Glass Wall Art Can Enhance Your Living Space

There are many ways to add beauty to a home and its walls, including hanging picture frames and works of art. Another way that homeowners can create a visual focal point in a room is with glass wall art. Throughout history glass wall art has always been very popular in different parts of the world. The colors and textures that can be made into glass enhance the overall aesthetics of any living space. When it comes to picking out glass wall art for your home you need to decide a number of things before setting out to shop for the actual piece. You have to consider the size of the wall as well as the activities that take place inside that room. A quiet reading room or library wouldn’t be a good fit for wild and loud glass wall art. You’ll have to choose glass wall art that is calming that will put you at ease. Then you have to consider the color palette you will be using for this room. You can either decide to go with a neutral color of glass wall art or you can decide to include some contrast into the room. When you’re planning to buy wall art, your interior designer can help you find the right colors, textures and design. Your designer will help you plan your space and work within price range to realize your project. You’ll also have to determine which wall should display your art. High traffic areas might not be the best place to display glass wall art. It’s important to make sure that you clean your new glass wall art each week to prevent dust from staying on it for too long. It will be much harder to remove if you allow it to settle into the cracks. Glass wall art doesn't usually require a frame because glass wall art can hang onto the wall its own. Because it’s heavier than traditional wall art because of the materials used to make it, it will have to use strong supports and hardware attach it to the wall. If you really want to add beauty to your living space and are looking for an original piece of art, we can design a glass wall art piece that will make you proud.

Inspired by Nature

As I was driving back from Regina earlier today, I couldn't help but notice the changing autumn colors, especially the leaves in the trees. Oranges mixing with greens and browns mixing with reds inspire the artist in all of us to create our next piece of art using nature's vibrant colour palette. Whether I am driving by the Evergreen Parks such as the George Dyck Park or John Brockelbank Park or a Stonebridge Park like the Patricia Roe Park, I am always fascinated by the beautiful tones and shades of colour. And the wonderful thing about these colours is that I will be able to create new textures for backsplashes, wall art, countertops with them in mind. At Castle Designer Glass, the textures that we create will have a large influence in the overall vision of the piece that we're working on. More than ever, customers are trying to recreate nature's beauty through the colours and furniture that they have in their homes. With some pieces they will be limited by technology. But with glass art, it can be customized as to the shape, colour and texture. Without texture, glass would just be plain and not interesting in any way. If you look through our website at www.castledesignerglass.com you'll see a sample of the textures that we can create. Our only limit is your imagination.

The Great Thing About Glass

I've always been a big fan of glass, almost as much as I am of jewellery! In modern day society glass has been used for more functional roles such as to hold a liquid or allow light to enter a building. But glass art has always appealed to me. In fact, the use of glass for practical and decorative purposes dates back to Ancient Egypt and Rome. Glass was most likely discovered by accident when melted sand (silica)was fused in cooking fires. Glassblowing, was used in Jerusalem in the first century BC and spread throughout the Roman Empire. Other glass art techniques, such as stained glass, casting, fusing, and mosaic, evolved over time (i.e. stained glass was a very popular technique used in the cathedrals of Europe during the Middle Ages; 5th to 16th centuries AD). Eventually, glassblowing became the dominant technique with the production of glass art pieces and the industry concentrated in Murano, Italy. Many of the technologies used then including crystalline glass, enamelled glass (smalto), glass with threads of gold (aventurine), multicoloured glass (millefiori), milk glass (lattimo), and imitation gemstones made of glass are still be used today in everything from contemporary art glass and glass figurines to Murano glass chandeliers and wine stoppers. When I founded Castle Designer Glass a few years ago, I was inspired to bring the beautiful designs that I had encountered on my travels back to my hometown of Saskatoon. The versatility of glass allows it to be used in a wide variety of surfaces including backsplashes. glass boards, freestanding or wall art, door inserts, tables, countertops, etc... in the home, the office or in a casino, spa, airport, hotel or store. Glass art gives a piece that special something that makes people take notice. When someone wants their room to standout, I can't think of a better way than with glass art.

The History of Slumping

As glass designers we spend a lot of our time slumping. You heard me right we love to slump. Slumping is the term that is used to describe how we form warm glass into a shape that our customers will want for their backsplashes, wall or stand alone pieces of art, countertops or glass boards. By applying heat to the point where the glass will soften, our glass designers increase the fluidity of the glass causing the glass to 'slump' into or onto the mold underneath. Here's how we do it. Once the oven reaches the right temperature we put a sheet of glass in, 'slumping' it over a form or into a mold. We use molds that are made of plaster, clay coated with plaster, graphite, sand or steel. Once the glass is formed, we reduce the temperature so that it can cool off or anneal. Slumping has been around since the days of the the Romans. They used slumping on everything from vessels to bowls and plates. They would place a sheet of glass over a mold which produced vessels with rough surfaces, which could then be ground or polished to a smooth finish. Some of the other techniques that they used to get their unique pillar-molded bowls was through the use of a special slotted tool to for the glass into a ribbed shape before it would go to slumping. This helped create a ribbed effect on the exterior of the bowl. Glass is a malleable material that can be made into almost any shape that you want. In my coming posts I'll write about them to give you a better idea of the techniques that we use.