How beautiful are these? I have my very talented friend Stevie Davies to thank for letting me and my mum loose In her workshop and showing us how to create these. Stevie is a very talented fused glass artist in Derby and you can find out more about her work on her website here (and her work is much prettier than these samples made by myself and my mum). She also teaches workshops around the East Midlands and I would definitely recommend, she's a brilliant teacher.
My mum has always been drawn to fused glass Christmas decorations so for a long time I have been meaning to sort a time for us to go and do this as a surprise for her. I think she was pleased and I think her decorations are amazing. I'm not going to get technical and pretend I know what I'm talking about, I will leave that to the experts, but here is a brief description of what we made. The first image is a fused glass tree my mum made which is mounted onto a clear glass candle holder. The tree is made of two layers of clear glass with some thin green coloured glass in between the layers and the snow effect added To the top to give a 3D effect. Her second piece, the star, is made of 5 triangle pieces which have been overlapped when fired to create the shape. These are only one layer of glass and my mum has added tiny pieces of coloured glass to the top which has melted and fused together and created this lovely mottled star decoration. I think she has a natural flair for this don't you!
I made three pieces, the first tree has had some small chunks of glass added in between layers to make the tree bauble effect and a small wire star on the top which has fused into the glass to make the hanging which I really like. The second tree was made using very thin rods of glass cut and layered into the tree shape on top of another piece of clear glass. I love the bumpy feeling of this one and the colours! Not very festive, but I absolutely love this colour combo.
Finally I managed to make my own star which has small thin pieces of coloured glass on top to create the colours and graduates from purple through blue to white snowy tips.
I really enjoyed doing this, it was really interesting to learn how the glass works with each other in order to create the different finishes and this is something completely different to what I make normally. If you have never tried doing fused glass I really recommend finding a workshop near you (or booking one with Stevie) as its loads of fun and really easy to make something truly beautiful. You don't have to just make decorations for Christmas but for all year round, they would look lovely hanging in a window where the light can really show them off.
Do you have a favourite type of hand made decoration, or make any of your own? I'm always looking for new ideas to try and inspiration so let me know.
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