Just for fun, I thought I'd take pictures of the pieces I did before and after they got baked in the kiln.
I don't know why I looked at this particular piece and thought, "Hey, that looks like a rabbit!," but I did. So, well, I made a rabbit.
Note here the delicate and pretty pale pink color that goes oh so well with the pink in the dichroic piece of glass that I used as the background behind the bunny...
Now notice how it came out in the kiln: a screeching medium hot pink that doesn't match the dichro at all. What is up with that? But otherwise, it looks like a bunny. Unless you're my teacher, who called it "a deranged burro." Actually, that's pretty funny too.
This piece, I don't really think I knew what to do with it beyond wanting to merge those particular colors together. When I put it together, I thought it looked roughly like a heart, except I had a harder time making a point at the top of the heart with the grinder and fused glass than I had with my previous hearts. I don't know why, really. Some glass seems to grind easier than others.
I thought it still looked heart-ish when it came out of the kiln, but when others saw it, they thought it looked like a cat. Well, I suppose so, I guess... I do have to admit it's in a weird shape. But the shininess comes across very nicely. I am kind of baffled why the top and bottom points came out a different shade when they were obviously the same kind of colored glass before!
This was another fun experiment- I call this one the spaceship. I ended up laying some clear glass behind the white part and behind the second layer of triangles to hold things up, but decided to leave the clear showing behind the colored triangles in the end. I thought the way I had the triangles stacked and overlapping looked really cool.
And this ist how it turned out- I don't think I was quite expecting that. The clearer colors of glass just kind of melted in and don't look as distinct, and you can't really tell on the overlapping. But it does make for a pretty blend of colors, and it still looks spaceshippy, so that's all right.
This was pretty much a quickie one-off- just stack a few together and there you go. It pretty much came out as you'd expect it to, I suppose.

Then there's this piece, which was an experiment because I stuck some matching green bars across the dichro. It came out much more distinct and cartoon-line-y than I was expecting. Also, much rounder than I was expecting. It's always a surprise what pieces stay square/rectangle and what ones don't.
Along the same lines as the previous one (heh), this one drapes some squiggle lines around the dichro to see how they come out. You can't really see them in the picture, though. I am such a suckass photographer, but oh well. Again, the other lines come out pretty cartoon-y.
I was trying to make a piece to replace this one, from memory, but that didn't go very well. The before looks a little "glue-y" because, well, it is- they tell you to glue your pieces with Elmer's to keep them holding together enough to put them in the kiln because the glue boils away or something. It looks rather messy when you try it, though. Anyway, I was really surprised to see the big crayon line around the edges of the green sparkly triangles on the finished product. Oh well...
I found these two pieces in a scrap bin and knew I had to use them, even if they didn't match the colors of anything I was working with. Check out the one on the left in particular- that sucker is NOT flat. I was curious to see what that would do during the fusing process.
The paper sticking out from this piece is fiber paper, which also boils away (or something), but leaves a hole going through the two pieces of glass it's stacked between. That's how you get those holes. It made for an um, interesting hole effect with the (now hot pink) background behind this one. You can't really see the blue squiggle in the final picture too well, unfortunately.
Yet another "tower" motif for me, albeit this was kind of inadvertent. I layered the various pieces of glass in a weird way so that the poking-out blue squiggle could be
balanced enough to sit in the kiln. And yet, the squiggle comes out looking very flat post-kiln, and the back came out a lot more purple when the glass baked than I was expecting. But still,l you can pretty much tell what it is, eh?
After class ended, the teacher told me I have talent and I should keep it up. Very flattering, eh?