Glass Paperweights! Made from What? Fused Glass Project

You and I are going to make a couple of

paperweights

but we're not going to use the normal type of mold, we're going to use something you probably have at home right now. I hope you're okay, this is a rocket. roseart and my name is Jeff and yes we are going to make a couple of

paperweights

and you can ask who uses paperweights, who cares about them, we are an electronic society, everything is on a laptop or a phone now, who uses paper the most. Well, I use it a lot and I use paperweights because sometimes you walk around with that vacuum cleaner and suddenly everything is gone.

What do you need a paperweight for? And on top of that there are a lot of people who collect paperweights and they make great little gifts, so paperweights aren't obsolete yet, like I said, we're going to use something you probably have at home right now as a mold and I'll talk about that shortly. but stay until the end of the video because I have something that will really surprise you and it has to do with paperweights. If you would like to help support the channel, which would be greatly appreciated, please consider donating via the thank you button. there or think about becoming a member, there are additional benefits to memberships and I think you will find them very interesting now if you are in Australia and you are looking for Bullseye

glass

, which is coe90.

I have some available on my website. um that's rocketr art.com they're just little hobby squares and um I have a range of clears and opals and I'm listing more as I can so go and have a look they're suitable if you say Kil microwave works with that. It will be very suitable for that, so let's start making a couple of paperweights, but remember, wait until the end because there is something that I think will surprise you a lot in terms of the design, it's actually quite simple first. The important thing is that the

glass

that you use, you can use colored glass, obviously, but basically it's pretty much any bottle or anything that's

made

of glass that you can melt, so that's the first aspect of the design.

The second is the mold you use. This is just a mug that I bought at a cheap store but it is a nice thick mug but it is a very traditional mug shape but I also have mugs that are square and you might find some other one so that's probably the one second part of the design. and the last thing would be

what

you would do to it after you've melted it all down and I'll show you

what

I do to it a little bit later, you might have a better idea, so um design wise, that's it. each paperweight, a piece of glass, don't mix the items up, so even if they're both clear, don't mix them up, all that's here is a Co Coe which is probably something quite different and you'll find pretty much anything out of this. nature will have a different Coe and if you mix them you will end up with cracks.

I actually don't have one right now, but there is a bottle you can use in mine for coffee. They had a glass top. also with a plastic seal, so you had the glass lid and the glass bottle. I

made

the mistake of putting together everything I got. I got cracks because the cap was obviously a different Coe than the bottle itself, so stick with it. To only all the glass in one item, do not mix them, if you do you will end up with cracks. What more can I tell you? As far as materials go, that's the material that you're going to use and, um, it's. not limited, there are many different items that you can get that you can melt, not just bottles, obviously the bottles are different colors, but there are other things like, even things like glass plates, you can get them broken and melted, so if you go to a thrift store or a thrift store and you look around and you will find a lot of glass items and some of them have a really nice tint that you should be able to melt, so those are your materials, your equipment is just your mold really and if you want Cal to work in the end, whatever you want to do with it, so make sure your polka dots are nice and thick and strong and make sure you test them before you use them, so put them on your Kil. bring it to the temperature you are going to use to melt the glass.

I'm taking this up to about 850 from memory, so it's going to be a high temperature, temperature shouldn't be a problem if it's nice and thick, make sure there are no cracks anywhere, cracks or chips, don't use it, uh, don't want compromise it at all, by the way, that's not a chip and there are no cracks on these, they were actually new when I bought them, having said Still, I examined them thoroughly and also tested them on the Kil, so I brought them up to temperature I'm going to use them and kept them there for as long as it would take to melt. all this glass down, so that's it for your design, your materials and your equipment.

The next thing we have to do is break some glass. I'll finish cleaning them and then I'll show you how I break them down. This is my way of doing it, you might have a better way of doing it, it doesn't really matter, just keep the glass as clean as you can, um, you don't want any little bits of rock or anything like that in there because it will show. up um, you might like that on your paperweights, but um, yeah, it's totally up to you how you do it, this is the way I do it.

I just had the bottle wrapped in a bunch of thick paper and I'm going to start the process by holding it because I don't want the glass to just fly everywhere and break it basically there we go, so I'm going to try to hold it all together as best as possible, I'm going to squish it up a little bit. more and that's it, basically. I'm going to keep breaking it, I don't want all the bigger pieces to become small pieces and that's easy to do, so there we have our broken bottle. I still have bigger pieces here that I'm going to break up a little bit more, so I'm actually going to take them out, put them on some more paper, and we'll break them up a little bit more.

I don't want them to be too small, but basically I have to pack this in a cup and I want to get as much as I can in that cup so smaller is better um smaller You can introduce more bubbles, it doesn't matter in this case because it's just a paperweight and uh you don't want dust, you don't want very fine glass, I just want bits and pieces of glass, so I'm going to go and finish baking all these bigger pieces, then I'll make the other bottle and then we'll come back and fill the molds now that I've selected. the larger pieces of glass and that's really all I'm interested in.

