Fusing digital ceramic decals to glass, attempt #1

I was just chastised by my glass shop owner for not keeping better notes when I fuse glass. I've got lots to catch up on but here's a quick post to record the details for a test I just ran before I forget.

I love the look of decals fused to glass and have had a little success selling pendants with this method in my etsy shop - Artful Excursions. I wanted to make custom decals and, from what I can tell,  there are three methods for doing that - printing your own decals on a laser printer (yielding sepia tones that I don't like), having silk-screened decals printed for you (I'm sure they'll look good but they're very expensive), or having digital ceramic decals printed for you. I just finished firing a test run with a set of custom digital ceramic decals from Fotoceramic.com.


The price was pretty awesome ($20 including shipping from UK to the US for all that I could fit on a 10x16" sheet, it turns out that I could fit quite a bit). Their sales staff was very helpful in answering questions and suggested that I order just one sheet in order to see if I liked the results. They said that it was possible to put one of two cover coats on the decals, one that would require firing at a slumping temperature and one that would require firing at a lower temperature, but they suggested that I go for the covercoat that would require slumping.

My results are somewhat mixed. From a distance, especially on a light colored glass, the decals look really good. They're a bit more of a dark grey than the true black I was going for, but the image transferred flawlessly without bubbles and without being burned off. That said, I don't know if I'd order these again. The black is not truly opaque like silk-screened would be and, on medium toned glass, that makes it harder to see. Also, the mass produced enamel decals that I've used in the past are printed on a background that completely burns off during firing, leaving just the enamel image. You have to look closely, at an angle to see it but, when you do so, you can definitely see the edge line from the background paper.

I think the results are good enough to sell, especially on light colored glass, but I'll keep searching for a different method of getting images on glass. (With one caveat - I have an email in to the staff at fotoceramic asking whether the opacity and background paper issues are things that can be solved with a different firing schedule. I suspect they aren't but I'll know more soon.)

Etsy!

I'm branching out to try selling on etsy! I have no idea how well this will go but I've always wanted to be able to sell just enough of what I create to pay for materials to make more pretty things. So... the etsy shop is officially open with two pendants that I created recently using sealife enamel decals. More later..

http://www.etsy.com/people/joycical

That shop and glass, in general, will be the only place where I use my husband's last name and go by Joyce Clew. In general, I have philosophical issues with taking a husband's last name if you're not planning on having children. That said, I want for the google results for my real name to be limited to my professional side so I'll have a bit of a split personality and use his last name form my artistic side.

I put two pendants up for sale. The first has an enamel jellyfish silhouette.

The second pendant is the first thing that I've created without myself or a specific gift recipient in mind. I'm not sure I would wear a mermaid pendant myself because it seems a bit young for me. But, I think it might be very fun for someone younger.

All work and no play makes Joyce a dull girl

I've been working a ton lately and not had much time to play with glass. I made up for it last weekend though by finally tackling a project that I've been playing since I bought a glass top table for my patio a year ago. I set up some pavers, chairs, and plants to try to make a little zen garden area in my backyard recently and I put together this glass mosaic koi pond table to fit the theme. This is the first time that I've made the pattern myself - drawing it by hand and scanning it into the computer to make multiple copies.

I'm particularly excited that the mosaic is on top of a clear glass base. I can put a light under it and really highlight the glass. I don't imagine I'll do it often but it would be cool to do for parties. 

The next project to tackle is to master adobe illustrator so I can more easily put together patterns. Fun fun.

The process of elimination

I'll looked through Warm Glass and discovered that there are three potential reasons for the turtle cracking.

• I might have cooled the glass too quickly. My one-size fits all firing schedule was based on using Bullseye glass, which should be annealed at 900 degrees. Spectrum should, instead, be annealed around 960.
• I might have warmed the glass up too quickly. That's less likely but it's easy to slow it down, just in case.
• The glass might not be compatible. That's completely possible, given that Susan helped me guess on the manufacturer for some of the glass. 

So I've changed the firing schedule to the following, and crossed my fingers.

Starting Temp	Ending Temp	Rate Per Hour	Minutes to Hold
Room temp	1100	250	0
1100	1240	150	30
1240	1480	max	10
1480	960	150	60

Grrrrr..... stop cracking!

I've done a few fires of the same pieces, repeatedly, over the last few days. Up until now, I've been trying to keep my experimenting relatively simple with small pieces (pendants and coasters) made up entirely of Bullseye (COE 90) or Spectrum (COE 96 - though not all "tested compatible") glass.

But I had two nephews and a niece in town last week and the two older kids wanted to make something out of glass. One of these includes a turtle piece that's a bit bigger and more complex design than I've fused before which means (1) more potential for problems and (2) the less patience I have to pull the final result out of the kiln and play with it (significantly increasing the odds of problems).

But first, a recap. The firing schedule I've been using over and over is the same one that Warm Glass recommends for a basic 2 layer coaster project. I know that the best firing schedule depends on a ton of different factors but I haven't learned what those factors are yet so I've stuck with what has worked.

