Announcing the new way to select glass! When you come in, we have all of our glass varieties ready for you to take to any table. You’ll work with nippers to get exactly what you need for your project.
You can still score and cut glass, but we’re going to make it easier to get started and create. It won’t take any longer to start you on a glass project than it does to paint pottery!
We still have a selection of noodles, stringers and frit (glass glitter), and I’m still buying all the pretty colors of glass we all love. How can I not?
This *is* glass, and glass can cut. We have bandaids. Kids aged 6-10 need “dedicated adult involvement” to work with cutting glass – it’s mainly a hand-strength issue for using the tile nippers. Kids older – and adults, obviously, can do all sorts of fun stuff. We don’t recommend glass for friends under age 6, but I defer to parents for this.
The first firing of glass is the fusing firing, and leaves the glass flat. We can shape it into bowls or plates with a second firing called a slump firing.
If you are interested in WHY we made these changes, it’s because in the past, if you wanted to do glass you’d be presented with a LOT of choices. Glass in bins that were sorted by color, and by size. Plus stringers, noodles and frit. It could be overwhelming, and I think many customers didn’t pick glass for this reason. I also think my staff would get overwhelmed with showing you HOW glass worked.
So one day three weeks ago, I was sitting at a red light and had this idea. You know how those ideas are – you have to really consider if it will work, and this one seems to be.
Now, all the glass is together ready for you choose what you need.
We’ve had it set up for three weeks, and we’re seeing more and more customers try glass fusing, and it is so much easier on everyone.
Some more back-story on glass:
It’s been around a LONG time, but only about 12 years ago did people start to use kilns traditionally used for ceramics to fire glass. Glass kilns are usually heated from the lid, while ceramic kilns are heated from the side, and it wasn’t until someone started playing around did they realize you could use side-elements to fuse glass.
DIYC brought in glass about 11 years ago. We started out offering it for classes, and eventually it became a part of our walk-in options for the store.
This past year, we had a scare: in the spring, the company who makes all the glass we use announced they were going out of business. Oh no! What were we going to do? It was a summer of not knowing, and we were so happy when it was announced that another company would continue to manufacture the glass we use.
(One of the things about glass, is that you can’t use just any old glass. As glass heats, it expands and contracts, and you have to make sure it is expanding and contracting at a regulated rate. This is called the Coefficient of Expansion, or COE. And you can only use ONE COE at a time. Imagine if you mixed Coke and Pepsi, and the result was an explosion. That’s what happens with different COEs, which is why we couldn’t just go by any glass we wanted.)
So, this is where we are: glass is staying, and we’ve made it easier than ever.
