Fused Glass - Glass Pendants - Step Two

Fused Glass Pendants are a great project for the novice fused glass artist, as well as those who are familiar with the art of fusing. Making pendants is quite easy, they require very little glass, they are very popular, they look very nice and the success rate for the beginner is very high.

If you have a small tabletop kiln you can easily produce 8 to 10 pendants with a single firing, and if you're careful your finished pendants will require no cold working or re-firing. Your finished pendants will only require an easily attachable bail and they will be ready to wear.

When you decide to make your fused glass pendants, be careful and plan your project before you do anything else. Select a few pieces of contrasting colored glass for your pendants. You don't need a whole lot of glass so small scraps will be fine as long as you can cut the correct sized pieces from them.

Using opaque colors for this project is a good idea as opaque glasses are usually priced lower than some iridized glass or streaky patterned glasses.

If you just starting out with fused glass and your not sure how to cut glass, watch the brief video in the next section before you move along any further.

If you are already familiar with cutting glass just jump down to the next section to find out what sizes you should cut for your pendant project.

The Fused Glass Pendants that we'll be making have a finished size of approximately 1 1/8 inches wide by approximately 1 1/2 inches long. This is a very nice sized pendant that looks good and isn't too heavy to be worn on any necklace you might like.

First select a few colors for your base pieces, these are the background color for your pendants and the pieces should be cut 1 1/4 inches wide, by 1 5/8 inches tall. Check the size of your kiln shelf and cut as many pieces as you can fit on your shelf making sure to leave at least 3/4 inch between the pieces to allow for expansion of the glass. You don't want your pendants to flow together when you fire them.

Next you'll want to cut the second layer of glass for your project. The pieces for the second layer should be cut to 7/8 inches wide by 1 1/4 inches high. Be sure to pay close attention to your measurements for this layer. Cutting the proper sized glass for this layer will help you have success with this project.

The top layer of glass should be cut to 1/2 inch wide by 7/8 inches tall. Once again try to cut your glass as close to the measurements shown to assure your success. If you'd like to experiment a bit you can cut a few of these top layer pieces in half again before assembling your project for firing.

Once you are certain that you have cut all of the required pieces, double check your sizes and place the cut glass into groups of three pieces for each of your pendants. By placing the pieces in these groups you will be able to see that the colors you have chosen will look good when finished and you'll assure yourself that you have three layers of glass for each pendant.

Now you can move on to Step Three!