UPDATED! Polar Fusing - Glass Fusing - Microwave Kiln

Someone asked about polar fusing and I had a bunch of pics ready to write a blog post about it, so I got busy writing! I had no prior experience and have a ton of molds and had bought the Polar Fuse kits @ Hobby Lobby so I read some article and then dove in. This is what worked for me. It isn't difficult to do but I did it a little differently than many directions tell you. I started off by putting some purified water in the molds..I used some Martha Stewart molds I've been waiting for a chance to try. You place some of the powder in there (I cut the end off a straw and made a little shovel with it) on top of the water. After you get enough in there it settles...I used a small spoon to press it into the corners of the mold very hard so there would be no gaps or bubbles in the final product. They are silicone molds so you can press very hard...just try not to make it crack.

These pictured below have not been fired yet...just out of the freezer. I did wait a few times i tried this method for it to thaw out (and you must have them frozen very solid so don't listen to directions that tell you one hour in the freezer is sufficient!) but after a few times I just fused them right out of the freezer...I DID go very slowly in my microwave, starting at 10% power for 9 minutes, then 5 mins at 20%, then 3 minutes at 30%, 40%, 50%, and continued at 60% until they were completely (or mostly!) fused. I figured doing it that way would give it time to thaw out and for the minimal amount of water in it to dissipate. I used two different colors in these.

Here's a Martha Stewart (MS) flower from one of her molds. I put some mica powder on my finger and rubbed the high spots of it, which turned out to be a good thing to do!

Here is the flower after fusing. I had a little crack or something happen but the mica brought out the highlights on the flower. The bird, I am sorry to say, blew up in the kiln! I heard a "pwoof" and opened the kiln to find powder everywhere. I ended up scooping all the powder up and reusing it since it wasn't fused at all...:)

Here's the little owl and sealife. They weren't completely fused - hard to tell in the picture, but I didn't want them to melt too much so I stopped there. The owl will get darker once I add it to another pendant, for instance.

Here are the ones I fused next to their molds, so you can see how much they shrank. I have heard of polar fuses shrinking even more...I think the key is packing the powders into the molds well. The flower at the bottom needs to be fused more, which is why the color looks strange, but it was melting too much in the center so I stopped there. The MWK doesn't leave you a whole lot of control temperature wise!

Here's a few from a different mold - one of my favorites! I have used it a lot...the sun face on the right is in polymer clay...once again, you can see how much the glass shrinks with this technique. I dipped my finger in mica powder again for the moon on the left before I fused him. He melted a wee bit too much so I am glad I used the mica...it keeps their features a little bit even though the shape isn't perfect.

I ended up using the sealife pieces on a piece of dichroic that actually broke in the kiln....the figures hid the crack quite well when I fused it back together. :) You can see the seahorse and crab darkened somewhat on this second firing. The colors of the pendant remind me of the ocean and sand on the beach....I used the trick I saw elsewhere of using that flat bezel wire to make a bail for it. This one has found a good home!

UPDATED 7/25/15: Forgot to add this cautionary tale when I wrote this: I tried to do the same thing with another dichro pendant that broke, with some other polar fused shapes I had on hand from the same mold. I let it go just a few seconds too long and look what happened! :P Seconds count in a microwave kiln!

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