Tried a different mix for my color frit and got a wild surprise

Honestly, I was just messing around in the studio last Tuesday. I had some leftover cobalt blue frit and a tiny bit of silver foil I usually use for luster. Ngl, I was bored and thought 'what if I just mix them together before I roll the gather?' So I sprinkled maybe a 4 to 1 ratio of blue frit with the silver bits right into my marver dish. When I rolled the hot glass in it and started shaping a simple tumbler, the silver didn't just make a shiny layer. It reacted and created these crazy, tiny webbed cracks all through the blue, like a lightning storm in the glass. It's not a flaw, it's a pattern. Totally stable after annealing. Has anyone else had a reactive surprise like this with mixing metals into frit? I wanna try it with copper now.

2 comments

2 Comments

jenniferwells10h ago

Tiny webbed cracks like a lightning storm" is the kind of happy accident I live for. Sounds like you accidentally invented something cooler than what you were trying to make. I guess boredom is the real mother of invention.

betht3212h ago

That's a cool reaction. Silver foil can do wild things when it gets hot enough to really mix in. Copper might give you a totally different look, maybe more of a reddish web or even a pinkish haze. You could also try a tiny bit of fine gold leaf mixed with a clear frit. It sometimes makes a deep cranberry color. The key seems to be getting the metal super hot so it dissolves instead of just sitting on the surface.