Glass Craft and Bead Expo, 2016

Free-flow fused glass dish/candle holder

The Glass Craft and Bead Expo is a glass conference held annually in Las Vegas. I've attended for several years now, and in late March once again made the trek south to take a couple of classes, meet with friends, and walk the exhibit hall to see the latest in fused glass products.

 Of particular note this year was a class that I took with Lisa Vogt. The class was called "Fireworks", and it was a full-day lecture covering a variety of topics. In Lisa's well-prepared slide shows she talked about design theory, creating fused glass sinks, painting with frit, a new technique she calls free flow, slumping, combining iron & glass for sculpture, glass casting, pot melts, embossing, and stenciling. Whew! It was a great class that left me full of ideas and with a long list of new things to try. Lisa is an excellent teacher, and I would love to make it to her studio some day.

Supplies, Glass Craft & Bead Expo

No Expo experience would be complete without picking up at least a few new supplies to experiment with. Among the things I purchased were a set of Colors for Earth paints, a glass slitter (a diamond dremel wheel for cutting through glass) and some Buttercut sandblast resist from His Glassworks, two packages of dichroic glass from CBS, two jars of Uroboros glass powder, Verre Eglomise supplies, and a renewal of my Bullseye Educational Video subscription (which came with a free sheet of their new petrified wood glass).

The wave appetizer mold makes a nice candleholder

All-in-all it was a fun and inspiring weekend. I've only just started working on my long list of ideas, but one of the things I have tried is Lisa's free flow technique. The candle holder at the top of this post and shown left is from my free flow firing. The piece from this was fused, cut on a tile saw, cold-worked, and then slumped in Creative Paradise's GM68 wave appetizer mold. There's still another piece of this free-flow glass which will eventually find its way into another fused glass design. While there are a few things I learned for the next time I fire a free-flow, I'm happy with the piece and excited about the potential for adding color, movement, and depth to my fused glass creations.

There are several other projects I want to try, and hopefully a blog post or two will result from my efforts. Until then, happy spring!

Verre Eglomise created
in class with Peggy Stewart

Dana

Resources: 

Lisa Vogt, website www.lisavogt.net
His Glassworks http://www.hisglassworks.com/
Colors for Earth paints http://colorsforearth.com/
Uroboros glass http://www.uroboros.com/
CBS glass http://www.cbs-dichroic.com/
Creative Paradise (GM68 mold) http://www.creativeparadiseglass.com/
Bullseye Educational Video, click the banner below: