Glassfusing.com.au in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory | Arts and crafts shop

Glassfusing.com.au

Locality: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

Phone: +61 421 444 291

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• Commercial and industrial
• Retail company
• Arts and crafts shop

24.01.2022 The only time I've ever been more nervous cutting glass than tonight was the first time I ever cut glass.. but here is 3 full sheets of Urobium pink, cut into 12 handy sheets, 10 going off to a very lucky customer

23.01.2022 Howdy Folks, We have just put some bumpons on the bottom, and can present the final results from the pot melt and slice project. All up this was 5 firings (one firing had to be made twice due to kiln operator error, 696c is not as good as 796c for a short full fuse), we did a little faster than normal on the full fuse soak to preserve the deepest parts of the surface finish, which look fantastic in person, not so much in pictures (but we gave it a go). Enough of my babbling, here are the pictures.

23.01.2022 And a better photo of the finished product

22.01.2022 Howdy Folks, Just two quick notices before we relax for the evening: The calander competition closes tonight at midnight..ish. We'll start the judging process tomorrow night, so if you are running late with an entry please try to get it in before then... a quick reminder of the rules and regulations: Everyone who enters the competition will receive a calendar even if their work is not selected for inclusion.... Everyone who enters will have a photo of their work published in a special gallery of the glassfusing.com.au website, for all the world to see and admire. Everyone whose work is included in the calendar will also receive a prize directly from us, you too can look (almost) as good as Bec does in her Glassfusing Polo shirt, or far better than Ashley looks in his. There will also be a special prize for the People’s Choice (when the entries are posted on the website there will be a voting system) This year calendars will also be available for sale, at whatever the cost of printing is. We do not make money from the competition (quite the opposite actually), and will not seek to profit from your images. What are the rules? The work must be fused/slumped/cast/draped/melt.. it must be a piece of art glass You must have made the work yourself. No pieces made during courses or formal workshops are allowed. You must be ok with us putting a watermark on your work for the website gallery and for the calendar, we put it somewhere out of the way, but it is there. A maximum of two entries per person is allowed. By entering the competition, you agree to having the photo displayed in the published calendar, on the Glassfusing.com.au website and those of our suppliers. Any published photos will be attributed to you by name. You need to submit an image suitable for printing (minimum 300 dpi) for consideration. Nice lightning helps, as does a clean background. The pieces will be judged solely on the basis of the submitted photo. There is no cash value or advantage to entering the competition. It is simply for fun and of course, if successful, gives you bragging rights with your relatives and friends. The judges' decision will be final, even if they display a total lack of understanding, reasonableness or logic. This year the judging panel will consist of an expert panel of glass artists.. well, a panel of glass artists well, the Glassfusing.com.au team. If you would like to enter the competition, please send the images of your glass and associated information to [email protected] by 11:59pm on Monday the 31st of OCTOBER. Phew.. sorry for the wall of text. And Lastly; We are having a sale to celebrate having run Glassfusing.com.au for 2 years, which starts tomorrow and will run for a week. Mainly glass accessories and accessory glass will be on sale. Thanks for reading, this was a lot longer than our normal posts. Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

22.01.2022 Hi folks! As promised in our last update, we have put a new project video up on Youtube this morning. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/u8U0dnDwYtU This is a video of creating three similar versions of coral bowls, but each uses a different density of glass to create a different effect.... We have changed things up for this video, showing the final products at the start.. please let us know if you like to see them at the beginning, or rather see them after all the work has been done. These are lovely simple projects, easy to create and they don't don't much raw material (half a handy sheet each). We hope you all have a good week. Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

