Flaming Heart Windchime Bottle Glass Tutorial
This pattern is available in the Big Book of Kiln Carving Patterns. You will need to print and cut out the pattern using 1mm or thicker fiber paper.
Step 1:
Find (or cut out) the heart and flame portion of your kiln carving pattern from the Big Book of Kiln Carving.
Step 2:
Glass! I’m using a clear bottle that has been cut in half and flattened. (a Bicardi Bottle, if you’re interested).
Two pieces of clear bottle glass for a windchime.
Step 3:
Put one piece of glass over the fiber paper and trace your wind chime shape. I’m using an oval, similar to the sun catcher from last week.
Choosing bottle glass for kiln carving pattern.
Sketch your wind chime shape on the glass.
Step 4:
Cut the first piece of glass on the lines you’ve drawn, and then use the first piece as a template for the second piece. Cut the second piece to fit.
Kiln carving with bottle glass
Trace the shape on 2nd piece of glass
Step 5:
Now we’re ready to add the hanging loops at the top of the chime and the loops for the chimes themselves.
Put the first piece of glass on the kiln carving pattern so we can see where to add loops.
Add a glue dot to hold in the fused in loops.
I’m going to put two hanging loops on the top, one on each side, and 3 chime loops across the bottom.
Glue dots for fused in loops
Once you have your glue dots on there, you can add nichrome or brass loops that will be fused in. (You can make your own brass loops, or you can buy ready to use brass loops in the shop.)
Add brass loops to glue dots
Step 6:
Add the 2nd layer of glass and move the whole project to a prepared kiln shelf.
Assemble the wind chime
Assembled wind chime with kiln carving pattern
Step 7:
Fire to a full fuse using the full fuse schedule for 1/4″ thick glass.
Fused bottle glass wind chime kiln carving project
Now, you could take this and add chimes and a hanging wire right away, OR, you could go on to the next segment and see how to add color frit to it and refire.
Part 2
In this portion of the tutorial, we will be adding color frit to the windchime. One handy tool for bottle/float glass fusers is 82 CoE Frits and Powders available from Glassycuts.com specifically for use with float glass (and it works great with bottles too!) Float Fire has a flexible CoE of 82 +/-3 so it is useful in a number of situations. I have listed the colors I’m using, you can, of course, use whichever colors suit your fancy.
Float Fire Frits and Powder for fusing
Gold Ruby – FF4005F2
Cherry Red – Lead Free – FF1045FL
Opaque White – Extra Dense – FF3130F
Opaque Orange – Lead Free – FF2025F
Black – FF0025F2
Yellow – FF1035
You will also need hairspray (or some other fusing glue) and a fine paintbrush. Don’t forget the safety equipment! Wear a respirator when working with frits and powders!
Step 1:
Start with your windchime top. I have mine on a large paper plate to contain any extra frit. We will be filling the impressions made with the fiber paper and then fusing, the kiln carving pattern will act as a dam for the frit to keep it in place during firing.
Windchime top without frit
Step 2:
Add Gold Ruby frit to the sides of the heart with contour cuts.
Add Gold Ruby Float Fire Frit
Spray with aerosol hairspray, or other fusing glue. This will keep the frit from moving around as you add other colors. When the glue is dry add the next color.
Step 3:
Add Opaque White frit to the flames and as a highlight on the heart.
Adding White Frit highlights
It’s a little hard to see in the photo because of the white plate, but there is a tiny scatter of white frit at the bottom of the U shaped flames and a crescent of white highlight on the upper left side of the heart. Once your white frit is in place, spray and let the glue dry before moving on to the next color.
Step 4:
Add Opaque Orange to the tips of the flames. Use your fine paintbrush to move the frit into place.
Add Opaque Orange to flame tips.
Again, spray and wait for it to dry. Did I mention there is a lot of waiting in this tutorial?
Step 5:
Add Yellow to the flames. I’m using powder for this step, because that’s what I have handy. Yellow frit would be just as effective.
