Facebook is a useful tool for interacting with other glass-fusing artists and getting inspirational ideas. We recommend Bullseye Glass Community, as a group you can join on Facebook.
Bullseye Glass is a manufacturer of art glass supplies, located in Portland Oregon. They were one of the first manufacturers of compatible art glass.
Historically when stained glass was the only medium for doing mosaic-type work, the glass was held together with leading. At the time, the minerals and chemical additives that were used to make the colors, meant that each color of glass melted and hardened at different temperatures. Those were the old days. Very little fusing work was done at that time, because if you mixed colors, they would break as each color glass hardened or expanded at a different temperature. Bullseye hired a chemist who worked out formulations for coloring glass that would all have matching melt/hardening temps (also known as the Coefficient of Expansion or COE) This opened up the world of fusing and suddenly many colors could be melted together in a kiln and the glass fusing art world exploded in the 1980s and 1990s.
For reference, we use COE90 in our shop. All glass used in the fusing studio must be COE90. We have to be very careful about not bringing other COE glass into the fusing studio. If you buy or have your own glass, we have to double-check the COE to make sure it will work with the materials we have.
We recommend the Bullseye Glass Community on Facebook as a great place to get inspiration, interact with other glass artists, and learn technical information about kiln schedules, types of moulds, and other techniques.
A last note- we don’t use glass powder. Some of the amazing projects you will see in the Bullseye Glass Community group use powdered glass to “paint” on other glass, or to drop in moulds to make shapes. We choose not to use powdered glass in our studio because it is a very serious health risk if you inhale it. To use powders, you need to be wearing a respirator, to prevent that fine glass dust from getting into your lungs. We choose not to have this in our studio at all. If it were accidentally spilled it ends up in the air, coating everything, including your lungs and eyes. Since we teach all ages and people with various abilities, it is just safer for us to avoid glass powder.