22.01.2022 Well.. we weren't expecting that. Many of you will have recieved an email from Uroboros this morning, announcing that they too are going out of business. You can find the full details here: http://www.uroboros.com/announcements.php?id=56 We are saddened by the news, and our thoughts go out to Eric and their entire Uroboros Glass team.... We hope they can find a willing buyer, we would miss their colour depth and patterns greatly if they can't. As importantly we will miss working with their fantastic team, from the glass makers through to the admin staff; We have never had anything less than an amazing experience dealing with Uroboros... to top it off, we just love their glass. Our stocking level for Uroboros sheet glass is as high as we could make it, most glasses will be on our shelves for the next 2-3 years, and stringers/noodles and rods we currently hold (or have on the way) 2 years worth. The upshot is that we have stock enough on hand to give the industry time to recover. Once again in mourning... Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

21.01.2022 Hi Folks, We are still processing the announcement that Spectrum will be closing its doors. We are primarily a 96 COE shop, and our two major manufactures are Uroboros and Spectrum.... at the moment. As you can imagine this will be a testing time. As we said in our newsletter yesterday, we will continue to support Uroboros if they can get back on their feet, we were also planning on again selling Wissmach glass since they have resumed production. This was meant to be an addit...ional line, but they may become very important to us, very quickly. We will be up late tonight working with our wholesalers and with companies directly to ensure the future of 96 COE glass in Australia. We currently have over 10000 square feet of glass in stock, thousands more on the way and our wholesalers have hundreds of thousands of square feet on their shelves. Spectrum glass is not going to run out quickly, we do have time to transition. Glassfusing.com.au is not going anywhere. We will continue to provide glass, materials and accessories for many years to come. We will update everyone as soon as we have solid information. Kind regards, Ashley and Bec

21.01.2022 New project time! This time we have gone with a segmented pattern bar melt, and it will have two Youtube videos to go with it (the first is up already, the second will be going up tomorrow night... just waiting on the last of it to come out of the kiln). The first video is here (or you can search for glassfusing.com.au)... https://youtu.be/hWYRC7RVEYE We get a new camera in the middle of this video, and unfortunately when the old one died (a miserable death) it took most of the photos with it, but fortunately the video was being filmed from two cameras. We start this project with a handy sheet of Black, and a handy sheet of white and finish with a single plate after only 3 firings, plus a lot of fiddling around. First cut your handy sheets into strips approximately 25mm wide. Tack fuse them in piles of alternating colours, 8 high. Only a very light tack fuse is required. Then slice them into pieces (we did 42mm and 50mm long ones) Artfully arrange them within some dams Fire to 819 and hold for 45 minutes to let them flatten out Slump into a design of your choice (the dams need to be sized to fit your project, and you will end up with around 1.25kg of glass, so at 8mm thick the project can have an area of 600cm2) We have included the full firing guides in the description of the video, but as usual.. this worked in our kiln, you may have to change it slightly for yours. The second video will cover what we did with the Blue ones. Thanks for reading, and I encourage you to watch the video (the production values are increasing with practice). We will have a dedicated camera for photos in the next project, but hopefully these ones will encourage you to watch the video.

17.01.2022 Hi Everyone, It has been another 10 days since our last update, but all has been quiet. Bullseye's 10 day ordered halt was extended to 20 days.. but there is nothing much else to report other than scuttlebutt. We have received our latest shipment today, and with it comes bad news. The keen eyed will have noticed that our prices went up. We usually like to give notice before we put them up, but in this case we simply couldn't, for a number of reasons: We are at historically l...ow levels of stock due to the recent splurge, so we don't have our usual buffer. We have just purchased an extraordinary amount of glass at a time when we don't have a great exchange rate.. and finally; The manufacturers have increased their pricing (Uroboros by a lot, Spectrum by a little). We have kept the rise to as little as possible, most glass is around the same price as it has been for the past year, but selected Uroboros glass is considerably more expensive. On a positive note, since we have now ordered just about all the Spectrum glass we will ever be able to, the Spectrum glasses will stay the same price until we run out. We hope Uroboros will lower their prices once they have sorted themselves out, if they do, we will lower ours too. We will have the glasses that we ran out of back in stock over the next day or two, there is a lot to unpack. Kind regards Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

16.01.2022 Howdy Folks, we are thinking about what to do for our next demonstration project, and will be taking better photos and some video of this one (the first one was a project the kids made to send to Gordon and Sally, so we didn't do a lot of documenting). We are tossing up between a rectangular pot melt, which will then be sliced to create some extra interesting glass for a slumping project, or a coral bowl. Thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome.

