Glass Fusing

The fourth-sixth graders made these glass fused pendants.  We are gluing the "bails" on the back to make necklaces.  The kids are going to give these as holiday gifts to a family member or friend.  They each made two pendants.  

This is the first time I have done fused glass with kids.  I used the how-to guides from the System 96 website and ordered the glass from Delphi glass.  

Have you done fused glass in your kiln before?  If so, I have some questions to ask you and maybe you can help me troubleshoot a bit.  Let me know and we can connect!

Some of the pendants turned out wonderfully (as I expected) and some of them did not seem to melt evenly.  They are still beautiful and the kids are proud of their work, but I am wondering if anyone has any insights.  

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Girls Night Out

The other weekend, I went out for a Girls' Night Out at our local paint your own pottery place.  They also do glass fusing, which I excitedly tried for the first time.  It was a blast!  We were able to bring our own wine and snacks and we all decided we were going to go back for another night out.  This is something we could actually do at my school with our kiln.  I just have to figure out temperature controls and buy some glass cutting tools.  There is a way to pre-cut the glass and melt it into little pieces, so when the kids use it the edges are rounded.  Have any of you art teachers done this before?  Do you have any tips for this type of project?   What we did at this store was assemble our designs with little pieces of glass, using tweezers and glue.  After it was glued together, they fired it and we picked it up a week later.  Here are mine!

The duck on the left I made because Daria's room is decorated in ducks.  This pendant I'm keeping for myself.  The other two pendants I'm going to give for gifts for Mother's Day.