A little stumble....

 Today I had a meltdown, like a six year old might, when my project didn't end up looking how I wanted it to look!

The day started well with me managing to scrounge some nuts and bolts off my Husbands friend - I am trying very hard not to purchase a single thing towards the making of this clock, so if I don't personally have what I need I will ask other people if they have it.  If they don't I will have to rethink my plan.

I then had to mark off where to drill on my ring, and the piece that would sit underneath, and find a drill bit large enough to accommodate the bolt.  My first attempt at drilling a hole wasn't massively successful as the wood all chipped badly on the back.

So I gripped it to the underneath piece and decided to drill them together.  This didn't work well either as the wood then just chipped under the second bit.

So I then drilled right through both and into a scrap piece of wood.  This worked!

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again.... as they say.

I didn't want the bolts to be black, so I drilled a load of holes in a scrap of wood to stand them up in while I spray painted them.  I also painted the two pieces of wood as the same time to hide all the chipped holes.

Once the paint was dry it was time to work on the wording.

My daughter had come up with a nice slogan that I thought would work well.  I wanted the word 'Time' in it, and also the word 'Waste'.

"Don't call time on the earth, reused, don't waste"

I liked this so I then proceeded to write it on the ring, in-between the screw holes.

And this is where my meltdown began..... why I even attempted it in the first place is beyond me, I know my handwriting is complete scrawl.

I type, I have no need to write.  Maybe that's a skill I should work on for the future.

The worst bit was, I didn't actually have my meltdown at this point, where it would have been much easier to rectify... no, I waited until I had glued all the wood into place on the glass bottles and screwed all the bolts tightly into place too.  THEN I decided to have my tantrum.

I decided to pour myself a rather large glass of wine and put it all away to deal with another day.

Thanking the Kiln Gods.

  The Kiln Gods were good to me overnight, when I opened the lid of 'big blue' my faithful kiln I was so relieved to see a piece that had worked how I wanted it to.  Always a risky business using recycled glass.

It had slumped down pretty evenly and the numbers had worked.  Big thumbs up all round.

So, off I went to my craft shed to find a clock mechanism that I know I have somewhere as I save all sorts of stuff for 'just-in-case'.

Instead of just finding a mechanism, I actually found a clock kit that someone had gifted me a few years back... now my idea had evolved somewhat, I could use this piece to add something else to the design.

The kit consisted of a wooden clock base, along with a wooden ring and the clock part.

I decided that the ring needed to be bright red... like a warning ring, to warm people about time ticking away to save our planet.

So I painted it all red.

I am going to give it another couple of coats, then work out how to assemble it all!

Deciding on a layout for my clock.

  Sometimes I have a determined plan in my head about where a design should end up, and other times  (most others) I just see how the pieces fit together and how much I like the look.

Not just with glass, but also with quilting and crochet, I will lay out a design, take a photo, move it around, take a photo...numerous times.  Then I go and make a cup of tea and flick through the photos, finally choosing a design/layout that way.

You seem to get a different view through a camera, you can certainly spot flaws and mistakes more in a photograph I think.

So I laid my bottles out in the kiln...

Then I decided that I really did need numbers, at least on some of them.

Using some old copper sheet that I had rescued from a fire pit, hence the beautiful colours on it, and cut it up.

I decided on Roman Numerals as it would be much easier to cut straight lines of copper sheets, rather than cut around shaped numbers.

I don't know where my head was when I did this, as I cut enough pieces to make up numbers 1, 3, 6 and 9, it wasn't until I was placing them that I realised I need a 12 instead of a 1.  thank goodness I caught that in time!

So, back to the kiln and laying out a design.

I finally settled on the middle design, it was a difficult decision which I pondered over for sometime.

The bottom design used all 12 bottles, which equated to the 12 numbers on a clock, but it just seemed a little bulky, plus I thought if I halved the use of the green bottles it would leave enough for another art piece in the future perhaps,

The kiln lid is now tightly shut and heating up nicely to fuse all the pieces together.   Fingers crossed!

Experimenting with what I have....

  Because I cannot really totally sustainably make a piece of glass art, I am going to head down the route of making a piece that will raise awareness.   I am also only going to use things that I already have. I am determined not to purchase anything extra but work around design issues to find a solution.

I have decided to make a clock - to show that time is ticking away for the planet and that we, as consumers, need to act now to help keep it safe.

The clock will be made out of the mini wine bottles, I have a clock part in my box of oddments that I can use.... the design will come to me as I put it together.  I have a rough idea of a design, but sometimes when working with glass - especially recycled glass, you have to roll with the punches and change the design at the drop of a hat.

I thought I might like to put some numbers on the clock, so while the kiln was on and melting the wine bottles flat, I added some little pieces of broken bottle to the corner with different things added to try and see if I could make marks.

The results weren't as pleasing as I had hoped, The Reichenbach green wasn't too bad but I would have  need a good thick layer before it looked decent, and the thicker I had it the more chance there would be of it cracking as the two glass types weren't compatible.

The mica powder just brushed right off, off the top fired piece and the piece with it underneath, which I found surprising.

The silver luster was very disappointing, I expected it to turn a nice dark metallic silver and it did ... nothing!

So that left the copper sheet piece. Now I know that copper sheet works well when sandwiched between two layers of glass, but didn't actually think it would adhere when just placed underneath - so this was a pleasant surprise.

Hopefully, I have found the way now to add numbers to my clock.  Happy days!