Cheered me up a bit :)
So far I think the images are strong but compared to some of the portfolios I've seen so far I just think its a little dull, and I haven't got any ideas of how to spruce it up. To be honest I think I would rather have a portfolio of images.
leave dirty wax in the pot when they have finish, these people are bad people!). As the wax was cooling I used a spoon to break the skin on the wax and scoop some wax out to hollow the mould out a little to save some time when steaming the wax out of the mould, and get the wax to cool quicker. 
Again back on the painting, nothing amazing, might just cut it up and use it in a colleague. I have some more piece of plaster and glass scattered around that I have been working on. Stuck up a few images I took at the British glass biennale in 2008, but no other exciting images. Still need to stick some up.
At the start of week 3 I made a mould to make Sven a twin brother, but not an identical one. When I made the mould I made some space of excess glass by sitting the piece on some rolled out clay and cut around the edges to continue the shape and because the last one I did, I had to spend some time flat bedding the piece so it could be could on the glass band saw. This way I would have to do as much cold working and if I needed some glass cut off I could get it done faster. I used the same mould mix of Plaster, Silica, HT and water but I ended up having to get some more mould mixture after I had poured because I had made the walls around the mould slightly wider than I did the last time. When the mould had dried long enough so I could take away the walls I cleaned up the mould and removed the wax and clay using some tools. When I was happy the mould was clean enough I put the mould in the drying cuboard and left it there until Friday. I wanted to see if I could get more of the copper colour in the glass (without buying the Light Copper Oxide colour of the Gaffer Casting Crystal, which I am considering getting for my final piece of work) so instead of just sieving the copper oxide in I just tipped a load in (I know very technical) then brushed it around the mould to cover all the surfaces, I wanted to put some into the flowerpot reservoir I was using but I've done this before and it makes an orb of colour in the middle of the piece (not really what I wanted). Instead of doing a displacement test I took Sven and weighed him on some scales, he was about 680g. Then I weighed out 680g of glass but it didn't look like very much compared to the size of Sven, so I put and extra 100g in because I thought about hown I had needed to cold work the piece so I'd taken some weight off (not 100g but its better to have more than you need compared to not enough). When I had set every thing up, put the glass in to the flower pot and set up some pieces of kiln shelf to rest it on and put it in the kiln to cast over the weekend. But unfortunately someone must have opened it and forgot to turn it back on or I was a bit of a plum and forgot to turn it on - but I am very sure I turned it on. Anyway when I came in on Monday morning to see how the cast was going I discovered my glass set up just as I had left it (cold and un melted). So I locked the kiln and turned it on checking it repeatedly to check no one was trying to mess with my head....
After looking at this piece I'm starting to lean towards using coloured casting billets to get a consistent colouring throughout the piece, but I could still use copper oxide with the billets to add a bit more colour and detail to the pieces. Not sure yet though, especially as I have moved on to make my forms with a mixture of surface textures.
When I was waiting for the gelflex to melt I used a spray bottle to keep the plaster damp so the plaster doesn't stick to the gelflex.
remake my plaster shape by using my rubbish gelflex mould I have chosen triangles shapes out of, I tried to make them by measuring a right angle triangle that was 1.5 times as big as the original shape making it 19cm x 23cm, the hypotenuse difficult to cut on the band saw, also if I was to make it out of glass it would be too expensive just for testing). As I am not used to working with just plaster (when working with plaster, silica and HT the amount of water is measured in liter, and just working with plaster the water is measured in pint) I estimated at I would need 4 pints of water and about 2.75kg of 
plaster after I set up my mould and I mixed and poured in the plaster the mould collapsed, I managed to pull it back together with a little help but it there wasn't enough plaster to get up the 13cm in depth, so I tried again with the same amounts of plaster unfortunately as the last mould had spilt I didn't find out if there was enough plaster to get to the 13cm point on the inside of my mould. But fortunately this time there were no spillages.
triangular shapes and working on some organic flowing surface decoration/texture. To make the texture on the piece below I just stared carving into the plaster with ceramics and wax carving tools to give a nice organic flowing type of efect. My original idea was to make gelflex of an interesting piece of wood then amke a wax of it, pour plaster over the top to make a block to cut out on the band saw then to melt the wax out to give the imprint of the wood. I may still do this but I really like the texture I have created.
