Time To Evolve..again.

When I start to get bored with making dichroic glass jewelry it's time to do something new. In the very competitive jewelry market you need to try to be as extraordinary as other talented and successful artisans without copying them. When I wanted to experiment with more complex layering techniques I wasn't sure I could splice the more complex shapes without creating lots of divots or air pockets. I wanted to cut more fluid, wavy shapes and splice them together so as to give dimension to the piece. Another way of forcing new designs was to use alot of different materials. So I began ordering deeply textured dichroic glass and finding ways to use the very opaque dichroic glass that I previously disliked because it doesn't permit the underlying glass colors to show through.
Creating templates in Photoshop allows me to make more exacting cuts with my ring saw, but even still I have to meticulously grind and shape the glass to fit as perfectly as possible. I like to create "windows" in the upper layers that allow to shapes and colors of the lower layers to show through. And, as far as the opaque dichro, I just started using it behind a more pale colored glass instead of on top, and the results are very nice.

Now that glass work has gotten exciting again I can only look forward to refining the new ideas and building upon them and, hopefully, expanding them to their full potential. I've shown in this photo a couple of the templates I've used to create the top two pendants shown. The fairy pendant is the result of  layering a pale aqua glass over a sparkly and very opaque dichroic glass with a wavy "ribbon" of opaque mint green through the middle.