Subject Reflection

Posted: June 8, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

From spending time in Cork it has helped me to become more independent with my working, it has also introduced me to working with glass. My experience away on Erasmus has made me really interested in using glass within my work, and I did get to use pate de verre in my work for subject.  Think my most stand out thing while I was in Cork was getting to see how other people work and to get to experience a different university and a new place, I think the change in scenery has helped with the way that I am thinking about my plans for next year.

The pieces I have made for the seed projects are using the skills I learnt in Ireland. The use of the pate de verre was for the design consequences, the pieces I created were about changing the process of making the glass. The change in the process would then change the outcome and usefulness of the glass. I think that this project could have been developed and tested a lot more if I had the time and the money to buy more frit. I’m happy with how the final pieces came out I would have liked to of spent more time testing the glass but because of my little time after I came back from Cork to get the projects finished.

For my medal I think this project went the best out of the projects I did, I do wish I had done some more casts of the medal in a few different materials like I had planned originally. If there was more time for the project I would want to sand the back of the medal down to get rid of the mistake of the letter press to try again with smaller text and find a way to hold the medal still in sand or something to stop the movement when hammering the letters in.

SEED Costings

Posted: June 8, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects, Subject | Leave a comment

I thought looking at the costings for this would be an interesting thing since pate de verre is an expensive thing to make and sell because of needing to make a new mould every time you make a vessel.

Materials

Frit 450g clear and 10x 50 g colour- £30

Wall paper paste- £2.49

Plaster 5kg bag – £5.00

Quarts- I couldn’t fine online anywhere so thought it would be about £10

Talcum powder- 2x £1.55 – £3.10

Total for materials – £50.59

Equipment

Scales- £10.00

Bucket £1

Clay- 25kg bag – £11.00

Kiln- £321.00

Toothbrush – £1.00

Total for equipment – £344.00

Hours

Minimum wage – £5.13

Moulds 5 hours

Packing glass-2.30 mins

Filling kiln-30 mins

Emptying kiln- 10 mins

Breaking mould- 30 mins

Cleaning glass- 1.20 mins

Total hours 10 hours x £5.13 = £51.30

Looking at the prices already makes it look like an expensive process to use because of the time taken up to do it and even though buying a kiln is a one of buy I still need to add it in to be able to add some money into the final price so that I can pay off the kiln being bought.

The full amount would be £445.89

Not including equipment- £101.89

A huge change from the including the one off buy of the kiln compared to thinking as if I already had a kiln. Again I think 20% of the equipment being added to the cost of hours and materials- £170.69

Thinking in the way of retail within galleries I will add 40% and do the rule the third years created of multiplying the total by 2.3 to get the amount that they think you should sell it at.

Adding the gallery 40% – £238.97

Multiplying but 2.3- £392.59

Both of these I would say is stupidly expensive but this isn’t a precise amount for my glass pieces this is the rough amount that I would need to buy for my making all of the moulds and some more on top of that because of the first mould I made went wrong so I added some more plaster on top of the total. But roughly it would be with the 40% added they would cost around £47.79 if I had all the equipment like the kiln they would become even cheaper.

I think looking at the pricing for these is really interesting seeing how much it would have cost to of done these things at home. If I was doing this I would need to figure out how much it would cost to run it for the long firing to be able to fuse he glass together. I would probably be more careful and make sure the entire kiln is filled so that the more pieces that would be in the kiln the less mney needed to pay for the firing.

Medal Costing

Posted: June 7, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Medal Project, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

I wanted to look at the costings for my medal project and how much it would cost me if I was making this myself at home and if I was going to be selling it in a gallery with the general 40% added for their payment.

Materials

½ m blue ribbon- 65p

½ m red ribbon- 55p

Roughly 850.5g pewter- £24.79

Reel black cotton (70p) – 5p

Total of material costs- £25.94

Equipment

Pewter melting pot- £50.00

Dremel – £69.99 ( I already own one but still adding it in)

Multiple grits of sand paper- £10.00

Fine wire wool- £2.39

Total for equipment- £132.38

Hourly wage

Minimum wage- £5.13

Mould- 1 hour

Pouring- 30 mins

Sanding- 4 hours

Polishing- 30 mins

Ribbon – 1 hour

5.13 x 7 hours= £35.91

Price including buying equipment- £194.23

Price excluding buying equipment- £61.85

The price with equipment seems to be a little over the top, I don’t think anyone would want to buy a medal for that price I’m not sure but I wouldn’t buy a medal for that price. I think the costing without the equipment is a more reasonable price but I would still need to buy the machines and such to make this piece so I thought maybe 20% of the price of the equipment be added in because then after 5 sales I will of then gotten money back for the equipment. This new total would then come to- £83.34, this seems like a more likely price that people might buy a medal for.

