The older elementary art students made Glass Fused Mirrors as their last project of the year.

Working with glass is always fun and a bit challenging.  We started by going over the basic of how glass fusion works and some safety rules:

Glass Cutting

• Cut on smooth side.
• First cut is a score line – cut from one edge to the next.
• Hold it straight up and down to make contact with glass.
• Use running pliers to break the glass – To adjust the pliers, screw it on then back off a bit. Works best when equal amounts on both sides of the pliers. For multiple lines, start in the middle and break into halves.
• If it doesn’t break, flip over and try on same line from the backside.

Layer glass pieces smooth side up to avoid bubbles.

Glue: Super glue burns off at 400 degrees. Glue on edges not center so it has a way to escape.

Sharpie: Black Sharpie burns off. Colors do not.

Glass Frames

We then made our glass frames. We did this by constructing two layers and tack fusing them together and adding embellishments.  As a final touch, I glued mirrors to the back of the frames.

As you can see, they turned out beautiful.