Glass Clay is easy to work with: you can shape it in minutes, dry it quickly with a hair drier, and fire it in your kiln. You start with soft clay and end up with real solid glass: ready to wear, give, or sell.

You can design and make your own unique bracelets, brooches, charms, earrings, keepsakes, miniatures, necklaces, ornaments, rings, and seasonal decorations. And you can make beads without a torch.

You can add overlays to gift cards, motifs to handbags, highlights to wood, ceramics, glass, and shells, and produce complex shapes, textures, and patterns from moulds.

You can shop here now: on line or by phone with a card, or by post with a cheque. Prices include UK VAT and duty, and insured door-to-door UK-mainland delivery: there are no other charges. For other destinations, mail or call.

All the products mentioned on these pages are in the on-line shop: use the shop link below the menu bar near the top of the page.

To look at the photos, hold your mouse over the zoom buttons below. The photos are 480px x 360px and about 60KB so, if you're not on a fast internet connection, they'll take a short while to download.

Flowers By Geneva Perkins.

Since its discovery about 5000 years ago, we've used glass to make containers, decorations, jewellery, mirrors, tools, and windows.

The main component of glass is silicon dioxide, often called silica: found naturally and plentifully as sand. When it melts, at around 1700°C, it's like syrup on a cold day. When it cools, it forms a rigid and brittle glass called quartz glass.

To lower the melting point, and the cost of melting, chemicals are added: typically sodium carbonate and calcium oxide. Other chemicals, and different heating and cooling processes, can produce a range of mechanical properties and colours.

Chemically, glass is an amorphous solid: not a liquid, as is widely believed. As it's heated, it becomes softer allowing it to be bent, blown, cast, coated, and pressed.

Inside a volcano, the intense heat melts sand to form Obsidian, a hard brown-to-black glass. Its lack of crystal structure means that the edges of fractures are extrememely sharp, leading to its ancient use as blades and spear points.

Glass Clay is a clay-like material made of fine glass powder and water-soluble organic binders. As it's fired, the binders vapourise, releasing very small amounts of non-toxic carbon dioxide and water vapour, and the glass powder fuses, leaving solid glass. Real glass, not something that just looks like glass.

Glass Clay is ideal for three-dimensional work and frees you from the constraint of working with flat glass. Perhaps the most exciting opportunity is to make your own beads without a torch.

GlasClay is made by ClayMania in vibrant colours, based on glasses from Bullseye and Oruboros. It's sold as a box of twelve colours in 12gm pots. They're all COE90: read this pop-up.

The colours in the table below are a rough guide. The clay powder, mixed powders, fused glass, and re-fused glass will not all look the same.

GlasClay is fired in a similar way to Art Clay Silver and PMC: put your dry pieces in a kiln and programme the temperature and hold-time.

Comprehensive instructions are included with the products, although you could do a one-day course at The Kitiki Studio.

The firing temperature and time are important: glass clay has to fuse, not melt. There's a difference between fusing and melting: during fusing, the binders in the clay vapourise and the glass powder particles bond to produce solid glass whereas, during melting, the glass powder particles liquify and lose their original clay-shape.

Firing GlasClay is a multi-segment process: a low-temperature segment, followed by a short high-temperature segment to fuse the glass. Then, by re-firing, the shape, detail, and colour will change: so experiment.

If you're new to glass work, the fired GlasClay colour will differ from the colour when you buy glass: as sheet, rod, or frit.

Glass clays shrink more than metal clays during firing, so it's important to do some tests before starting on your best ideas. However, it does mean that details and textures become more focused.

Coloured glass contains elements such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel, and lead, so wash your hands after use. If you have an accident, wash your hands then your eyes with water and visit the doctor.

All particulates represent a health risk if they're breathed in, so it's important to wear a HEPA mask when mixing the powder, sanding the dry clay, and cleaning out your kiln. Ideally, use protective glasses.

Kilns, clays, masks, protective glasses, and other tools and materials, are in the on-line shop: use the shop link below the menu bar near the top of the page.

The Kitiki Studio currently offers jewellery-making classes, demonstrations, masterclasses, and workshops, and Art Clay Levels One and Two courses taught by Aida-certified teachers, in the pretty village of Corfe Castle, in Dorset, England.

There are also classes for related products and techniques, art events, craft demonstrations, guest-teacher classes, the local arts weeks, studio open-days, and general jewellery-making opportunities. If you're interested, mail or call.

The Art Clay Club is a free Cherry Heaven on-line information resource dedicated to Art Clay. You don't have to register, log on, sign up, or remember a password. It's not a shop.

To learn more about working with Art Clay and related materials, buying and using kilns and tools, or choosing a course venue, transfer to The Art Clay Club, using the The Art Clay Club link above the menu bar near the top of the page.