enough to hang on a Christmas tree.

The second heart is also created to be light, using just a single strip of clear thin glass to fused the three different colors (red transparent, red opaque and red/green fracture streamer) together.

I've been making ornaments since 2008 and try to add a few new ones every year.  This year, I found that I have nearly one ornament for every branch (16) of my wire Christmas tree, even though I retired some of the ornaments over the year!  Looking forward to figuring out what the new ones will be for next year.  In the meantime, I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

Fused Glass Holiday Ornaments & Decorations

Happy Holidays from 360 Fusion!

Every season I make a new type of ornament and expand my holiday coaster selection.  Here's my new ornament for this year:

This wreath is made from crushed glass frit that I made myself.  I used a combination of opaque and transparent glass and formed the shape using a round cookie cutter and then pushed the glass around a bit to fill in the gaps.  The red balls are made from coarse red frit that's been fired at 1500 degrees.  The ornament is tack fused at 1350 degrees with a round wired loop that used for the hanger.  For my first attempt, I thought I could drill a hole but the fragility of the tack fused, crushed glass wouldn't withstand the pressure of the drill.  I'm happy with how this turned out as the texture of the glass gives the wreath more dimension.

Last year I made these fused glass coasters in red (which is still my favorite), but this year I expanded the color spectrum to include an olive and Christmas green.  The clear glass "fracture & streamer" glass already included red and green but I augmented the glass with red and green confetti (thin glass chards) to add more color.  It turns out that these colors were just as popular as the red one.

As Christmas is just around the corner, I wanted to wish you and your family a very blessed and joyous holiday.

Making Merry with Fused Glass Holiday Pendants

With the official start of the Christmas season starting on Friday, I thought I would share some the new pendants I made for the holiday season.  The first are variations of my window pendants that include bits of nipped glass or glass chards and holiday fracture/streamer glass.

When I purchased the fracture/streamer glass, I noticed that there were bits that didn't include enough green or red, so I augmented the glass with bits of red and green glass confetti or chards.  The pendants with the fracture streamer are on the right.

The second style of pendants are a variation on my wire wrapped heart pendant, adapted for Christmas of course!

I first make frit balls out of red glass as the ornaments.  Next I tack fuse them to the base glass before I grind a channel to hold the wire and refire them to polish the glass.  Then I wire wrap the pendant and finish by adding a red Swarovski crystal to the bottom and silver star to the top.  The above picture is of my prototype, which didn't include the star as I was still waiting for them to arrive.

While I don't have any holiday sweaters, I do have a green sweater and a red cardigan that I wear during the holidays.  I'm looking forward to adding the pendants for a more festive appearance.

My husband especially likes the Christmas trees.  Let me know what you think.  And, happy holidays!

Gearing Up for the Holidays with Fused Glass Ornaments

Every year, it seems that Christmas comes earlier and earlier. Well, if you're making items for the holidays, then it comes even sooner as you need time to make everything. For me, it's also a nice change to what I've been making this year. I've gotten to experiment with a few new designs and learned some things in the process.

New for 2011 will be a different snowflake design and poinsettia ornaments. I've been making snowflakes since 2008 and they've been fairly popular. Although each snowflake is fairly labor intensive with 17-18 individual pieces, I enjoy making them as I accumulate a lot of clear glass over the year and this is a great way to use up some of the excess (although I really haven't made too much of a dent). I start with drawing out several design options on paper and then pick the one I like best to make. As the snowflakes are rather detailed, drawing out designs tend to work better than coming up with something in my head. However, what I learned is that what may work on paper may not work in reality. Here's my first stab at a snowflake based on my design.

Not bad, but not quite at the same level as my original snowflake design and not quite the same look fired as pre-fired. Viewing the finished snowflake, I see that the design was not as tight as I would have liked and left room for error. So, I continued to play around with the design and came up with a new one that I like much better. What do you think?

My poinsettia ornaments were really an inspiration from one of my customers who commented that she could wear one of my red flower pins like a poinsettia. I was able to use some of the frit I had made too for the center.

These two new ornaments will be added to my existing ones: the original snowflake design and angels. I have a love-hate relationship with my angels. I love how cute they are when they're finished but the process of making them is laborious (lots of circle cutting, grozing or trimming the circles and then grinding or smoothing the circles) and precise (cutting and placing the stringer and glass chards for the face). While I made enough for this year, we'll see how I feel next year...

These ornaments are fresh out of the kiln, with the last load going in today. I have yet to drill the holes and attach the hanging ribbon but wanted to share with you what I've been doing the past two weeks. Hopefully they will be up on Etsy in the next week or so.