15.01.2022 Hi folks, Just a very quick update; http://spectrumglass.com/ is worth taking a look at today, they have been purchased in their entirety by another company, and will now be produced in Mexico. The current owners and some staff will be training them on production for a few months and then we expect Spectrum glass to be as avaliable as it always has been. We have another 12000ish square feet on the way at the moment, which will give us two years worth of stock on hand of the A...merican made glass. We are fully confident that there will be no interruption of supply that anyone of our customers will notice. Uroboros also made an announcement today : http://www.uroboros.com/announcements.php?id=55 They will also hopefully be fully back online early next year, but we currently have around 12 months worth of their glass on the shelves... so again, there should be no interruption to supply. Now were are off to continue our honeymoon. Thanks for your support Ashley and Bec

15.01.2022 As promised in our Newsletter, here is a little project our kids did a couple of weeks ago, with the Mini Scrap Master and some Cast-a-cab hearts. This is a great project to clear up some of your scrap, and turn it into something you can sell, or just something fun and easy to do with younger kids. Firstly, you need between 1.1 and 1.3oz of glass per heart, at least half should be clear. Try to add it to the Scrap Master in alternating layers (a dash of opal with primarily tr...ansparent and clear glass works best for us) Next, coat your moulds with whatever you prefer, we use MR-97 (or ZYP Lubricoat) but Primo works just as well. Next, position the cast-a-cab heart mould in your kiln, and place the Scrap Master over it, it should fit loosely, aim to have it centered as much as possible. Then fire it as follows (in Celsius): Ramp at 230 to 904, hold for 60 Ramp at full speed, to 815, hold for 30 Ramp at full speed to 510 (annealing point), hold for 90 Ramp at 40 to 440, hold for 10 Ramp at 40, to 290, hold for 5. This firing schedule takes around 14 hours.. so have a coffee or something.

12.01.2022 Hi Everyone, a quick status update. We have successfully placed our largest ever Spectrum order! This order brings all of our products to a level that we expect them to be in stock for approximately 2 years (based on our last 12 months sales, and factoring in the same growth we have seen over the past 2 years). We will maintain this level until our suppliers run out of stock (speaking to our main suppliers, they are also trying to build at least 6 months buffer). We remain c...onfident that an alternative manufacturer will be up and running long before we run out. We have been understandably inundated with orders over the past few days (3 weeks worth of normal orders in 4 days), and we have a bit of a backlog (not helped by our interrupted Friday, Tait continues to improve and is almost back to himself today) We do still have one order from Friday that has not been sent, although it is now packed, and we hope to get all of the orders that came in over the weekend out tomorrow, maybe even some from today. Sorry for the long update, but today has been a 16 hour day for both of us, we still have more that needs to be done tonight, and I think I'm rambling a little. Cheers, and have a good night. Ashley and Bec

12.01.2022 Wow, what a Wednesday. Due to circumstances beyond our control we had to update the website back-end infrastructure this afternoon. This usually happens around once a year, and we plan it carefully for around 2 weeks, and build a full test website to make sure it runs smoothly when we do the actual upgrade. Today, we planned for 30 seconds, and updated the live website. Hence we were offline for a few hours this afternoon/evening. We have tested it as best we can (both Bec an...d I are currently sick), but if you do see something that isn't right, please let us know and we will fix it up. Sorry about the lack of notice, but our ISP suggested we upgrade immediately to close a potential vulnerbility. Positive news; Our latest, and biggest ever, shipment will be in Canberra on Friday, all the glasses and accessories we are currently sold out of will be back in stock by Monday. Ashley and Bec