I then wanted to think about if the piece was being exhibited with two different ways. First with the general 40% that people always say to add to the price so the gallery can take their share. Then the second way I will be doing the third years 2.3 rule, by multiplying the final number by 2.3 you should get the price that you should sell it at for the retail price.

40% gallery- £116.68

2.3 rule- £191.68

I think the multiplying by 2.3 seems to be a lot higher and I don’t think anyone would buy the medal if it was sold at that but sometimes you find galleries add to the price of your work so they get their commission so if I added 80% to the medal it would then cost -£150 which isn’t such a unreasonable price to me.

I think if this was to be sold this year I would probably only want the price of the materials I bought and the couple of pieces of equipment I bought my self along with my hours, roughly £50 I would sell it for.

In the future I would need to think about the prices of electricity too to count bills into my work so things like using a pewter melting pot I would need to think about the price of that being on for the time to melt it and then the prices of using the dremel for the hours that I used it for. I’m not sure if I could count it to a perfect number but I would do a rough estimate on the hours I spent on them and decide on a price for the hour of having that piece of equipment on for.

Final Medal

Posted: June 7, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Medal Project, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

IMG_20150605_192648699[1]

I’m really happy with how my final medal came out, I think that deciding to do just one final medal was a good choice for me. I wasn’t thinking of time really I was happy to spend as much time to cast the meal in lots of things but I like the finish on this one medal alone. I also really like the use of the ribbon I’m glad that I decided I would actually use a ribbon, I would need to think of a way to present it better if it was to be sold. Something like a box frame with it hanging, it is too heavy to wear and if I had put a brooch pin on it the second it was pinned on and let go it would just bend the pin.

I’m really happy with the finish on the medal I spent a lot of time sitting sanding and using the dremel on it trying to smooth out all of the lumps and bumps of the pewter. I’m also quite happy with how the space that did have the big air bubble on it came out in the end, I tried to engrave pebbles into it so it didn’t look too bad it could of been a little better.

IMG_20150605_174015231[1]In the exhibition I wanted it hanging away from the wall because I was going to use the letter press on it but found that actually the letter press doesn’t work well on pewter. I squished a few of the letters and also found that I didn’t think about the font size so it ended up being way too big for the back of the medal. I also then messed but the medal with the letter press trying to get a decent print of the letters into the back caused the front of the head to be flattened a little bit but because of the medal not being flat on the front I found that if you weren’t paying attention to what you were doing then sometimes the letter jumped like it did on mine.

If I had more time I would sand the back down flat and try again but go and buy myself some harder letters to hammer into the medal. I think it would look good if I had thought some more about the smaller details of the text rather than panicking and messing it up leaving myself with a final piece that I am a little disappointed with but I am hoping that the front will make people not think about the rubbish back.

Unloading the Kiln

Posted: June 5, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects | Leave a comment

IMG_20150605_124852754[1]Unloaded my kiln all looked ok from it coming out, the little swatch tests I had done went a little funny I didn’t put enough glass on them to get a solid bit of glass with the markings from the plate they were put on. The testers were a shame but I’m not too worried about them they were mostly to test out the colours of the glass without the clear frit. I opened the kiln around 70 degrees and I was really worried that I might of opened it too early but nothing broke.

IMG_20150605_124840772_HDR[1]While I was transporting the moulds and the trays of the glass back to the studio, there were a few bumps in the halls and every now and again I hit a few and the moulds started falling apart around the glass. Which was really scary for me the moulds actually falling apart on the trolley I had to stop lots to pull the bits that were falling off and from quick looks the cups looked like they were still in one piece so that was good.

