How To Make A Cast Glass Pendant
In A Glass Fusing Mold

The glass is kiln formed in a commercial casting mold and produces a pendant 1.75 inches wide.

Frit castings can also be made with this mold.

Small pieces of clear glass are used to line the bottom of the mold, patterned transparent and opaque glass are laid over the clear glass with small pieces of clear glass used to cap the pendant. Gaps in the top layer are filled with pieces of medium frit.

This pendant is made from scrap glass; always keep your scrap as you can use it in many different ways.

The pendant can be made from Bullseye or System 96 fusing glass.

There are a number of ways to make the small pieces you will need. You can cut them with a glass cutter, break them off with grozing pliers or use wheeled glass nippers.

I find it is easier to use wheeled glass nippers as you can nip the pieces in half very quickly if you need to.

Safety glasses must be worn when cutting the glass pieces. If you are using mosaic nippers cut along the edge of the glass so that you can control the size of the glass pieces. Try to hold your hand around the glass so that the cut pieces fall into your hand.

If you have a pair of safety gloves wear one on the hand catching the glass, many nipped pieces will have needle sharp ends. Use tweezers when placing pieces into mold.

On a general note wheeled glass nippers are a very handy tool to have in your tool kit, glass rods can be nipped to length, pieces easily cut from glass edges, glass strips can be quickly cut into pieces, these are just a few of the jobs these nippers will do.

For this project you will need the following:

Wheeled mosaic nippers or grozing pliers.

Glass cutter.

Fusing mold.

Kiln Wash.

Glass fusing kiln.

Proceed as follows:

Step 1. Apply kiln wash to fusing mold.

Step 2. Cut glass into pieces.

Step 3. Place clear glass into bottom of dry mold.

Step 4. Put pieces of opaque and patterned glass over bottom layer.

Step 5. Apply clear top layer, build glass up slightly towards the center to help counter shrinkage. This happens because the glass tends to compact down into the mold and may end up two thirds of its original thickness.

Generally the smaller the pieces the less they will compact.

300 F (150C)/hour up to 1470 F (799 c).

Hold 20 minutes.

Check to ensure that glass is fully fused.

If glass fusing is complete turn off glass kiln.

Allow to cool to room temperature and then remove.

This type of mold is ideally suited for producing a large pendant as extra glass layers will increase the size and weight of the finished art glass jewelry piece.