Friday, February 15, 2013

Gorgeous Glass Gems

I spent 3 days cutting up the dichro slabs, engraving them with the Dremel, and then grinding and beveling them, and hustled them into the kiln yesterday for firepolishing - here are just a few of the cabs, liberated from the kiln this morning: (I wish dichro photographed well!)


Those of you with a trained eye will probably spot my mistake in this pic - Of these 7 cabs, somehow, 3 of them (the 2 uppermost ones, and the round one in the middle) - missed out on the beveling stage in the grinder.

Even more disheartening: out of the 35 cabs I made, only about 10 of them are beveled. I don't have the slightest idea how this happened - all 35 were in a bucket next to the grinder, and I was pulling them out one at a time to bevel. I sat at the dang grinder for 4 hours working on this - have NO CLUE how I missed more than 2/3 of them.

I was just going to leave them unbeveled,, until I started planning to solder with some of them - they are 7/16 inches tall, and my tallest bezel wire is 1/4 inch, so it will just barely work. And if I don't slant the top edge a little, I don't think I will get a good bezel.

So I am now going to haul out the grinder again, and bevel all the cabs I missed the first time - and then I'll firepolish them (again) tomorrow.

I have listed one of the cabs on Etsy - these are just SO pretty! Can't wait to make some rings, pendants, and bracelets with them. And I have put aside one for beadweaving, too!

This one's available on Etsy:   SOLD!!


If you'd be interested in some of the blue-green-purple ones, let me know, and I'll list them, too.

2 comments:

DeborahRead.com said...

OMG they are wonderful - they are so beautiful - they turned out so very well - the assortment etc.. the colors - Perfect !

Karin Slaton said...

Gorgeous! And you picked out my favorite of the set to post on Etsy. Lucky me!!