We call this design – a really popular design with customers – Sunrise Anticipation. We started making Sunrise Anticipation designs over a decade ago and its still a favourite, especially now as yellow is such a popular colour. Yellow is everywhere nowadays!
Look at your local shopping centre and you can see everything in yellow, from yellow prom dresses,yellow umbrellas, yellow nail polish, yellow overcoats and shirts, cushions and outdoor furniture! Yellow seemed to me to be the colour of 2018 (and not ultramarine as predicted by Pantone. 2019 will be coral according to Pantone – more about my thoughts on coral next week. You can learn the difference a yellow ceiling/wall or floor will make in your decor when you read this fascinating article by DSource.
My design starts with clear glass blank in the size of the finished piece. In this case I was making an enormous fruit platter to sit as the feature centrepiece on a dining area. The base glass is 33cms x 44cms (that’s 12.99 inches by 17.3 inches) I then cut the 4 rectangles of Sunflower Yellow Opaque Art glass very carefully so the joins meet perfectly. Can you see in the 4th picture the clear glass separator which is an integral part of this design? I like to keep the centre design feature completely separate so that it stands alone and is framed by clear first, and then the opaque frame on the outside.
After I’ve built the basic piece this is almost all 6mm thick, which is two layers of glass thick except the centre rectangle of this platter which is only one layer of clear glass thick. I then cut up the appropriate colours for this design and add them only to the centre rectangle. I have already created what we call “part sheets” you’ll see the red and clear strip pieces in there. I sometimes use this structure for a design that I call “Lady In Red”, if you like I’ll show you how I make this in another blog. Can you see this here clearly enough? I hope so.
The next image you can see is after two different full fuse firings. I fully fuse all the pieces in the centre and when that is flat and perfect I add the black stringers. I like the stringers to be perfectly 100% straight, and the only way I’ve worked out to achieve that is to add a 2nd firing at this stage. If I added the stringers to the separate pieces of coloured glass they rise and fall around the different levels of the coloured centre and end up being wavy. This is not the look I’m going for. I really think its worth the extra time and work to achieve this crisp black contrast on top of the bright yellow and orange centre feature piece.
When I am happy with everything that I’ve made so far, the edges and corners are absolutely exactly how I want them to look, then I’ll slump it into the desired shape that the customer has requested. In this case, they have chosen one we call The Jackson.
I wonder what colours you’d like to see put together? If you’d like me to create one for you, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you, and thank you for reading to the end!
jenie x
Tags: Australian made autumn colors bright yellow commission fruit platter huge fruit platter huge yellow fruit platter Melbourne made orange orange red yellow pantone yellow
