Lacey & Erica make fused glass jewelry.

A few months ago, my job sent me to Insurance Continuing Education classes at Francis Tuttle vocational school. Instead of paying attention to the instructor, I decided to browse through the course catalog. (C'mon who actually cares about continuing education? LOL) I saw that they offered a lot of interesting arts & crafts classes: canvas painting, introduction to sewing, French cooking, quilting (which I really wanted to take but was offered in the middle of the day), etc. One of the classes that caught my eye was Introduction to Fused Glass Pendants. I've played with jewelry making before in my spare time and wanted to actually take a class. I've never worked with glass before and thought this would probably be my only chance to do so.

I roped my friend, Lacey, into coming with me. (She's super artsy and I thought she'd really enjoy the class.) The class was held on two consecutive Wednesday nights. Our teacher was a friendly woman who makes glass jewelry with her husband for a living. They sell at craft shows and festivals. There were two other ladies in the class with us. I'm glad it was a small class because we got to use all the equipment without taking turns & choose all glass pieces we wanted. We all had a good time & I got to talk about craft shows with our teacher. (Yes, I shamelessly handed out business cards.)
       An aside... Our teacher taught a mosaic class a few weeks earlier and was having some trouble bringing in her supplies. She had a cart but the wheels were warped. Her husband fixed the cart after the class and everything ended up being okay. But, I guess she was lamenting to the janitor before her husband could fix the wheels. At the start of our class, the janitor brought in a replica of the cart! He had looked at her design while they spoke earlier and made her a new one ... with really nice wheels. What a sweet gesture!! (Lacey and the teacher thought it was creepy but I found it endearing.) Sadly, she didn't want it since her husband fixed her cart & she doesn't need two. She gave the janitor's cart to me so I could use it for my craft shows!!

That's Lacey expertly cutting glass on the top picture.

Anyway, back to fused glass jewelry class...
       The first thing we learned was how to cut glass. I thought it would be hard (and a little dangerous) but it is actually really simple. And no one got hurt! All we did was score a line across where we want to cut on the glass, then take this tool that looks like a pair of pliers and clamp it on the glass. It breaks apart where the glass was initially scored. We cut a few strips of clear glass to make a sun catcher. Oh and all we needed to do to put the pieces together was glue them with Elmer's glue. I thought it would be a much more elaborate process.

 After our sun catcher experiment, we moved onto the jewelry making part. There are three steps to making a glass pendant. First, we cut a piece of glass to be our base piece. This is the shape that the pendant will be. Second, we took small broken pieces of glass and placed it mosaic style on the base piece. Lastly, we cut a piece of clear non-colored glass that was slightly bigger than our base piece and glued it on top. Our teacher took our pendants home to fuse in her kiln. She told us that the mosaic pieces will melt and fuse together and the clear glass piece on top will act like a top coat to protect the colored pieces. That was it for our first class.

I didn't make the middle piece. It was a reject from one of our teacher's craft shows. We each got a pre-made pendant to practice wire wrapping on.

I was anxiously waiting all week for my glass pendants. The teacher warned us that the pendants will look different after coming out of the kiln. I was both eager to see how mine turned out and worried they wouldn't look pretty anymore after firing. My sun catcher turned out amazing and exactly how I wanted it to. My three pendants were a surprise, though! I liked them but they certainly did change in the kiln. We just tied some cheap string to our sun catcher but for the pendants, we had the option to glue on a hook (boring) or wrap wire around them.

Our teacher wanted us to each make at least one wire wrapped pendant so she gave us some of her glass jewelry from previous craft shows to wrap. (I got the green piece with the majestic horse. Lacey got a yellow piece also with a horse. I'm thinking horse jewelry doesn't sell well at shows. LOL) Wire wrapping was a little more complicated than making glass pendants. First, we each chose three pieces of wire. Then we gathered the pieces like we were getting ready to braid them. Next, we hooked one end onto a drill & held the other end with pliers. When we turned on the drill, it spun the three separate pieces into one thick wire.

Lacey is both an excellent friend and hand model.

Not all glass pendants come out of the kiln perfectly round or with straight edges (even the practice pendants our teacher gave us were bumpy around some edges). Before we wrapped the wire around them, we needed to smooth them out. We did this by using a sanding machine. Also, if the pendant turned out bigger than expected or not the desired shape, this machine was used to reshape it.

We each took turns holding our pendants against this spinning wheel which ground down the excess glass that we didn't want. I had to grind away a lot of excess glass on mine because I cut the clear glass top coat piece to be way too big. After we were satisfied with the final shape of our pendants, we moved to a second machine to etch a groove around the perimeter of the pendant.

The back of my long pendant is so pretty...too bad it's the back.

For me, etching the groove around the pendant was the hardest part. The blade on this machine seemed sharper and scarier than the sanding machine. So I did this step very slowly and carefully (probably too slowly because I was the last one to finish mine). I had to hold the pendant against the blade as it spun and then slowly push the pendant toward the blade to etch out a groove. The groove had to be equal depth around the entire pendant. Oh and there was water and glass shards flying off the machine...hence, scary! 

After the groove was made, we took our wire and wrapped it around the pendant. When we got to the top, we twisted it around and made a neck and bell (fancy jewelry terms for "where you string the necklace though"). I enjoyed making my practice pendant and I thought the wire made it look really nice & unique so I started on the glass pendants that I had made. The lavender one was pretty simple to wire wrap but the square black one was so difficult. I stayed after all the other ladies left because it took so long. Lacey was a sport and stayed behind with me even though hers were complete. In the end, the teacher had to jump in and help me with it. But it was all worth it. My black square pendant (and all the other ones) ended up looking fancy & professionally done. (Can we say handmade Christmas gifts!?!) At the end of the class, I was really proud of myself. I had done something new and out of the ordinary, I learned a new trade & had an enjoyable time doing it.