Some more great news. Wednesday, I finished and shipped my first commercial fused glass order!! What is a commercial order you may ask? Well it’s a large quantity custom fused glass order, typically for hotels, B&B, etc.. In this particular case it was for fused glass vanity and soap dishes for an amazing hotel in Boston. She told me what she wanted and I sent a sample, then she placed the order.
Commercial orders are interesting because the pieces are relatively simple to make, but a challenge because I had to make 36 of each. Which means a lot of glass! In fact, my first time picking up glass I didn’t get enough and I had to ask a good friend to pick-up another order for me. The other thing to remember is it’s important to cut the glass in the best way as to not waste glass. So you have to plan it out.
Also because of how many there were and the sizes. I could only get 2 of the vanity dishes in my medium kiln and only 1 soap dish in my little kiln, at a time. Then when you consider the little kiln takes 12 hrs for each firing (so 2 pieces a day) and the medium kiln takes 16 hrs per firing so basically 2 pieces a day. Additionally, each dish takes 2 firings – 1 full fuse and 1 slump; so that’s a lot of time.
Luckily when I got my big kiln it cut my time by quite a bit, but each firing in the big kiln takes over 24hrs which made it tough.
Slumping is another challenge, because the molds take up more space than a full fuse, so there is less pieces in each firing, which equates to more time. In addition, you have to have several of the same molds otherwise the slumping is really time consuming; which means more money invested.
Plus each fused glass piece is still hand cut, hand assembled, fired, then each is slumped over different molds, so what does that mean? Each piece is unique and not an exact copy!
But all that being said I got the entire commercial fused glass order completed and sent out as promised.
I’ve already got my next commercial fused glass order, for 100 soap dishes! The glass is very pretty so again each piece is different, because each piece of glass is different!
I hope to continue receiving the commercial fused glass orders, albeit I will also continue to create unique one of a kind fused pieces, because I love it!
Keeping all 3 of my kilns warm!
Karen
Hi Karen, do you use a clear glass layer with your decorative glass for the soap dishes?
I do most of the time, it depends on piece, but you don’t have too.