March of the Sassy Glass Studio Penguins

The penguins started with a plan and a design. The plan was to create fused glass penguins to decorate the tree in the Santa Hats kid's creativity area at Fantasy of Trees. My husband, Allan, and I are co-chairs for this particular area and I wanted our requisite Christmas tree to be extra special. The penguin design needed to be rather simplistic as I would have to cut the penguin body parts freehand. I chose the penguin above as the basic design and decided to to cut the black body parts as three sections: a half circle for the lower body, a triangle for the mid body and "arms" and a circle for the head. The entire penguin is about 4 inches long, so none of the parts are especially big. The white body parts were cut as two separate pieces- the head and the body. The last pieces are the two small triangles that form the feet.

The penguin body parts were assembled in the kiln and fired to a full fuse.

Once out of the kiln, the penguins were washed to remove any shelf paper residue.

The penguins faces were hand-painted using glass paints. Special care was taken to give the penguins a happy face.

Here are penguins waiting to be placed in the oven to set their painted faces.

After the penguins were placed in the oven for 40 minutes at 325 degrees their painted faces were permanent and their scarves were tied on and a dab of hot glue was added to make sure the scarves stayed put.

This penguin is awaiting the glue gun to fasten his scarf.

The penguins are ready to go to Fantasy of Trees.

The penguins are a wonderful addition to the Santa Hats Christmas tree. I also crafted the snowflakes on the tree.

The cute little penguins finally made their way to their destination. Time to party!

The penguin project was a lot of fun, but after handcrafting nineteen penguins I am pretty sure I will consider this a limited edition. Each of the penguins is $25 and they will be available for sale at the end of Fantasy of Trees on November 30th.

Please visit the shop for more Sassy Glass Studio one-of-a-kind fused glass art!