Enamel samples- bloo

I did a series of blue enamel samples on scrap copper to test out colors for a piece idea I'm currently fooling around with (working title- artificial tears). I'm usually crap about testing things out well in advance to making a piece, so these little pieces of glass with the enamel number and color dutifully recorded in sharpie on the back are kind of a big deal for me.

Turquoise, 326

All of these are transparent, because I'm still experimenting to understand the properties of transparent enamel. My first piece using transparent enamel completely covered up the liver of sulfur etched text, and I am going to find out why. With SCIENCE.

Blue bluebell

I overfired this one deliberately, since it was starting to look clearer the longer I left it in the kiln. And I wound up with firescale in the middle (?!). MORE SCIENCE IS NECESSARY.

Cascade, 2510

This one was also overfired, resulting in the blackened edge. But it's also the prettiest out of all the samples.

Cadmium Blue, 321

This one was fired perfectly, so I had to crack the glass at one point so the others didn't get jealous. Also I wanted to see what happened.

SCIENCE!

Prong-tacular!

This was a quick test piece I did while avoiding my real project the other day. We learned how to set stones with bezels and prongs last week, and it piqued my interest in using prongs in one of my masks.

I'd like to use mirrors in place of eyes in my next piece (apparently all my work this term is going to be inescapable creepy). The idea bouncing around my head is to create elaborate housings for the mirrors using prongs to mimic and stylize eyes.

This is the back. I just used a scrap piece of copper I had lying around, so it already had some interesting negative space going on before I sawed out the prongs. I shaped it a little with the bend so that it would stand up on its own on my desk.

Prongtacular.