I don't want those small pieces because they will tend to make it a little milky and considering the bottom of this is going to be the top of the paper. weight I don't want to put a lot of small things on the bottom and end up with a very milky surface. I want to make it as clear as possible now that this cup has a nice coating of boron nitrite. I used it once. I'm going to use it again without recoding it and it should be fine, so now it's just a matter of putting this whole glass in this cup and layering it and no, I haven't found any.

The real secret to this is to get the pieces, um reasonable sizes, don't make them too small and then just put them all in, try to get as much in as you can, basically, okay, now try not to have them hanging over the edge that you don't want. anything that hangs over the edge, but fill it as much as you can, it will melt and soften and everything will melt and you will get bubbles in there, so you won't get bubbles even if you squeeze the bubbles. you still won't have bubbles, something to keep in mind is that as far as the temperature goes, it's a little bit elevated in the air because you don't know what Coe is and even if you've done one of these before the next one it can be different, so I'm going to take it up to about I think it was 850.

I took the last one and kept it there until I'm happy that it's all melted. It takes a little time, I don't remember how long it took last time, but don't worry, I'll put up a schedule and um, so you can use it as a guide now, all the leftover glass I'm going to throw away because I can't use it on another paperweight and I can't think of anything else to use it for, but you might have an idea for using it on something, maybe a little miniature paperweight. Now, something to mention here is with this.

One smaller bottle when I hit it literally exploded into lots of little pieces so I have to add a little more tension to it than the other one so make sure you cover it well when you do this, you don't want the glass flying everywhere. place even if you're outside because I'm sure one day you're going to walk around barefoot and find those little fragments, so that's the only thing you need to be aware of, I think here, besides not doing it. Cut it out and even though I've covered the glass well with the newspaper and it's pretty thick, I'm still wearing eye protection while I'm doing this, which you never know, so we're going to get them in the kill and turn them. on paperweights, the paperweights are ready and I'm just going to show you these now, this is milky on the inside because that's how a little bit of glass comes out and if you can see there, it's very typical, it's got a lot of D and that on the top. but still, if you can see the inside, it's very interesting inside, that's the smallest one, this one's the biggest one, you can see the bubbles there, okay, those are the two that we just did, but here's a example of another that I had prepared before.

You can see that it has a green tint, but it is much lighter. You can see all the bubbles inside, making it a much more interesting piece. Then we have another one here that I polished in the fire and this one is more flattened, but it has. a much better polish on the top still very milky inside and we have a bubble there but that gives it character. I was going to show you another one that was made from a coffee jar that I talked about and it comes. It comes out very clear but I don't have it and I don't know where it is, but it depends on the glass you use, some things will come out very clear, others will have a little more mud and not as much. muddy but kind of milky looking inside I hope you can see all of that now there's something interesting you're wondering how much glass is needed well I'll weigh them for you so these are the ones we just made this is the biggest one 264 268 g one smaller one 211 and this one that was highly polished which was larger 318 so that's about how much glass you're going to need to make it into these cups and that will depend of course on what you use it gives you an idea of the amount of glass and if you're using art glass which is going to be more expensive of course this is a clear sheet I think it's about 250 by 270 something like that very useful sheet I hope you can see we're hovering here the 600 G, so you can see through that and here's an opal the same way, so if you use your art glass, you'll need about one of those sheets per paper.

It makes it more expensive because it depends on what color you use and what you are using IF and using scrap that you can't use otherwise, here in Australia that sheet of glass probably costs $3, $35 or more so makes it more expensive for a single paper. white um, but you'll get much better paper now. I promised a surprise at the end and here it is, you didn't see it coming, did you? It's a beautiful paperweight and gives you a good idea of ​​what you can do. Do with this process what I have shown you with the bottles, it is a nice and economical way to make something and you can make it really attractive and it is very interesting for people to look inside and see all those bubbles, but you can also use your art class . and if you think about it, you can do a lot of interesting things with that art glass and that uses diic glass.

I haven't shown you how to do it, but I've given you enough information so you can figure out how to do it. to make one of those I like, I love it, I think that diic is awesome and everyone I've shown it to thinks it's awesome too, so think about using your AR glass. I know it will be more expensive than just the bottles. but you'll get amazing results with that, think about the reactions you can get between glasses and combining opal glass and clear classes, not just iridescent dichroic classes, there's a lot of opportunity to make some really interesting pieces now that I'd love to have. your comments, so be sure to put them in the comments section below and if you have any questions about it, write them there and I will do my best to answer them.

I hope you enjoyed it now if you are thinking about becoming a member there is a playlist of videos just for members as well as a button where you can find more information at the bottom here we have a suggested video just for you as well as a subscribe button, that's it for this one and I'll do it. see you in the next video bye for now