All tutorials on this site are copyright protected. They are part of a book that I am currently working on and will  publish  in the near future.

In order to keep our tutorials simple for this web site, we have kept the verbiage to a minimum  There is a lot left up to the viewer to discover. We hope you enjoy these and find them useful.

 Creating Mica Coated Glass

And Etching It.

Etching mica on Glass

Mica gives a beautiful look to glass. There are many ways to add  mica to glass, but the difficulty is controlling the application. People have tried  to paint the mica on as a solution with a media. They have tried to stamp the glass with ranger medium (among others) and then added mica on the top. These an many other methods all yielding mixed results due to the difficulty of  exact placement of the mica.

We have developed this method to give precise placement of our design. This method is especially useful using our Photopolymer Masking technique to give photographic detail on the glass. The results of this technique, while not as startling as dichroic do give subtle and beautiful results

Applying the mica

The first thing you do is mix your favorite micas with A-14 Medium. You  can  use other mediums. We find A-14 gives the best results in our work. This liquid  mix is then painted on a piece of glass. Most any glass will work, but we prefer clear and black. Note that this will  not work on iridized glass. The metal in the irid and the mica do not play well together.

Your pattern of painting is totally up to you. We find that often a angled slash of three or four colors gives a beautiful starting point  for our work.

The mix is then dried. We use either a hot air gun or a toaster oven to dry the medium. The glass with the mica painted on is then placed in the kiln and fused to 1400°F for 10 minutes. Note: please see our tutorial on fusing jewelry pieces for a further discussion of fusing temperatures.  I want to repeat the kilns vary, sometimes widely.

The objective is to get the temperature as high as you can without deforming the glass. This gives more of the mica a chance to sink into the glass. As an aside, mica does not react with glass, and is actually held In place physically. Bu sinking into the glass slightly.

Once cooled, brush of f the excess mica and wash the piece in water. Much of your mica will brush off.

Applying a mask

Masking is a simple way of  protecting the glass in selected areas. There are many masking materials. You can use rubber cement, masking tape, frisket, electrical tape,  stickers, Weldbond, Testors paints,  and a myriad of other non-water soluble products. Sharpies DO NOT work well. In fact for this process, they do not work at all. A Sharpie is a weak mask and its masking properties disappear too rapidly for it to work.

All you do is appply the masking material where you wish the mica to remain. We use our Photopolymer Masking technique on the mica for highly detailed images. Samples shown here show the detail that can be attained with that process..

Etching the mica

This part of the process is quite simple. Just slather your Armour Etch (or other etching cream) and leave until etched. We have found that we are best leaving the cream on about 5-8 minutes. As long as your mask is stable (and our Photopolymer masking material is), you cannot really leave the etching material on too long.

Scrape the excess cream off and return that to the jar. It is reusable. Wash the glass very thoroughly. If the etched area has a matte look to it, do not worry . That will go away when you use the glass in a fuse piece.

Your are now done.  As we said before, the effect is both subtle and beautiful. You can use the glass as you see fit in further fusing . We find that the mica needs a dark background to give the full benefit of the bright colors. This is similar to dichro which also works best on dork backgrounds..

You now have a new technique to add to your arsenal. Another method to make your glass pieces different from the mass of glass out there.