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

Fire #1

	Here's the turtle that my nephew Michael helped to design and make. Bottom layer - clear COE 96 glass Top layer - small pieces of Spectrum glass that are, hopefully, all COE 96. I was too worn out to make the glass fit together perfectly and was interested in how the spaces would look in the final piece. (I like to justify my laziness as an aesthetic choice.)
	I also cut apart the two fused pendants and put them back in the kiln.
	And there was room left for one of the coasters.  I did nothing to change the shape of the pieces. I wanted to see what would happen/if it was necessary.
	Here's the turtle, after kiln firing. Because the small pieces were on top, when they became liquid, they oozed out enough to fill in most of the spaces. Unfortunately, I was so excited about the product that I took it out of the kiln before it was back to room temperature and, worse, washed off the piece to look at it more closely. A nice big cracked quickly made it's way across the turtle's head.
	One of the pendants looks like without my reshaping the glass but the coaster has an extra bump now because of the extra glass in that corner.
	The other pendant is also not circular any longer, because of the extra bit from being accidentally fused to its neighbor.

Fire #2

	I used the grinder to take the edges off of the pendant and coaster from the last round. I also added a glass bail with a little fiber paper to keep it open. My first time using these but I'm optimistic.
	And I added the turtle back in. I wasn't sure that just sticking the pieces of glass next to each other would work to make everything fuse back together so I added a strip of clear glass on top of the break, to increase the odds of it fusing well together.

Unfortunately, at the end of fire #2, the turtle managed to crack even more quickly than the last time. I left it in the kiln alone until it was at 117 degrees (I've never been known for my patience) and then set it down and left it alone for an hour. By the time I came back, there were multiple small breaks. I suspect that I'm going to have to venture outside of my one size fits all firing schedule, to slow down the heating up and/or cooling down of the kiln. At minimum, I'm going to do a bit more research before firing #3!

At least the glass bail attached really nicely:

Lessons learned:

• Small glass on the top layer spreads a bit and can fill in empty spaces
• it sucks to find a turtle that is so pretty but refuses to remain it one piece
• It's time to learn more about different firing schedules.
• The glass bails work really well!

A few more steps along the learning curve

I had a chance to throw a few more things in the kiln last week and learn a bit more:

	One piece is from the last firing. Notice how dark the purple the blue became. It still looks cool, but I expected it to be a bit lighter. Also, there was a faint white-ish circle around the edge - a consequence of a too small clear glass top layer. I talked to my local guru - Susan from Glass by Susan. Following her advice, I used the grinder to take the current cloudy circle off, then used a new finer grinder bit to take away the rough marks made by the normal grinder bit.
	I also recently ordered some glass paints and a few decals for pendants. I created simple square, triangular, and oval patterns and chose simple colors that would serve as hopefully nice backgrounds for the details from paint and decals. To make sure I didn't run into the same ghosted edge from the clear top layer, each of the pendants have a second layer (clear on top or, for one, purple on bottom) that are about 1/4 inch larger on all sides than the main piece.
	Finally, I tossed in two coasters using a simple design with more transparent glass than I used on the earlier coasters.

I'm definitely getting closer to pieces that I'm really happy with. But, I made a major error in this firing with spacing. I knew that the glass would shrink a little with firing but didn't factor in its expansion, before contraction, during the firing. So, several of my single pieces became double pieces.

	The ghosted circle disappeared from the purple/dichroic pendant perfectly, however that pendant fused together with the square pendant to the side of it. I'll need to cut them apart, grind, and refire. (Susan's line "never refuse to re-fuse" is surprisingly catchy.) The orange and blue/purple pendants turned out pretty close to perfect, however. They're ready for my first attempts at painting and decal details. More on that in the next few weeks.
	I think the 1/4" border all around is a bit too large for the pendants. It looks cool when the background is a color but the light blue pendant shows how it's a bit too much, relative to what I like, when the larger piece is clear. The bottom piece is a portion of a really pretty square fired by one of Susan's friends. The dichroic clear fused with blue was so pretty that I wanted to own it, before I even owned a kiln and before I had any idea what I could do with it. On the last fire, all of the iridized detail was lost once fused with a background color. Following Susan's advice, for this firing, I stuck with clear and the iridized detail is still visible. That one will soon have a cool turtle decal, once I have a few more things ready. The decals will only work with a lower temperature (~1400 degrees) so all fusing has to be done before I try that.
	Lastly, the coasters. I actually really love how the more transparent glass looks on the coasters, enough that I want to make much more. However, these too were placed too closely together, giving the expansion of the glass. On the right, bottom, there also looks too be evidence that the 1/4" glass border is larger than I want. I'll cut them apart, cut off the extra clear, grind, and try to perfect them the next time I fire up the kiln.

All that will probably have to wait for a week or so. One of my sisters has been visiting with her children and that's kept me far too busy to play with the kiln (or, before now, to catch up on notes from the last firing). I'm headed to Jacksonville to hang out with them more tomorrow and all playing with glass will have to be put on hold for a bit.

Lessons learned: 

• Don't place items too close together in the kiln!
• 1/4" border is probably a little too big for clear, but looks neat as a frame.

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. :)