Adding yellow float fire powder to the flames.
With powder, there are a couple of things to know. First, you need to make sure you have an even layer, after your spray glue is dry, hold the heart up to the light and look for thin spots in the powder layer. Add more powder if necessary. Second, it’s much easier to scrape the extra off around the edges AFTER the glue is dry.
Step 6:
Add the black low lights.
Adding black frit to heart
It easy to go overboard with the black, I’ve added a thin line across the bottom of the flames and up a tiny bit of the two side most flames. Spray and wait until the glue is dry, and then add the last color.
Step 7:
Finish with Cherry Red Frit.
Add Cherry Red frit to heart and flames
This is our last color, so we are going to fill the heart and the bottom of the flames with Cherry Red Frit. You’ll see I have mostly covered the white highlight in the heart, you can leave this visible if you with to have it visible from either side, or cover it as I have. Once the Cherry Red frit is in place, spray with glue and let dry.
Step 8:
Clean up the edges of the kiln carving of extra frit (if necessary). Place the heart frit side UP on a prepared kiln shelf. Fire to a full fuse using the full fuse 1/4″ thick schedule.
Fused Flaming Heart Windchime top
After fusing:
Flaming Heart Windchime with color frit
and from the other side:
Fused bottle glass windchime top with Float Fire
Part 3
Materials and tools for windchime making
Materials:
Bottle glass strips (each pair needs to be from the same bottle)
Glass Donuts
White Glue
Brass Loops
Glass Cutting tools
Step 1:
Cutting the glass strips for the hanging chimes.
Measure glass strips for trimming
Measure your glass strips, for this project, I would like all of my chime parts to be the same length. It looks like 4.5″ is what I’m looking at here.
Mark cutting lines on glass strips
Glass strips trimmed to length
I’m sure you’ve noticed that not all of those strips are the same width, so our next step is to trim the width down. I find it easiest to stack two strips together and then trim the larger one down to match the smaller one. (If you are using a large flattened sheet of bottle glass, you can mark and cut uniform strips and avoid all this trimming stuff.)
Trim uneven strips
Step 2:
Add brass hanging loops to top and bottom of bottle glass strips. We are going to sandwich the loops between two strips of glass, so just add loops to one of each pair of glass strips. I’m using white glue to keep them in place.
Add brass hanging loops
Add top layer of glass:
Stacked glass strips
Step 3:
Fuse strips and donuts. Move the strips and the cut donuts to a prepared kiln shelf and fire to a full fuse using the full fuse schedule for 1/4″ glass. (only 2 of my donuts are visible here, there really are 3)
Windchime strips ready to fuse
Step 4:
Assemble the whole project.
Windchime assembly project
Materials needed:
Windchime Top
Windchime strips
glass donuts
tiger-tail or other wire
crimp beads
crimp pliers
heavy duty scissors or wire cutters
Start by slipping the wire through a crimp bead, then a brass loop at the bottom of the windchime, then through the brass loop on the strip and back, making a figure 8 through the bead.
Connect the pieces with wire and a crimp bead.
Pull the wire to the desired tightness and crimp with your crimp pliers:
Crimp the bead
Some types of crimp beads are crimped in 2 steps, so use the appropriate amount of crimping for the type of bead you have. After crimping, you can trim the extra wire closer to the crimp bead.
Bead after crimping
Repeat for the other two glass strips.
Step 5:
Attach the glass donuts to the bottom of each strip using the same basic method:
Attach the donuts to the strips
Step 6:
Add a hanging wire to the top of the windchime. There is no hard and fast rule about how long this wire should be, just long enough to hang the windchime conveniently. The crimp bead connection is slightly different since it just goes through one loop and attaches to itself. Repeat for the other side.
Add hanging loop
After crimping those beads firmly, you are done!
Finished Flaming Heart Windchime
Additonal notes:
- the oxidation on the fused in loops will easily brush off using a wire brush
- if you want to get super fancy, add seed beads to the top hanging wire before crimping the second side