Back To My Glass Incarnate Roots

It was a Tuesday. Tuesdays are days when I catch up from Monday. I watered the garden today (and managed to remember to turn the water off when I was done so I didn't flood the pond this time). And I took Dave to work and Jessie to school. And I designed the glass for the kitchen cabinet doors. That last one was my big accomplishment.

I started out the project absolutely certain I was doing stained glass for the cabinets. But the design I came up with is just not really feasible for stained glass. I wanted something that was a flowing river of one-inch glass squares in many colors continuing from one door to the next. But I didn't really want squares. Instead I wanted squares with rounded corners. I love the look of the design, but the rounded corners would be extraordinarily difficult--especially given the number of squares and the number of doors--and I'm not even sure I could do them so that they would come out as good as they are in my mind. Cutting the lead would be a nightmare. As I was looking at the finished design and trying to come up with a way it would work I said to Dave, "This would be easy in fused glass." And the lightbulb went off.

I guess my creative force really wanted to do these doors as individual panes of fuse glass. However there's a big difference between the clarity of antique or semi-antique glass and glass that's been fired on a kiln shelf (however non-textured). What to do to make the clear portion of the doors look textured so the contents of the cabinets can't be seen through them, and yet have the transparent colored squares be as untextured as possible? I have some ideas, which I can't wait to start on Thursday--I'm already booked all day tomorrow. The first option I'm thinking of is tack-fusing and using large frit in the clear areas. Should I not like the look of that option, I have several other texturing options available from lava cloth or fiber paper to sculpted kiln wash. Whichever option I end up going with, I have plenty of glass to make them!