Fusing with Dichroic Glass

My Mom and I have recently done a couple of glass fusing sessions together in her small workshop. My Mom fuses dichroic glass to create one-of-a-kind jewelery items such as pendants and earrings. She sells them at the summer art and craft show in Laguna Beach, called 'Art-A-Fair.'

I am lucky to have been taught the 'tricks of the trade' by someone who knows them so well.

Here I am cutting and arranging tiny pieces of glass on the carbon kiln base. Notice how safe I am with my safety glasses! Raytheon has trained me well!


My Mom lets me pilfer through her 'scraps' -- tiny off-cuts of dichroic glass that I sift through, cut and layer onto bases of solid color regular glass. The dichroic glass is the stuff that gleams in all sorts of fantastic colors. It is an expensive kind of glass so it is nice to get these bits for free.


Here you can see a better photo of my Mom layering the glass into tiny squares. When the glass melts, the squares turn into round pieces.


Once the kiln base has been covered with layered pieces of glass, the kiln lid is placed on top and the kiln is slowly brought to a temperature of about 1500 to 1600 degrees F. At this temperature, the glass melts and all the layers fuse together. At that point, you tilt the kiln base top up to release some heat and 'flash cool' the glass to about 1200 degrees. You have to wear really big, thick leather gloves to do this because the heat coming from the kiln is so intense. This stops the glass melting process in its tracks. Then you turn off the kiln and wait for the glass to slowly to cool to about 100 degrees (before you can remove it from the kiln).

This is one of my batches of finished glass pieces.


A lot of these I will be using to embed into and embellish jewelery that I will be making, therefore I have made a lot of them into tiny dots.

Now it is less than two weeks before I return to my home in New Zealand. I am excited to get back to my house, but sad to leave my 'other' home here in Orange County where my family resides. I am busy packing and tying up loose ends. It's been a great visit.