Poor Man's Etching (Glass Fusing & Mica Powders)

Warning: This post has a TON of photos! :) Not too long ago, I found out you could use Versamark, rubber stamps and mica powders with fused glass in my microwave kiln (mwk)...AKA "Poor man's etching", I fell in love with the technique and have used it extensively over the last couple of weeks. I got a deal on one of my FB groups to buy/sell glass and other fusing stuff and got three pounds of black 96 COE scrap very cheap. It is my ONLY 96 COE glass so I haven't been able to use it with any of my other glass....so I got stamping to jazz it up a bit! I had recently purchased some tree stamps and loved the way they look as a pendant. The tree below was done with three different colors of mica powder - blue, pink and green. I found the coolest bail for it, that looks like a tree, too. :)

Back of tree pendant with tree bail.

Then on one of my other FB fused glass groups, a gentleman made the most amazing fused glass panel by etching black backed dichroic with a rotary tool, so I decided to give it a try.  I've also been fascinated by the MUD technique by Margot Clark (link leads to her Pinterest board, some lovely examples of her work!), and have been trying to emulate it with other methods and tried etching a flower into the blue pendant pictured below. It came out a little dark but is a gorgeous color blue!

Then I got inspired and tried making a flag for someone special using a red background and white premade stringers with some dichroic. It came out really cute!

Another tree. This pendant showed me that I could add the mica on the firepolish firing. I wasn't happy with the red pendant - an attempt at the "bubble technique" taught by Tanya Veit...if you don't know who she is, go watch some of her Youtube videos on glass fusing, immediately! She is so talented and teaches such cool stuff. Anyway, I got some kind of devit or something in this and wasn't happy with it. 

Bubble Pendant before - showing devit?

I stamped it with the first tree stamp I had and still wasn't satisfied...(the one on the right in the photo has musical notes behind the trees...it's called Tree Song.)

Then I got a new tree stamp and tried restamping it and fire polishing it again. Surprisingly, it took! I'm very happy with this one. I have since learned that I could have ground off the original tree that I stamped at first and then restamped, but fortunately the first stamp doesn't show through this tree. 

More stamped pendants...this one with dichro.

This is more of my 96 COE glass.

Then I got on a sailboat kick. Don't ask me why. :) 

This one, I etched some birds flying into the sun. Somehow I got fish flying over the sun, as well. :)

This one is kind of plain but its the only one I used a pinch bail on....

 Then I pulled out my Asian stamps. Really happy with this one. :)

This one came out okay too. :)

 I got some cool tiny stamps of deer to go with the trees and got inspired with talk of landscape canes on both my polymer clay and glass groups, recently, so I made some tiny landscapes.  These deer are supposed to be standing by the dichroic water, at any rate. :)

This one was more of an Alpine feel but I wasnt' entirely happy with the result, so I restamped it with the light pink mica. Can you see the tiny millefiore flowers at the bottom? :)

Another sort of Alpine setting, with a sunset. :)

Deer at night. :D Found this Pearl Ex mica powder called Citrine that is so pretty fired! I think the Pearl Ex shows up better than the Perfect Pearls I've been using. I would love to find some black mica....I think that is next on my to-do list! If anyone knows any good suppliers, let me know in the comments!

More deer with a dichro moon. There is a tree in the background, as well. "Ghost Tree".

 I wouldn't say I got carried away making these stamped deer/moon landscapes, but....

Okay, I did. :D This is still just SOME of them...lol.

  

Then I found out about something called Sgraffito. (See why I love that Citrine? Looks like real gold, even fired on the bottom of a piece!) Sgraffito is scratching into a surface to reveal the color below. So, I covered the bottom glass with Versamark, dusted with Citrine, and scratched the name into it.

Tried doing it with this one. Not that great but it was my first one! :)

I then figured out I could combine the sgraffito with my stamps to make them look more detailed...or fix them if they didn't stamp perfectly...I added some detail to the palm tree and scratched waves into my "beach" background...

So, I have to finish this here....been trying to for a while now but I keep making more I want to put in this post!  I hope I've given you some ideas and some inspiration! And if you would like to purchase anything you see on my page, contact me! 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, Karmic Confetti!