Accessory Glass
At Blazing Star Arts, we rely on large sheets of fusible glass as the foundation for much of our work. However, we also use on a range of Accessory Glasses to "accessorize," add interest, texture, and design elements, or achieve specific effects, in our work.
Accessory Glass comes in several forms:
Glass Frit: Frit has many different applications that can transform ordinary fused glass pieces into extraordinary pieces of art. Frit is ground fusible glass. It’s available in a variety of sizes including power, fine, medium, course and mosaic. Each size has its own special characteristics and uses. Powder is great for filling in tight spaces and for a smooth appearance. Fine gives fast, even coverage and leaves a slight grainy look to the art. Medium fills larger areas well. But it can leave tiny gaps that allow the color of the base glass to show through. It leaves a granular pattern that resembles beach sand. Course is great for filling in large areas, but it also leaves spaces.
Glass Rods, Noodles, Stringers, and Ribbons: Glass rods, noodles, and stringers are long, narrow strips of glass that are fused to other pieces of glass to create patterns, textures, or other artistic effects. The delicate strands of color allow us to use linear detail in designs. Often we shape the stringers with a blow torch to create curves, bends, and waves. Glass ribbons are flat, fettuccini-like glass strips that we break, cut, or bend to add unique elements to our designs.
Glass Confetti: Glass confetti shards are very thin pieces of colored glass. Traditionally, confetti is made by blowing a very thin glass bubble which breaks as the size of the bubble increases. Confetti shards are very delicate. We use them as design elements on top of fused glass pieces or between pieces of art glass, and to shade or blend colors.
Glass Billets: Billets are large, thick, glass tiles that are intended for glass casting. They are about 1” (25 mm) thick and are, more often than not, square or rectangular.
Accessory Glass comes in all a wide variety of colors and levels of translucence, which allows us to create the perfect effects for our kiln formed glass projects.
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