The Open Bail Tutorial

I asked Mike (our famous bail maker) to create an OPEN bail for me. It would give the option to do a mosaic inside. But what I discovered is there is SO MUCH MORE we can do! Over Christmas break he worked on his designs. They are great, but be prepared to embrace an organic shaped circle. The inside is perfect, but the outsides will have some variation which makes them incredibly unique.

First I took the bail and filled the hole with a little bit of rolled up fiber paper. I then put a touch of super glue on the bail and the underlying kiln shelf paper so it doesn't move. Once it's secure, load the inside with frit, murrini, stringer, you name it!

Here I have the parts I want to use laid out.

Next, since some of the little pieces are a little bit difficult to work with, once I had them where I wanted them (and they were sitting steady in that location) I put a touch of super glue on them to hold them still.

You can see I have the leaves in place along with my Cardinal. Now, since we are just tack fusing, we need to make sure every piece of murrini is touching another murrini. It must have something to fuse to. In this first try, I put a little rolled up fiber paper between the top of the cardinal and top of the loop to hold it steady against the branch.

I used this firing schedule:

300>1150>30
350>1300>5
9999>950>1 hour
150>700>10
300>room temp

Here is my first result:

I said WOO HOO!!! BUT! I had a little leaf turn under to booty of the Cardinal, which I wasn't thrilled with. So I added another leaf to fill in the void. WHAT I LEARNED was the bird on the branch wasn't enough of a connection to hold the bird on, so having that leaf fall under him was a blessing in disguise. So I put on another leaft and went back into the kiln at this schedule:

300>1150>30
350>1300>NO HOLD
9999>950>1 hour
150>700>10
300>room temp

Here is the FINAL result! I actually love the movement of the leaves. I was again saying WOO HOO!

Since the bail faces forward, we'll have to get creative with chains by adding a jump ring or using a small ribbon (I think I like the ribbon idea).

Here are some others I then worked on testing other things:

This is the White poppy that I put black frit all around and in the center.

These circles and murrini are all touching each other in at least one spot.

Love the simplicity of this one.

With this design, I put the bee together first making sure nothing was moving and I glued it together. Once together I put the bail over the top and glued it to the paper so it wouldn't move when I filled the entire thing with medium clear frit.

This was my very first attempt. I filled the inside with murrini as tight as I could, then I sprinkled a bit of clear POWDER on top and with a small brush worked it in between the murrini. After the full fuse, the powder looks a bit foggy, but pleasant enough! After inspecting it, I actually liked the back side better, so I flipped it over for a fire polish and here we go!

The sky is the limit on these new OPEN bails! Thank you Mike for indulging me in my crazy idea!