Wednesday, 21 January 2015

WEEK 1 OF MY CRAFT YEAR CHALLENGE  -  GLASS PLATE FLOWER/GARDEN ORNAMENT

As we are three weeks into January this is not actually week one, but it is the first thing I made this year so I am going to start here.

My inspiration for this project came from trawling the net, these wonderful creations are all a rage in the good old USA.  They are made from recycled glass plates/dishes/vases.




I was really inspired by these and began to scour the net looking for information/tutorials on how to make them and found quite a few.  I particularly liked this tutorial http://empressofdirt.net/makeglassflowers/

After much research I found that although many people glue their plates together, the best way to do them to make sure that they can stand cold winters is to drill and bolt them.  Therefore I needed to learn how to drill glass and ceramics. I did some more research, there are a lot of tutorials out there on how to drill glass.  I needed a diamond drill  bit and promptly sent the other half to the local DIY store for new drill bits.  We then visited the local charity shops for some well priced glass plates/dishes to play with.  I expected to find loads of it, but it was difficult to find suitable coloured pieces of glass, but we got there eventually. We probably bought more than we needed, but I was envisaging breaking loads before I mastered my new skill.

I also got inspiration and help from this person.  His flowers are lovely, he has a real eye for putting them together, well worth a look for your own inspiration.

https://www.facebook.com/glassflowerguy

I messaged him as I was not sure how to finish the back of the flower off to fit onto a pole and he promptly and kindly replied to my request with a picture and information on how to do it, so a big thank you to him.

This is my first attempt at making a glass flower, hope you like it.



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