With easily learned skills, many people are making fused art glass jewelry at home.
Fused glass jewelry has risen in popularity in recent years, fusing supplies, tools, and classes have grown rapidly as more people have come to realize the beauty of fused glass art.
The melting is done in an electric hot glass melting furnace where the pieces of glass are heated until they soften and are fused into one piece. It can produce art glass pendants, fused glass earrings, cuff bracelets, glass beads, and many other fused glass jewelry items.
Fusible products are on the market from various manufacturers in a wide range of colors, textures, and styles; colored stringers, rods, shards, powders and various grades of crushed glass called frit are also available. The wide range of supplies available allows you to mix and match colors and designs to your liking.
There are differences between the glasses of some manufacturers; which means that some vessels cannot be fused.
Glass expands and contracts at a particular rate, this is called the coefficient of expansion (COE). Two of the most popular glasses are 90 COE or 96 Coe.COE96 Dichroic Glass only with another vessel of the same COE and not with COE 96.
The same applies to COE 96, it just needs to be fused with another piece of COE 96.
Fusing incompatible parts will generally cause the item to crack.
Special enamels, paints, and decals made to fuse are also used to provide elegant and unique pieces. Many artists like to color on glass and then bake their creations in an oven to produce amazing results.
Dichroic glass is coated with a variety of metallic materials resulting in glass that when heated in an oven produces bright, vivid colors.
Because glass heats and cools at a different rate than a metallic coating, no two pieces are exactly alike, giving you uniquely fused dichroic jewelry.
Dichroic glass jewelry is popular for its rich colors and is used to create earrings, bracelets, beads, cabochons, rings, hair clips, and molten glass pendants.