PINEAPPLE SAMPLES!

Holey Pineapple Slice, Batman! Am I excited about the up-coming Fruit of the Month Workshop!

We'll be making pineapples - and I have some samples now to show you! I threw these together somewhat quickly so that I could get the photos posted and an email sent out to you; but I'm sure with your own unique style, some time and patience, you will come up with something simply mahvelous!

The smaller round dish (6" diameter) is the primary project for the May Fruit of the Month Workshop. The full size dish (12" L x 6" W) is the "Bonus Dish" for the workshop, but you can choose to do either - or both - of the dishes. If you choose to make both, you will receive a discount of about 15% on your total cost! Cool deal!

I can visualize half a real pineapple, scooped out, with some kind of pineapple fruit salad inside, served on this clever dish. It was a lot of fun to make - and even more fun to see when it came out of the kiln! (Anyone have an idea how to scoop out a real pineapple? We tried a grapefruit knife to get the fruit out from the ends. It works pretty well. Pretty juicy, too!)

Coming up with ideas for making the smaller round dish (6" diameter) was fun. I'm sure you will come up with many more clever ways to design a pineapple slice. This small dish was made by cutting strips of yellow and light amber glass into pineapple wedges, filling in the spaces with a random mix of assorted frit sizes in ivory, yellow, white and amber. The edge was done with coarse frit in amber, yellow, olive and moss. With a live pineapple model at the workshop, you will see colors and structures to inspire your design.

So, have you figured out yet why I just love to do glass fusing? It's not just the feel of the warm, glistening glass that is alluring, but the surprise of how things look when they come out that keeps drawing me to the kiln in the middle of the night to see how things turn out! Take a look at the leaves on the end of the dish. What a surprise! Lots of leaves! These were made with three differenct colors of green.

And every piece will come out differently. I experimented with a technique to add more than one layer of leaves, which makes the dish look much different than I bet you thought it would look, didn't it? This dish has two leaf layers, but I'll bet with a little diligence, we could put three layers in there. On the other hand, maybe two layers is enough. :-)