On the left is an image of the gleflex mould I made last semester of a plaster form I had cut and smoother out. At the end of week 2 I made a wax for lost wax casting from this mould and saw that it was staring to look a bit shabby and I realised I should have cast the gelflex into a triangular shape the fit the shape of the plaster model. As I ended up flat bedding off a lot more than I would have liked to on my kiln cast glass piece of the same shape I wanted to try to re make the mould, so I decided to pour plaster into the mould, now looking back on this I don't think I was such a good Idea because as I have been trying to smooth down the edges and it 
had taken a lot of time and effort, and I'm still not happy that the edges arn't completly flat. And as I have been polishing down the sides the shape has been getting smaller and I dont think that it looks as good as the original. I have been thinking about trying to make the piece again using different methods, like re cutting the piece on the band saw by measuring out the shape with a little etra to the size to alow for polishing or another idea I've had is to use alginate to take a mould of the glass piece as I'm happy with the shape and flatness of it then use the alginated to make a new plaster model.
As you can see I have spent some time doing some drawing and painting (not great one though) and I'm soaking some plaster ready to cut up a new shape on the band saw in the week.
pushed the copper oxide out to the corners of the mould, before I put the mould in to the kiln I sievedd the copper oxide power all over the mould to get the blue copper colour all around the piece.
when it had the gel flex mould taken of it, I may make a plaster mould next time I work with these angular shapes so I don't lose too much of the surface colour or detail. But before I could start polishing I needed to remove the overflow from the glass, my original idea was to put the piece in plaster and put the it in to the lap saw but I was worried that the corner with acute angles would chip or break off. I asked around a few people for their opinion, the solution I settled for was to flatten of one of the edges so the bottom of the piece, it needed to be flat and at a 90 so that it could be pushed through the glass band saw.
completely flat after it was cut so I flat bedded where it had been cut off and the other two largest surfaces because they weren't very flat either and there were a few lumps on there too. The glass was flat bedded on a 120grit bed, then polished down the edges on the linisher so that they wouldn't be so weak or chip too. I left the smaller surfaces because I wanted to keep some of the cast surface and colour, when I flat bedded the piece I ground away a lot of colour trying to get the piece flat.
it some more. I need to get more practice polishing ready for when I make my piece to display at the degree show and new designers.
dels, the largest piece of wood and the knife were used to get the pieces out of the sand after it had been cast, there is a small stick for poking air holds around the mould and water because it was really hot in there.
on. When I had sieved out enought sand Simon used a piece of wood to flatten out the surface of the sand ready to push my plaster pieces into the sand.
Because the sand was wet it needed to be dried out before I could get glass poured into my moulds, to dry them off I used a blow torch to for a few minuets, for the first couple of minuets there was a lot of steam coming out of the moulds, so I kept going until there was almost no steam. Then I sieved a small amount off copper oxide into a couple of the moulds to compare to the kiln cast pieces that had copper oxide in too.
the glass heat up the top of the glass so that it would smooth out.
plastic sheet over the tray to keep the moisture in the sand. It took about 24 hours for the kiln to get to a low enough temperature for me to be able to take them out, and after I had taken them out they were still quite hot, so I was unable to clean the pieces in water but I was able to use a wire brush to dust away some of the sand that got stuck to the glass. To the right is an image of the results of my sand casting attempt, the two larger ones that look darkest are the ones I had copper oxcide in, the rest are just clear glass and the one in the middle of the smalles pieces is the piece I cast without spraying any grafite into the sand. I really enjoyed the process and was happy with the result, I plan on making some more plaster models to make a range of shapes to test with sand casting.
