We’ve done Silver Fuming, so today, we’re going to encase the silver fuming!
I love encasing my silver fuming! You never know what’s going to happen!
Let’s get to it! Remember to always, always wear you mask with fuming!
I do want to say, I always do research on what I’m going to demo (for additional ideas or usages) and with encasing silver fuming… it was a total waste of time. Everything I found was about borosilicate glass.
So… if you are exploring lampworking soft glass techniques… make sure your information is about soft glass. Some borosilicate workers call working with boro glass lampworking. I usually think of boro as flameworking but I think it’s just the way the individual was taught. :)
Back to encasing silver fuming glass…
You have to be willing to be flexible with your results because, just like silver glass… it all depends what color the glass is, how thickly you encase it with clear and how much heat you use to apply your clear.
TIP: Too much heat will burn off the silver if the encasing is too thin.
Here’s my 1st video…I’m showing some of my practice beads with encasing & silver fuming…
Second video below…This video shows you different ways to encase silver fuming.
Here are things I do with this Silver Fuming technique…
1. I use colored transparent glass a lot with my sea environments. I fume a couple of times to get a really heavy layer of silver… then I encase heavily with clear or light transparent colors. I like that iridescence created by the silver being caught between the layers of transparent glasses in my sea worlds. It actually looks like that underwater… when the sun reflects through the water.
TIP: Soft glass seems to really lose the silver fuming easily so it’s better to go heavy in the beginning. The down side to heavy silver fuming is it tends to go milky sometimes.
2. I like the fumed silver caught under a bubble. Really cool effect.
3. I tend to layer the silver fuming with transparent glasses… multiple times and even swirl and deform the molten glass.
4. I like fuming to get unusual colors of glass that you can’t get otherwise. TRY… reds, oranges and black for cool reactions with silver.
5. I use silver fuming with the dark ivory and other reactive glasses a lot.
Things to think about when using silver fuming on your beads…
1. You have to plan what you want to remain shiny silver and what you are going to encase on your bead. Re fuming clear discolors it… so you have to preplan your bead.
2. Be aware how much heat you have to apply to form your bead and if that will burn out your encased silver fuming. If it does… you need to use more encasing.
I do like to have shiny and encased silver fuming, so I have to think about the end results I want before I build my sea worlds.
3. I think silver fuming is very similar, result wise, to silver glass and a lot cheaper to play around with. Practice with silver fuming for silver reducing effects.
4. I like to do test beads where I put 4-6 colors of glass in stripes on the bead and then silver fume the entire bead. You can see what the fuming does to each color of glass. Heavy fuming will just turn the whole bead silver.
5. Repeat the process but encase the fumed bead. I think you just need to do heavy fuming with encasing because the silver burns off so easily. You better write down what colors you use cause they really change colors when you fume them.
Well, all you need to do now is get on your torch and start practicing and experimenting!
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I use silver fuming, silver glass and reducing, striking and encasing plus a few more techniques in this Ocean World…sold
I use silver fuming, silver glass and reducing, striking and encasing plus a few more techniques in this Ocean World…click photo for more details!
Click the Ocean World for a closer peek!
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Want to see Gold Fuming??
Have you tried fuming, yet?…Let me know in the comments!!!!:)
Patsy
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