pendants attempt #3

I'm moving past coasters and trying my hand out at making a few simple pendants. My first 2 tries were complicated by the kiln breaking the circuit and using a mold that had too much kiln wash on it. I stopped at the glass store today and learned that the woman there never uses molds for her pendants. Yay! No mold = easier life. I just set these up in the kiln. I'll be able to see how they turned out when I wake up tomorrow.

	Top pendant = coe90: base layer-  dichroic with a rumpled texture top layer - clear Bottom pendant = coe96: base layer- light blue scrap glass top layer - part of previously fused iridized blue glass with clear. Two corners of this have the rounded Edited to add: I didn't take pictures of these results but the dichroic one turned out awesome, though less black then in the original glass. The only thing I might change would be to make the top layer slightly larger. It was pretty enough that I gave it away as a gift before having a chance to take a picture. The iridized, however, turned out like a big blue blob. Although placing the iridized glass on top of a light layer brought out the colors, fusing them together made the iridized bits invisible. I tossed that in the mistakes pile, possibly to be incorporated into some other project eventually.
	Top pendant = coe90: base layer-  dichroic red/grey top layer - clear Bottom pendant = coe90: base layer-  dichroic lizard print, purple striker glass top layer - clear Edited to add: The top pendant came out great, though more green/yellow and less red than I would have guessed. I also would have given it a slightly bigger top layer if I had it to do again. This one is also already given away as a gift. The bottom pendant had a few issues, to be discussed resolved in future fires. I knew that the blue glass would turn more purple upon being fired (it was marked as glass that would strike this way when I bought it). But, as you can see in later posts, it came out so dark a purple that it effectively looks to be black. As with the other dichroic glass, a lot of the black came out of the glass. The largest issue is that the clear piece on top is smaller than the bottom pieces and the grinded edge of the clear showed up as a cloudy circle around the top of the fired piece.
	This has been fused twice using the mold but has a bumpy texture from the uneven kiln wash. I'm hoping that this third firing outside of the mold will give it a nice clean, shiny polish. Edited to add: I had forgotten about the rule that fused glass likes to be about 1/4" thick. Inside of the mold, I could add multiple layers to make a deeper pendant. Not constrained my a mold, this turned out cool but ginormous. It could make a really big pendant but I suspect I'll use it for something else one day. Josh suggested using it as a garden marker, which I really like. It's tossed in the mistakes pile, perhaps to be revisited someday.

For these, I used the same firing schedule as before:

Starting Temp	Ending Temp	Rate Per Hour	Minutes to Hold
Room temp	1100	300	0
1100	1240	150	30
1240	1480	max	10
1480	900	150	45

Lessons learned:

• Dichroic glass is very pretty, and loses a lot of the black bottom layer when fired. 
• Iridized glass should be the bottom layer, to maintain it's shimmer. A follow up conversation with Susan suggests that the iridized layer would burn off if placed on the top layer of a piece (turned outside, I think). 
• A clear top layer needs to be a bit larger than the bottom layer to avoid having a cloudy ring from the grinded edge
• Remember that glass likes to be too layers thick
• Take pictures before you give things away. :)