Fused Glass Christmas Decorations

I always been drawn to coloured glass. I'm equally as happy looking at stained glass windows or glass bricks.

I took an evening class in 2005 and made this stained glass panel. It sits in my utility room window and I look at it every day. I had plans to make more panels. I still have my glass tools in a box in the garage. They've moved house with me five times since then.

I was delighted when my friend, Liz, asked me if I'd like to go to a fused glass workshop with her. We were going to make Christmas decorations and have a good old natter. What a treat.

Fused glass is nothing like stained glass and I didn't know what to expect. Basically you put pieces of coloured glass together and then place them in a kiln to fuse. Fusing melts the glass. You can make jewellery this way, as well as ornaments and Christmas decorations.

We started off by playing with the tubs of coloured glass and put together a few ideas.

It was difficult to picture the outcome and some of our ideas worked better than others.

This:

...becomes this:

And this:

...becomes this:

Even this:

...can become this:

...or this:

Here are a couple I wired up and hung on my Christmas tree:

The class we attended was run by the extremely talented Carla Sealey and cost us £35 each.

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