12.01.2022 Hi Folks! The newsletter is running a couple of days late.. we are hanging out for the shipment to arrive so that we can announce all the exciting new stuff immediately instead of waiting for a month. To help make our lives miserable our hosting company migrated our website today just after 2pm, and it is finally back online properly again, after only two complaint calls. Unfortunately we have not received any emails since 2pm, so if you have tried to get in touch this aftern...oon, your email has become a sacrifice to the internet gods, please send it through again. Sorry about the hassle, and if anyone was having trouble getting onto the website today.. at least we all now know why. We'll get the newsletter out this week either way, but hopefully we will have new items, new glasses and a whole new glass supplier to announce. Thanks for reading Ashley and Bec

09.01.2022 Hi folks, We have been enjoying our break down here in the usually lovely, but currently amazingly hot, Canberra and we have been fortunate enough to have several of you pop around for a chat and to see our recent massive glass shipment as we try and get it stored on the shelves. It has been a very busy time for us and our boys, but we are enjoying spending some quality time with each other and trying not to work much. We are looking forward to the new year, and hope that you... are too. Why the post this morning? We can finally tell you that Uroboros has been purchased by Oceanside GlassTile, and they will begin production in the new year. you can find the announcement here : http://www.uroboros.com/announcements.php?id=57 We hope you have all had a lovely christmas and that you are enjoying some time off. We would also like to wish you a happy new year. Rebecca and Ashley Glassfusing.com.au

05.01.2022 Hi folks, I'm always coming here with good news... but at least this one is not as bad as all the other recent updates have been. We have recently been targeted and exploited by a spam mailing group. They successfully used our Email domain to send a thousand or so malicious emails to primarily French email addresses. Luckily we recieved notification quickly and were in a position to stop it within 30 minutes. None of that is good, but it also isn't anything to worry about (fr...om your side of the fence). We don't store your financial details on our website, that is all handled by Paypal. We also use a hashed and salted database to store your username, password, address and order history, and we can find no evidence that it has been accessed or copied (it is held in a different part of the server to shield it from attacks). While we blocked their access quickly, we need to overhaul the 90Dichroic.com.au website to prevent it happening again, so I have taken it offline until it is updated, which may take all weekend. I will also be updating the Glassfusing.com.au website, but that is a much quicker and easier task as it is almost completely up to date, and was not the source of the compromise. Feel free to get in touch in you have any concerns. Thanks for your support, Ash and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

03.01.2022 Hi Everyone, It has been 10 days since our last update, and what a 10 days it has been. We have seen extremely promising statements from Uroboros ( http://www.uroboros.com/announcements.php?id=48 ) alongside extremely unsettling news from Bullseye ( http://www.bullseyeglass.com//bullseye-glass-responds-to-c ) with some more baffling news today ( http://www.bullseyeglass.com//bullseye-proposes-new-produc ).... What they expect to gain from arguing with a government Depart...ment is beyond my level of thinking, but worth a shot? We have consolidated our stocking levels, made our eyes go square looking at spreadsheets all night, and placed another order today to maintain our target 2 year stocking level after the minor panic over the past two weeks. We are expecting our next shipment to arrive on the 31st, and to clear customs by the following Monday. This good news comes with the bad news is that we are currently sold out of several varieties of glass, but the incoming shipment will resolve this... temporarily. We expect to run out of several colours again in 4-6 weeks, but this will again be temporary, and resolved when the next ship arrives in 2-3 months. We are only going to be sold out due to the increased demand over the past few weeks, and have successfully ordered glass to replace everything recently sold (and more). Our short term shortages are not a sign of the coming apocalypse, just a failure to anticipate increased demand. Excellent news to wrap things up. 90dichroic.com.au is now running again! We don't have as much Tekta as we would have liked, but it should be enough to get us through until the aforementioned ship arrives. Thanks for reading, we are still not going anywhere, and anticipate providing your fused glass supplies for years to come. Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

