I went a little nuts with the fused glass nugget flowers! I made quite a few in the last few days! I made all types and all colors...I had quite a few nuggets leftover from when I was doing mosaics. The ones in the first picture are rather odd. They are the deep red nuggets that turn yellow after fusing. For some reason this particular method of putting them together rather reliably gave me the results below. The red stayed on the tips of the flower in the center, and some of it pooled in the low spots. And for some reason, the glass becomes cloudy in the center, while the petals remain clear. It gets a color almost like an egg yolk. You can see that in the flower to the right, too. They look beautiful in the sunlight, with the sun streaming through those red streaks! The little blue nugget on the left is rather funny. I was trying to make one of these red/yellow flowers with a blue nugget in the center. Apparently they didn't get along well! I picked the flower up from the kiln and all the petals fell off. Not broke off, fell off. Different COEs, apparently! :D Those little yellow chips still attached may come off, eventually, too! It just tickled me, and I thought it was cool how the blue melted into those points. Some of the flowers didn't fuse correctly but this was the only one that did that. I used green nuggets with the other colors with no apparent problems..
I like the way they look and thought they'd be cute as another windchime. This set sounds really pretty when they tinkle together...the glass has an entirely different sound from the stained glass ones I made recently. Yes, I went overboard on the pictures! I wanted you to see the variations in this though. I didn't use fishing line this time, just the clear tubing, because these are much lighter than the stained glass was.
I was thrilled to find those olive green nuggets (near the bottom) at the Dollar Tree! A color I didn't have! Some flowers are basic, some are kind of intricate. Some, I cut the beads in half and laid the cut side down, either in a circle or arranged around a center whole bead. Some of the halves I laid on their sides, as I did with the blue on near the center right on the above picture. Some got a little too melted and still came out looking pretty cool! I was calling them Blob flowers. :D Had to learn to drill a hole in those! Got to use my rotary tool to do it, and it was easier than I thought!
The photo below shows another "yellow" one that kept some of it's red coloring. You can see the green "leaves" near the bottom of most of the flowers.
As in the photo at the top, the red ones, besides turning yellow, also developed spots that were cloudy. This one developed it on one side, although the other style I made developed it in the center only. Odd idiosyncrasy of these red nuggets! This one is more melted on one side, meaning I had a hot spot in my microwave kiln. I learned to spin the top periodically while they are fusing. So I guess the cloudy area got more heated than the rest of it, hence the cloudiness. The ones with the center bead also got hotter in the center when they were fusing, and the center bead melted a bit more and acted like glue to fuse the less melted petals in place. But it's weird that little streak of red remained. I have several that lost all the red and were pure yellow.
I also wanted to point out this flower, below. This was actually the very first flower I fused! All I did was take five blue glass nuggets, lay them in a tight circle, and fuse them. After I started getting creative and making all the other types, this one looked a little boring to me! So I took a brush and did some brush embroidery on it with some white fabric paint...Should withstand the elements nicely. :) So you can jazz up any of your beads if you decide to try this technique!
I have a couple of more interesting projects to show you soon. One is a non-fusing fusing project! The other is an idea I got from Beads, Baubles & Jewels...with a little twist. :) Come back soon and read about them! Thanks for looking. and make sure to stop by my Pinterest page to see a lot more of my creations, and like my Facebook page!
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