Vodka bottle

Phil and I went to a major liquor store today and asked if they had any empty wine bottles. They gave us a case of empties. (Why would a liquor store have empty wine bottles???) On the way out of the store I spied a beautiful cobalt blue bottle of vodka and bought it--for the bottle. Since we don't drink vodka, at our request the store clerk poured the vodka into an empty water jug. I think I now understand why there were empty wine bottles at the liquor store.  


Below are some of the wine bottles I've slumped. I painted snowflakes on a couple of them. 

The glass you use to paint on makes a huge difference.

This is the unfired piece--skull painted with Reusche paint on the uncoated side of a 96 COC 4"x4" piece of dichroic glass.  

Here is the fired (fused) piece, with little or no deterioration in the painted surface. The painted surface was placed on a larger 96 COE piece of white iridescent glass. The firing schedule was for fusing. 

My near sister, Diane, had her first design project choosing the layout for the background glass. She and I spent some time Saturday playing with dichro squiggles, dichro stringers and 96 COE chips.  We were looking for a design that would continue the electrified look beyond the dichroic square. Diane chose the squiggles.

Below is the slumped dish, back lit.  I learned an important lesson with this piece. Dichroic glass does not slump well.  It loses its smoothness.

 

It feels rough to the touch; gritty in fact, and any image clarity is hidden behind the crazing. The white iridescent glass is smooth on the inside of the bowl.

The whole object shrunk quite a bit, to nearly three fourths the size of the mold. 

I spent quite a bit of time and effort creating this piece and I learned a lot in the process. Even without house guests it took me two days to create the painting, a half day to fuse the painting onto the glass and a half day to slump it.