We all know that Wissmach Glass offers a beautiful color palette of fusible styles, but what if you could expand that offering even further to create custom colors for your projects? The good news is you can! Color blending can open your palette to new color variations and tones by combining glass styles from the Wissmach catalog. This article touches on what the color blending technique is and shows you some examples of how to blend colors to help get you started exploring on your own.
What is Color Blending?
Color blending in kilnformed glass is layering two or more sheet glass styles to achieve a new color when fused in the kiln. Color blending uses combinations of opaque and transparent glass styles. The photograph above shows several color blending samples mixing cool opaque colors and transparent colors of glass. I made the samples with a single piece of opaque glass as the base. The base piece is 2″ x 10″. On top of the opaque base, I placed five equal-sized squares of transparent glass in various colors. The transparent squares are all the same colors for each sample. each square is 2″ x 2″. The square to the farthest left is clear glass to show the original color of the opaque base strip. You can see from the photograph that using four transparent colors produces four unique custom color blends on each opaque base, expanding your color palette!
The photograph above shows the colors I used for the transparent squares on each sample written on the bottom of a strip of sky blue opal. I recommend keeping track of the glass numbers you combine and saving your samples as a color reference library. Here is a list, in order, of all the opaque color bases and the transparent squares for the samples in the above photograph.
Opaque Color Bases (From Top To Bottom)
96-71 Sky Blue Opal
96-07 Olive Green
96-05 Superior Blue
96-09 Oyster Pearl
Transparent Colors On Top (From Left To Right)
96-01 Crystal
96-50 Turquoise Green Transparent
96-19 Peacock Feather Transparent
96-43 Sea Blue Transparent
96-17 Garden Green Transparent
The photo above shows color blending also works well when using a warm opaque color base. The sample on the top has a base strip of Gold Tone, and the strip on the bottom is Orange/Red. I again used a clear square of glass for the swatch on the farthest left to show the true base color. The following three swatches were made using warm transparent colors. Look at the third square over from the left on each sample strip. I created the swatch on both strips by overlaying a 2″ x 2″ piece of yellow transparent. Notice how the yellow transparent darkens the Gold Tone and lightens the Orange/Red. Seeing how one color of transparent glass can affect others in many ways is one of my favorite things about color blending.
The above photo shows the glass styles I used for both sample strips. Here is the complete list in order:
Opaque Color Bases (From Top To Bottom)
96-10 Gold Tone
96-40 Orange/Red
Transparent Colors On Top (From Left To Right)
96-01 Crystal
96-11 Honey Transparent Transparent
96-59 Yellow Transparent
96-51 Orange/Red Transparent
What About Color Reactions?
Color reactions occur when two glass colors form a third color where they interact when fired in the kiln. You can read more about color reactions in this earlier article I wrote for Wissmach. Color reactions can also occur when color blending. Take the photograph above as an example. This sample strip is also in the first photograph of this article. I made this sample using a base piece of Oyster Pearl (96-09) glass. I created the color swatches using 2″ x 2″ pieces of the same transparent blues and greens I used in the first set of samples. Oyster Pearl glass has a high sulfur content. Many of the Wissmach blues and greens contain copper. The combination of sulfur and copper-bearing glasses can result in a chemical reaction that produces copper sulfide. It is important to note that not all combinations will give a strong or noticeable reaction, as you can see in the photograph. The reaction varies depending on the amount of reactive material in each color. Here is the complete list of the colors I used on the Oyster Pearl base:
Transparent Colors On Top (From Left To Right)
96-01 Crystal
96-50 Turquoise Green Transparent
96-19 Peacock Feather Transparent
96-43 Sea Blue Transparent
96-17 Garden Green Transparent
Color Reactions in kilnformed glass often reveal themselves darkened or even brown areas where the glasses interact. Notice how the Turquoise Green remains blue and provides little reaction. Further down the swatches, Peacock Feather and Sea Blue still maintain their blueness but become much darker with hints of green and brown. This is a great example of color reactions when color blending. Testing is the best way to see what the results will be.
What About Color Blending Two Layers Of Transparent Glass?
So far, I have only written about color blending using transparent glass on top of an opaque color, but using two layers of transparent glass also works great! The photograph above shows the wide color palette you can achieve by firing different colors of overlaid transparent glass. It is important to note that color reactions must be considered when using transparent styles as well. The photograph below shows the pre-fired layout for my transparent samples. Below it, is the the complete list of samples I used to create my swatches. The base color is in bold, and the swatches are listed below, indented from left to right:
Transparent Color Bases (From Top To Bottom)
96-59 Yellow Transparent
96-01, 96-11, 96-50, 96-17
96-11 Honey Transparent Transparent
96-01, 96-50, 96-17, 96-51
96-17 Garden Green Transparent
96-01, 96-51, 96-19, 96-43
96-50 Turquiose Green Transparent
96-01, 96-51, 96-19, 96-43
96-19 Peacock Feather Blue Transparent
96-01, 96-51, 96-59, 96-11
I hope this article inspires you to explore color blending in your studio!
Happy Kilnforming!
Drew, Wissmach Kiln Consultant
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