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Someone has put a baseball through your window and now you have a pile of sharp, dangerous broken glass. Before your throw it away, think of it as a learning experience. As long as you don’t cut yourself, broken glass can be a prime art material instead of an annoying drag. Before you do anything else, call a company to come out and replace your now defunct window. The best replacement windows Chicago, Omaha, Oceanside, or any city in the country are only a phone call away. You won’t need a lot of motivation if the weather is particularly cold. Now, don some thick gloves and safety goggles, the kind that cover your entire eye area and wrap around the sides and top. Carefully pick up the glass and put it into a container that won’t be ripped, torn, or damaged by sharp edges. You can either store your broken glass safely away to be used later or get your creative juices flowing right now. There are lots of things you can do with broken glass. You’d be surprised at the variety, and you might just be inspired to come up with your own ideas. Jewelry Sea glass is at a premium, but you don’t have to wait for years for glass to be tumbled in the ocean and over sand to get that frosted, smooth, jewel-like effect. You can do the same thing with a glass tumbler. Clear glass works fine, and produces a lovely crystal effect, but you can easily find colored bottles and smash them up for a variety of color saturated beads. Ask your friends to save their alcohol or water bottles. Companies are doing a lot of advertising with glass color, and that works to your advantage. Once you have some tumbled glass that won’t cut you, play around with wire and beads. There are lots of books available on creating and designing your own jewelry. Experiments with Faux Mercury Glass Making faux mercury glass out of clear vases is not a new idea, but giving larger pieces of broken glass the same treatment might yield some interesting effects. You could use the mercury glass as an unusual frame for a mirror, glued in layers over a wooden frame. You could also create a mosaic top for a table with the glittery, silver shards and some grout. Use the mosaic table idea on a small scale for a square of framed glass you can lean on a window to add privacy without cutting off the light. Fusing Glass While we will not go into the details of fusing glass here, but glass fusing is the process of using a kiln raised to a high heat level in order to fuse separate pieces of glass together. You can only use one type of glass at a time for this kind of project, so don’t mix glasses from different sources. To fuse glass, you will need an electric kiln and kiln wash. You will also need safety goggles and some glass. You can buy kits that include glass specifically designed to be fused, and that might help you learn how to do it initially, but finding and using glass from other sources will produce all different kinds of looks. You can make glass beads, jewelry, and even sculptures using the fusing method. These are just some ideas to get you going. Broken glass doesn’t have to be relegated to the garbage can or recycle bin alone. You can use it as a jumpstart to becoming an artist.
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