This was quite a challenging piece. I started with a 6x9 clear base and a transparent dark blue top piece. On the clear base piece I used Vitrogel and glass powder mixture to create a background mottled texture. I just used a palette knife to move the mixture around until I like it. Then I began painting my flower with the Vitrogel and powders on the blue panel. I dried these pieces thoroughly. I decided to add leaves on the backside of the blue panel so they would be in the middle layer giving the piece some depth. I used my colorline white paint to do the leaves. That way it created a shadow effect by making those leaves opaque blue. I then fired these two pieces seperatly but together in the same kiln.
After the two pieces were fired I put them together and did a contour fuse. I wasnt quite happy with the piece yet so I added more leaves to backside and added green leaves to front side creating more depth. I contour fused this again but the green leaf kind of curled up on the edges and made a sharp edge. Not good. I ground the sharp part off did a little more painting with powders and full fused a last time. I am pretty happy with the piece now except one miner booboo. When I fired the first two seperate pieces the edges shrank in slightly and made a slightly thicker edge. So when I put the two pieces together there was an air pocket left between the two pieces. I was not observant enough at the time to notice that. When the two pieces were fused together bubbles were created. The only unusual thing about that was the bubbles are only in the background area around the flower not behind the flower anywhere???? Also no bubbles around the 1/2 inch border. At least it looks almost like the bubbles were intentional in the area where they occurred. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Next time I will top the back layer with clear frit to even it up level all the way across to eliminate that air gap.
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