Introduction

Jewelry making provides the creator with the ability to express her taste, moods, and talent into handmade wearable artwork. Fusing art glass is a very unique craft that results in brilliant, fascinating and magnificent jewelry pieces. The success of your jewelry is a result of your choice of materials, flair for design, and skill level.

Fusing is the process of stacking two or more layers of glass and heating them in a kiln until they melt into a single unit. By adjusting the temperature of the kiln and the length of time the glass is in the kiln, the creator can achieve very different effects.

Dichroic Glass

Dichroic glass is the most popular glass for jewelry making. Dichroic is a special coating placed on glass which was originally designed for the aerospace industry. Dichroic glass has a transmitted color and a completely different reflective color. These two colors shift and blend depending upon your angle of view.

In order for the glass to fuse successfully and not crack over time, the glass pieces must be compatible with one another. Compatible means that the glass will expand and contract at the same rate when it is heated and cooled. There are many types of glass, and most are not compatible with each other. For this reason, glass manufacturers label the compatibility of the glass by co-efficient of expansion (COE), the standard measurement of expansion of the heated glass.

Dichroic glass comes in two different COEs, 90 and 96, and is sold in 1/8” (standard) thickness and 1/16” (thin) and can be purchased in 12” square hobby sheets. It comes in a large variety of colors, and can be opalescent or transparent, with smooth or textured finishes. If you are just beginning, you can purchase starter packs that include a variety of glasses. Below are some samples of base, dichroic and clear glasses.

This picture shows samples of COE 90 base glass in various colors and textures.

Here are some beautiful and interesting textured dichroic glass sheets.

These dichroic glass pieces have patterns similar to those in fabrics.

This illustrates a solid opaque sheet of glass with a clear overlay.