Wire & Glass Celtic Pendant

Currently, I make a lot of Dichroic Fused Pendant which have jump rings in them. Sometimes I have goofed up, and the jump rings have been visible through the glass instead of just sticking out. This "goof" got me to thinking and eventually lead me to try to do this on purpose. That’s how I came up with these Wire & Glass Celtic Pendants. I created a number of designs using a jig and then sandwiched them in between glass.

You’ll need:

glass set up
*squares of glass (approx. 1 x 1 inch)
round wire - 18 - 20 gauge
**jig or round nosed pliers
white glue

*I used scraps of glass that I had. Just about any type will do as long as you can see through the glass. The whole ideas is to purposely see the wire in the glass, so you don’t want to use glass that’s too dark.

**You can either create designs on a jig or by bending the wire with round nosed pliers. I’ve created a few designs. I really like the Celtic Wire Component, and I've also made some with the Wire Snake Shape.

1. Start by making your wire designs. Whether or not you use the Celtic design, you want to make sure you use designs that have a loop some where so that this will stick out of the glass and can be used as your bale. For my proto-types, I used good, old 18 gauge round, copper wire.

2. Once you get your wire designs made, cut some glass squares that are large enough to cover your designs, and still allow at least one loop to stick out at the top.

3. Use a glass grinder to smooth the corners of each square.

4. Next, sandwich the wire piece in between the two pieces of glass and dab a little glue in the middle. So you’d have glass, glue, wire, glass in that order.

5. Now the piece is ready for fusing in your kiln. I use the same schedule as I do for my other pendants, but all kilns vary a little. So, you may have to adjust the times depending on how your kiln operates. Here’s the schedule I used for fusing:

25 minutes at #3 (500 degrees)
25 minutes at #5 (800 degrees)
20 minutes at #6 (1000 degrees)
15 minutes at Hi (1500 degrees)

6. After the glass is finished fusing and cooling, you’ll need to do one more step before you are finished: clean the metal sticking out of the glass. For copper, I soaked mine in white vinegar for a day or so. Then I took them out and used by flexi-shaft to finish polishing. I found that the vinegar got a lot of the black off. So, that made the polishing go more quickly.

Now your glass and wire pendant can be added to a chain, or you can create a wire and bead necklace to enhance the pendant. Try the Celtic, as well as other wire designs, and have fun.

All graphics created by Tammy Powley.