Fusing with Leaves and Color

Fused leaf with glassline paint

If you haven’t already, you should consider a set of Glassline Paints.  I acquired a set and have been doing some playing and experimenting. One possible use that I am very curious about is using paints instead of powder for fossil projects. So, I decided to do some trial firings. If you are new to the site, I am ALL about testing and more testing.

First I collected my materials. This is a compare and contrast type of deal, so I’m going to test Mica as well as Glassline Paint and Float Fire powder.

leaves with mica, float fire and glassline paint

After shaking the paint well to mix it, I painted on yellow and orange and then set the leaf aside to dry.

Painting Glassline on a leaf

Then, I mixed the mica very well and painted it on a different leaf and set it aside to dry.

Painting Mica on a Leaf

Last but not least, I painted white glue on a third leaf and added pink Float Fire powder. (wear a respirator)

Painting Glue on a leaf

FloatFire powder on leaf

Extra Floatfire powder on leaf

leaves with color added

Then, into the kiln they go, covered by pieces of float glass. I should note here that although I am using float glass for this test, all 3 of these products are also compatible with bottle glass.

leaves under glass - prefire

And here they are after a standard full fuse firing. Notice how much smaller the leaves are.

fused leaf with glassline paint

fused leaf with mica

Fused leaf with FloatFire

These are still in the kiln though, so we won’t have a really good idea of how successful they are until we take them out and wash them.

So, final results and my thoughts on each:

Fused leaf with glassline paint

Wonderful! The Glassline looks great. I love that the leaf detail remains visible. This is definitely a direction to explore, particularly in terms of kid projects.

Leaf with fused mica

Hmmm. The mica is a bit disappointing. It’s interesting that the leaf print remains, as well as very tiny traces of mica. I’m not giving up on this one yet, but next time I will add the mica to the GlassLine and see if that helps.

Leaf with FloatFire Powder

Good enough, I suppose. I’m disappointed that the leaf details are obscured, and I’m not sure the complication of added safety precautions are worth the end result.

Conclusions:

GlassLine paints are a clear winner for this technique! I will be moving forward with additional tests with bottle glass and mica.

 

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