Once I got them back up to the studio I started to try to empty out the talcum powder but as I was pouring it in to a tub the moulds were just disintegrating which was really weird since the moulds in Cork were really hard and had to use a lot of strength to separate the glass from the mould. When I was taking the glass out of the moulds they were really hot still and to a point almost too hot to handle in some cases, I was really nervous that I took them out too soon.

IMG_20150605_134256958[1]Once they were all out I let them sit for a little while to cool before cleaning them up. Once they sat for a while I started cleaning the glass up with a paint brush and some water. I got most of the talcum powder off but I think they need a little more of a clean to get it all off and looking good. I really like the tops of the cups and the laciness of them. The edges have got some small bits of glass that are quite sharp but I want to leave them because its showing other issues with the change of process.

Filling my Kiln

Posted: June 4, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects, Subject | Leave a comment

Originally being told that the kiln wasn’t going to be able to go on till either Friday or Monday and panicking about not being to get my pieces done in time for the deadline. Thankfully the kiln got loaded today and I feel 100x less worried about the deadline already.

IMG_20150604_144513936[1]In the kiln I put my 5 moulds and bought lots of talcum powder to fill the moulds with for the firing. I first put the moulds in and it was only half full so I was a little worried it was a little of a waste of a firing in such a big kiln too. I proceeded to do the things I needed to do to get the glass ready, I filled them with talcum powder filling them just a tiny bit over the top of the glass just to protect it from direct heat from the kiln.

IMG_20150604_151802900[1]IMG_20150604_151805858[1]To solve the problem of an almost empty kiln, I did some little colour splotches just to see how the colours look without any of the clear frit mixed in. I was lucky enough to of had Martin helping me with what I was doing with the colour tests and he had some slumping forms that I then filled elements with frit to see how they fuse into smaller detail without being mixed with glue and pat down I literally poured it on to the forms.

The firing has been set to the same as it was for when I was in Cork slightly tweaked but just without the drying firing. I am hoping that it doesn’t need the drying firing as desperately as I think it might but it has been sitting on my desk for a couple of days so I think that it should of dried out enough for it to still be ok without it. Below is the firing we did cutting out the very last step.

Rate (Celsius per hour) Temperature (Celsius) Hold/Soak (minutes)
150 600 0.30
150 770 1.00
Skip 650 1.00
Skip 482 2.00
50 427 0
100 END

IMG_20150604_151754808[1]The glass kiln was a top heated kiln so the heating elements are at the top of the kiln which I’m not sure about how the Pate de verre will come out of it because we used side heated kilns in Cork, it’s worth a try just to see how it comes out and how it might change the way the glass is fired. I am mostly worried about it not getting enough heat to fuse it all together through the mould but I will have to see how it comes out.

Pate De Vere

Posted: June 3, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects, Subject | Leave a comment

Once I made my moulds all I needed to do now was the glass in the moulds. After a long search I spent a while searching for someone who had some wall paper paste. In the end I found some and got a pot of it.

I mixed the clear glass frit and the coloured glass frit together to about 25% colour to 75% clear frit. The fine frit I think was a little bit too fine for what I want my finished pieces to come out. One I got the desired colour mixed I then added about a spoon full of my wallpaper paste. I found that in a couple of my pots I put too much paste in to the mix of the glass so the mix of glass and paste was really sloppy.

11355422_10153248611651539_583297158_nOnce it was all mixed I then started applying the mix to the sides of the mould. The sloppier mixes I found stuck to the spoon a lot more and were hard to actually get to stick to the mould, so instead of patting the mix on I had to scrape it on in some places which I think might of effected the mould a little on the outside but I think it will still come out ok. I did two layers of glass on each of the moulds except for one because I wanted to see how the two layers and one layer differ after the firing. 11289609_10153248611751539_1927744561_n 11304225_10153248611696539_1583317500_n

I’m really happy with how the glass turned out in the moulds just got to wait for them to go into the kiln and see hoe they come out. I think some of the layers of glass are really thick so I’m not sure what to expect when they come out the kiln, I hope they are as delicate as the ones I made in Cork.

Mould making

Posted: June 2, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects | Leave a comment

For my Pate De Verre I needed to make a mould for the glass to be able to be put against the sides of it to make my vessels.