02.01.2022 Hi again folks! As promised, we have now finished the pot melt and slicing project, and have some photos here, plus a youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqnM-kaPA6g I would highly recommend watching the video to get more details, there is only so much I can write on a facebook post.... In this project we used 2.2kg of glass (most of it scrap) 1 firing for the melt, another firing for the cabachons, and the plate will take another 2 firings. The cabachons were made out of 3cm cubes, and 1.5x3cmx3cm half cubes. the cubes of glass are the leftovers, eventually you can't take more slices out of your slab without breakage.. plus we already had enough slices for our plate, so cabachons made sense. We wanted to produce the plate for you today, but it won't be finished until the weekend, we will add another post before Monday with what the primary piece of this work looks like, but we wanted you to see this before the newsletter comes out tomorrow. Starting for the beginning, we used a 20cm wide Terracotta pot from our closest hardware store, and put some extra 20mm holes in it, and filled it with glass. The slab we created was almost 20cm long, and 15 cm wide, 3cm deep. I gloss over it in the video, but if you were wondering, 1 litre of glass weighs about 2.5kg, so first you need to work out the volume of the piece you want, then you can work out how much glass you will need. The best part about this project is that you don't need any shelf primer! We use 3mm fibre paper for the base sheet, and 1mm fibre paper for the sides, 17 gauge High Temperature wire secures the dams in place during the firing. The slab came out of the dams without a problem. The firing schedule we used was: ramp at 230 to 900 hold for 90 ramp at full to 815 hold for 60 ramp at full to 510 hold for 90 ramp at 150 to 440 hold for 10 ramp at 150 to ambient. The Cabachons were fired on papyros, and we made little ramps to give some of them interesting shapes, the rest we let become circles. Would we do anything differently next time we do a video project? Yep, I need to take longer pauses between sentences to make the editing easier/smoother, and we need a microphone...but we'll get better (and we'll replace the go-pro..... don't hold them on the tripod with tape, spend 5 minutes and find the adapter). Thanks for reading, and hopefully watching, please let us know what you think. Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

02.01.2022 The final slump of the segment patterns project is still cooling, so I thought I would put up a quickie video of cutting up a box worth of 100 SFICE. If you would like to see other quick videos of our day to day work, please let us know.

02.01.2022 Hi everyone, It has been a month since our last facebook update, and I do apologise. This has been a trying time for most of us, full of stress and worry, and unfortunately that simply won't stop anytime soon. We have no updates regarding the American glass industry that we haven't already published here or in our newsletter, all I can say is that we have done all we can to ensure the continued availability of fusible glass in this country for as long as possible.... We continue to hold out hope that Uroboros and Wissmach thrive given their new opportunities born out of Spectrum's closure, and that Bullseye can also get through this period. In brighter news, the number of orders has come back down to normal levels, which has allowed us time to play with glass again, and our next project video is well on its way to being finished (for some reason we decided to complete three projects in one video.... all three are fused, one is currently slumping and the other two will slump tomorrow)... but I ran into a problem firing them as we stole the recently built controller off our primary kiln to get someone else firing again ASAP. This gave us the chance to make a quick "how to build a kiln controller" video, which if you are interested can be found here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgOai6JHExs (or click the box below). I stress repeatedly in the video that an electrician is required before it gets connected to power, if you do build a kit please get it checked before using it. We will be posting again regularly from now on, and making the project videos will be a high priority for us. Happy fusing Ashley and Bec Glassfusing.com.au

02.01.2022 Today is not going to be a good day for getting orders on their way to you. We were both up very late, and then this morning our Tait has had an allergic reaction to his new binoculars (he should be fine, just miserable). We are taking turns sitting with him watching daytime TV, some orders will be posted today, but not as many as normal. We apologise for the delay this will cause for some orders that came in yesterday and today.