I liked my other beetles, but they really needed dichroic class. Dichroic glass looks like beetle’s wings, one of the most beautiful things in nature, and I had to combine them.
First, I made the legs by cutting masking tape, lifting the positive, spraying with hairspray, and dusting it with mica pigments. When I lifted the rest of the tape, I had some great beetle legs ready for bodies. Next, I cut the dichro (being as careful not to waste it as I could be–that stuff is expensive!) and carefully glued it on to the mica legs. Super glue does not stick well to mica pigments, fyi.
Once I’d glued the dichro down, I cut clear sheets of glass to fit and set them on the shelf to be fused. When I got them out, I found that they had these blisters of air surrounding the bodies. Yes of course, the instructor said, the air got trapped because the dichro took a while to fuse into the background. You have to fuse the dichro first, then cap it in a second firing. Great. Now I knew.
