Saturday, August 29, 2009

Dichroic Glass Jewelry, the hard way!

I've been asked Many times "How do you make your Dichroic Glass Pendants?" Here are the steps in the process. I don't take any shortcuts, I'm going for a quality product, something very special.
This is the dichroic glass before it is cut:
A glass cutter is used to cut the pieces. 2 or 3 layers of glass for each pendant.

Dichroic glass looks one color when viewed from the top, the color from a 45 degree angle will look closer to the color it will turn out after firing.




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Here are the layers stacked up
A small engraving tool is used for removing some of the Dichroic coating thus creating the designs, this part takes some time and design skills.



Handmade silver bails are made:


All the pieces ready for final careful cleaning with alcohol.

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Stacked and ready to fire on kiln shelf above and after 1 1/2 hour firing to just under 1500' F below:


The fired pieces, its very hard to get a good picture of dichroic glass as its colors change when viewed from slightly different angles. I am happy with the way these turned out although surprised the background color is more gold than red! The back sides ready for signing. The long pendant is now available at The Art Glass Guild, Studio 25, Spanish Village, San Diego. http://www.agasc.org/index.php?page=44

Contact me if you are interested in a tiny work of art!

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