I’ve been happily experimenting with pot melts for the past few weeks or so coming out with some pretty cool stuff. The problem was I had no clue what sort of border to add to them. I realize you don’t have to add a border to a melt; putting them in a display can be good enough. But I wanted to make blanks that were big enough to make decent sized decorative bowls and the belts I had weren't quite big enough I wanted them to be 10 inches in diameter. I scoured the interwebs to see what other people were doing. Some took their melts and did a full fuse on to circular piece of white (or clear) glass, others incorporated the border by lining the bottom of their ring forms with glass and then melting on top of it and others sandwiched the melt between two pieces of glass to add a border and to cap it.
I wasn’t quite satisfied with any of those solutions. Not that they’re bad ideas I just thought a plain white or clear border just seemed a bit bland. Well the answer was in the bin at my feet. I have over 50 pounds of scrap glass I got from Ebay from a glass blowing shop in TX. There’s tons of different colors and patterns in there and it would give a nice mosaic border.
Here’s my first attempt. I centered the melt and then added the scrap around it. I actually had to do this one twice because I didn’t have enough scrap in there and ended up with a border with a really ragged edge. It took more scap than I thought.
Here is the piece after grinding and a fire polish. Not too shabby.
Here’s a close up of the border.
An now for another melt. this next one was small so I had more fill in. I incorporated a failed bowl slump that suffered a painful thermal shock death. At the time I had thought it would be sage to sneak a quick peek when the kiln was at about 300 degrees. Twas a bad idea.
Anway…
Here it is.
Here it is after a grind and fire polish.
This next one is currently in the cooking in the kiln.
TTFN!
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