Kathleen \"KIK\" Kimball on fri 26 mar 99
for a gift which pleases, is relatively inexpensive, reduces the waste
stream, and holds up in new england winters, try tiles which have house
numbers carved out of the clay, with glass floating in the carved
areas. i do all different color combinations as commissions.
fire the clay to maturity ( i use miller 75/cone 5-6). this way, the
clay has done all the shrinking it needs to and you are not going to
have extra pressure on it when the glass is added.
then carefully break scrap glass into small pieces, fill the carved out
area where the numbers are, and return the tile to the kiln. the glass
will become like a molten river, so do not overfill. obviously, you are
firing these flat!
if the glaze will not be disturbed by going only to bisque, just stick
the piece in your next bisque kiln. (e.g., cream breaking red glaze from
clayart with green bottle glass) if you have a sensitive glaze, then
put it in the next glaze firing (e.g., floating blue with clear glass)
there are alot of nice surprises along the way, e.g., the pendant i made
for my son's wedding used clear glass with the weathered bronze glaze,
and it leached the color of pale blue into the glass and matched my vest
perfectly!
in case k. gordon or others are wondering, yes, i have tried various
fusing schemes with bullseye glass, but prefer the look of the
fractured/crystal trash glass.
sometime back, there was a question on clayart about items that sell
well. perhaps if one wanted to make just numbers separately (as opposed
to already collected ones on a single tile, e.g., 815, 161, etc.) these
could be marketed at a good price and people could assemble their own
house numbers!
as for mounting, i put holes in the four corners to allow for direct
mounting, but this does not exclude people adhering the tiles to wood
and mounting that instead.
good luck!
kik in new hampshire/usa
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