Dichroic Glass Sterling Silver Adjustable Rings

I finished making my second Dichroic glass ring today. I bought the sterling silver adjustable ring blanks and made the Dichroic glass piece which has been glued on with high strength epoxy jewellers glue.
The rings are also hallmarked 925 silver. I like the way the rings wrap around the finger and adjust at the front. It took me a while to find a suitable ring blank. I bought 10 of these to begin with, so I have some more to make yet.
I have recently done some fire polishing with some pendants I made a while ago, and they have come up so shiny and sparkly. I read that fire polishing will improve the finish look, and it really does. I was really pleased after opening the kiln on my first fire polish and seeing loads of little dichroic glass pieces shining straight up at you : - )
I've had a couple of nice suprises when opening the kiln door. (I've also had a couple of bad suprises too!! lol) However.. when a piece has gone wrong or not as expected, I have sometimes been able to adapt it into another piece.. the results can be quite pleasing.
I have enquired into a couple more craft fairs in summertime. Will post venues & dates as soon as I have more info.

Wire Wrapped Jewellery

I found some wire laying around my workshop and decided to try some wire wrapping on my jewellery. I had just made a couple of small triangle dichroic pendants and thought these would be perfect to use. I had picked up a few techniques from reading about wire wrapping on the internet, and then came up with my own design for the pendant pictured above. I think the effect of wire wrapping adds that extra special touch.
This was one of my favorite pieces which I recently sold from my ebay shop.

Brown & pink glass bangles

I've just finished my first brown & pink glass bangles which I am delighted with. The pink glass was a complete suprise for me. It's the first time I've bought this shade of pink bullseye glass and when it arrived it was a very pale transparent pink - not what I had expected. However, after firing, the glass turned an opaque dusky pink which I was really pleased with.
I was inspired to make brown bangles when I noticed I had some bright orange 1mm glass stringers. I thought that the orange and brown would look very retro together. I am going to list these bangles in my ebay shop, but am also going to be making some more to take to the craft fair in February. (Sunday 24th Feb '08 at the Whitworth Centre, Matlock. 10am-4pm)

I have 2 new bangles ready to shape. I have been trying out some new designs on these bangles, so will post a pic when they're done. In the meantime, I need to go and prepare some more things to put in the kiln this evening.

Glass Bangles

My new bangle making kit arrived last week, which I just couldn't wait to test out. They recommend you use scrap glass for your first bangle to test out the size. So for my first bangle I simply placed three 1mm stringers on two layers of of 2mm black glass. It took a couple of goes in the kiln to get the finished bangle, which I was extremely pleased with.

I added a square swirly pattern to my second bangle, but unfortunately you cannot see the full pattern in the picture. I am going to make a few more of these bangles to take to my next craft fair in February.

Craft Fair in February 2008

I've booked a stall at a Craft Fair in February. It's 1 week before Mother's Day, so I hope it will be busy. It's at The Whitworth Centre in Matlock, Derbyshire on Sunday 24th February. I am working on some new glass bracelets and bangles which should be ready to take to the fair. I will be listing some of the bracelets in my Ebay Shop shortly if anyone fancies a look. (There's a link to my Ebay Shop on the right hand side)

Welcome to Chloe's Designs

Hi,
This is my first blog ever and I hope there will be many more to follow!!
A couple of years ago I decided to set up an Ebay Shop selling my own artwork. This originally came about through my love of Volkswagen Camper vans and Beetles. A couple of years ago we drove our Camper van from Nottingham to Rome and along the way we got some great pictures. I wanted to jazz up my photos, so I learned how to use Corel Paint Shop Pro. I had hours of fun just re-creating the same photograph with different coloured camper vans. I began to experiment with different techniques and it wasn't long before I had a pretty cool collection of pictures. I also love attending the shows which is a great place for some awsome pics!
I set up my Ebay shop selling A4 and A3+ sized glossy posters. I use premium quality photo paper and you can really notice the difference compared to standard photo paper.
I was pretty chuffed when my posters started to sell.

I have recently began working with glass and am loving every minute of it. I bought a very small kiln to begin. This was working brilliantly and did about 4-8 glass pendants at a time. The only downfall was that the kiln did not have a temperature reading or control and therefore it was very difficult to get the annealing stage correct... which is very important!!
I have done alot of reading on glass, and once read that if glass is not annealed correctly, it could crack a week, a month, or even a year after it was made.
I had been doing some work with clay silver, so I didn't waste any time investing in a new Hotstart Pro Kiln which is alot bigger and a million times better than my first kiln. (I can fit around 40 or so pendants in my new kiln)
So far I have been making different glass pendants and earrings using Bullseye fusing glass and Dichroic glass. Dichroic glass was what originally got me interested in glass. I loved the way the glass sparkled different colours in the light.
I have also found a suppllier for sterling silver bails, so that my jewellery sets will be glass and all the findings and chains will be sterling silver.

I am working on several new things at the moment.. and even have some new glass bangles going in the kiln this afternoon. Another update coming soon....