This afternoon I began making two-part moulds of two light bulbs for my Friday module. My aim is to slip cast them and as the module is all about multiples, slip casting is a great was of doing this. I have never tried slip casting before so it should be interesting. I completed the first half of each mould. Two part moulds take SO LONG to make and are so annoying! Thankfully Mark helped me a lot, particularly with one piece while I was working on the other one! I will have to finish them off tomorrow and also paint some enamels onto sheet copper and put a kiln on to do some test pieces.
I am trying to translate my ideas of flowers in drinking cans into glass for the BAMS medal Competition. I know that the printed imagery on the cans would burn out instantly when casting hot glass on top. The aluminium is also not a compatible metal whereas copper works better with glass. I love the pop art imagery on the cans. The recognisable elements from the Coca-Cola cans and Sprite cans etc is going to be challenge. I have bought some very high firing enamels and I am going to paint them onto samples of copper to see how they work out. I would like to try them fired on and then later dropped into sand cast forms as inclusions. I will also try out some where I put the enamelled copper between sheet float glass which could be cut into petal shapes. I could also try carving into plaster and putting the glass on it so that the glass can pick up texture as well.
I want to try out the enamelled copper as an inclusion in sheet glasma from the hot glass workshop so that I could use them as an inclusion in sand casting too. This way the glass will be compatible.