Recycling and Sustainability

In my compact home studio I'm more than aware of the importance of using every 'scrap' of glass.
The artists glass that I use is a premium product from Bullseye Glass and is, like everything else these days becoming increasingly expensive.
In a lot of my projects I'm cutting specific shapes and sizes, which inevitably result in little off cuts and slivers of glass.
To use these up I have a created a range of decorative pendants and attractive bowls.
I carefully assemble colour combinations of both transparent and opaque pieces and high fire them in the kiln to create a wonderful base to work from.
The pendants will be cut from these bases using a tile saw, as they can be up to 12 mm thick, cleaned, placed in the kiln again for a process called 'fire polishing' to smooth and round the edges. I may embellish them further with small floral or insect murrine and fire once again. Finally a jewellery bail and necklet are added to complete.

The process is similar with the bowls, placing a round base into a ceramic mould and fired to a lower temperature allowing the glass to relax and slump into the shape. 

My recycling is not just limited to glass.
Were possible I reuse cardboard boxes and packaging to ship my products to customers.
It may be a small thing, but as they say, every little helps!

Maggie x