Bubbles in Glass

Bubbles naturally occur in art glass. It's one of the ways that you can tell

you're purchasing art glass versus a

lower grade of glass such as float or pressed glass.

Although recycled glass is really in vogue & people always ask if

I use recycled glass it sort of makes me chuckle

because the quality is so low & it's hard to work.

Recycled glass is often not even compatible with itself

so the result is cracking, haze,

and generally poor results.

Sometimes, however, an artist might want to create

bubbles within a glass piece.

If you're "painting" with glass & want to make some bubbles

in the sky or water areas of your piece the effects can be cool!

Here's a couple of examples ~ or rather poor examples!

I just threw these into the kiln on a full fuse to see what happened.

The glass piece on the left has Borax sprinkled between the glass layers & the sample on the right has baking soda sprinkled between the layers. The baking soda really bubbled up & the glass was stretched very thin while the borax didn't really react at all. Go figure??

I think I'll keep experimenting because I want to use this effect in some new pieces I'm painting up. Anyone out there have experience with making bubbles? Tell me your techniques!