For the mould I made in cork it was equal quantities of Plaster and Silica, it was more of a rough science and seeing how much you actually want and not measuring it like we do in Cardiff. The moulds I have made in for my seed work are Quarts and Plaster 750g of each to 1 litre of water.

To start my mould I needed to find a cup to use for it. I looked in the art school café and they had small cups but they had ridges and a logo that was embossed on to it so I couldn’t use those for my glass, unless I wanted to fill all of the embossed bits with clay. Another option for me was to throw cups on the wheel in clay then I could have personalised them with adding bits and carving things out of them. I then had the sudden realisation of my lack of skills on the wheel, I could have commissioned one of the ceramic students to throw me some but they also have deadlines and weren’t going to want to take a hour or so out of their time to do these for me. I then went to the Zen bar and found coke cups that were smooth and a good size for me to make the mould.

IMG_20150529_144458669[1]The first thing I had to do was to use clay to fix the cups to the board that I would be making the moulds on. After running the clay around the rim of the cup smooth to the board I then proceeded to fill the bottom ridge of the cup so it was a flat bottom. Then I did my second cup and I was then ready to start measuring the plaster and quarts out.

I measured out the litre of water at the 750g of plaster and quarts and started mixing.IMG_20150529_144453965[1] I then had to wait till it had started to thicken up a lot because of doing the moulds like I did in Cork you have the cup upside down. I waited for the plaster quarts mix to start to thicken then it’s a race against time to get an even cover over the entire cup. I realised very fast that I had mixed enough to do both cups in that first mix so very quickly poured blobs on top of the cups, to then start pushing the mix down the cups.

IMG_20150529_145916759[1]My first two moulds were really rushed because of having to do two at the same time so they didn’t turn out very good. One of them when I was tidying up the top broke, I had a moment of thinking I could fix it but just didn’t try because the entire bottom of the mould was going to fall off so just binned it and focused on sorting the only one I had. I then tidied the top gently without putting too much weight on it so I didn’t break this one. I patched a few holes and where it was thin around the base, I re-mixed ¼ of a litre of water with about 190g of plaster and quarts- I couldn’t get 187.5 grams weighed out on the scales so rounded it up. It put what I mixed on to the bottom of the mould just to strengthen it and so that I knew that it was very secure.

IMG_20150601_134532555[1]I then repeated this again but only doing half a litre at a time so that I could just do one cup at a time in a way making myself a production line of moulds. What I found interesting about using paper cups was that as I used them more and more the cups started to warp and become odd shapes so I’m looking forward to seeing how the vessel will look once it is fired and out of the mould.

If I was to do these moulds again I think I would get someone to throw me cup shapes because I think that they would come out a lot better than these ones did. They wouldn’t have warped either but now that I’ve seen the moulds made and fished I actually like the warped cups, but I could have had lots of different shaped cups if I had them made out clay.

Making the Ribbon

Posted: June 2, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Medal Project, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

IMG_20150607_123528047[1]To start making my ribbon I looked at the two ribbons I had in different ways. I cut them up into bits to create strips just to see how I liked it. I decided on the red ribbon with the blue in half on the top. These were the other ones I looked at possibly doing:

IMG_20150607_123538765[1] IMG_20150607_123535663[1] IMG_20150607_123532242[1]

I then needed to sew the blue one down I started with little tests of the sewing machine just to make sure it was working ok, I found that it was having a few problems with the machine not fully stitching where it was meant to. Spent a while playing around with the machine trying to get it sorted seeing if it was a few problems but couldn’t figure it out in the end.

IMG_20150530_150549147[1]I left the machine for a while just to see if it was just getting a little hot and sat and tried to hand sew the blue ribbon to the red one but I wanted a silk stitch on it and it just didn’t look right being sewn by hand so I pulled the stitches out and just did a running stitch down the side mainly to hold it into place for using the sewing machine. I set up the sewing machine again and did a few test stitches again to check it was going to be ok and set off with my sewing.

IMG_20150530_161122030[1]I’m actually really happy with how the ribbon turned out I really like how the colours work together with the blue, red and black. I’m a little annoyed with some of the stitching because some of the stitched spread themselves out while the machine was going so I didn’t see it till after it had been stitched.