love affair with stained glass

I love making patterns, but wow, they are hard. Today I spent a few hours working with the sea life pattern. This is what I ended up with:

Version 2

I hadn’t actually looked at what I had posted yesterday until I posted this photo. I am happy to see that I did actually change some things. Still need to tweak a few things, put in the separation lines… all in all though, I think this is it. I took elements from several different pattern books (Tropical Waters by Leslie Gibbs [a CKP publication] and Marine Animals Stained Glass Pattern Book by Carolyn Relei. the turtle is from someone else… i can’t remember who… I went through almost every book I own, looking for inspiration) and mixed them up, changed a line here or there. I’m not really happy with the dolphin tails, I might have to fiddle with them some more.

I was hoping to use some of the wave elements from my humpback whale piece (which is all original except for the whale itself) but it didn’t work out.

Anyway, the point of this post is that making pattern is fricking hard! It takes hours, literally. There is drawing and erasing, and more drawing and erasing… repositioning stuff, moving it around, adding, discarding. Every element in the pattern was drawn and erased at least once. those two fish i drew, erased and re-drew 4 times. 4!! The starfish was changed three times. I repositioned the coral once, the seahorse 4 times… and lets not even get started on the turtle. I moved that sucker all over the place. The dolphins could really only go one place, so that was relatively easy.  (oooh, a skunk is going by outside. hello, Stinky, lol).

When its done, though… very rewarding. Hopefully, K still wants the window, lol.

I drew out he lampshade pattern. That one was easy. It’s actually much larger than I had anticipated. To get good positioning on the light, the shade needs to be 10″ long… that will end up being a lot of glass. But it will look super cool, and I think it is something I will be able to knock out in a couple of days. Need to hit up Makin Glass for some soft spool lead for  the top and bottom edge, and for the wood framing for the coven repair.

I took a long nap today, so I am wide awake. It’s midnight, or almost. I think I’ll go grocery shopping.

Posted in Commissions, Custom, For Sale, Patterns
Tags: commission, coral, difficult, dolphins, fish, fun, lamp shade, ocean, patterns, sea, seahorse, sealife, stained glass, starfish, turtle, whale

Been working the glass, finally. I have the repair of the coven piece mostly done. Another lesson, lol. Nothing is ever as easy as I think hope it will be. It wasn’t as simple as just reprinting the pattern and drawing a frame around it and figuring out where the breaks would be. There is a thing i am calling spread which  needs to be taken into consideration. No matter how careful or perfect your piece is, is will grow when you solder it. It just does. It becomes slightly bigger. So if you use the same pattern, you will have some gaps to deal with. That was an unfortunate thing to realize. but, i made it work.

I have a tentative commission for another underwater piece. I will be honest here…I’m totally burned out on the underwater scenes. I was having a ton of trouble getting in the mood to draw this one. I have been working up to it, psyching myself out for it, all week. Got most of the ground work done, the finding of elements, scanning, re-sizing, printing… then taping it all up on the window to see how it plays out. I am pretty pleased with it. i don’t have all of it done, but will before I go to bed tonight. Or at least 90% of it.

I needed to take a break for bit so I am out back, sitting on my lounge chair, typing, listening to the birds eat birdseed. They are very loud. Woodpecker is in a tree nearby. The sun is setting, and the sky is shot thorugh with pink and peach. its quite lovely. Last week i was putting plants in and shifted the position of my lounge chair, so it faced the west. I sat in it later, to enjoy a cup of coffee and a book, and noticed the gorgeous sun set. i felt like a dolt, lol, for not realizing the potential before. But luck to have discovered it now.

I was in Lowe’s last weekend and happened on some interesting lampshades. I think I am going to try these for my bedroom. Simple, quick, easy. Or so I think, right?

It is even already in the colors of my bedroom, lol. 

Feeling the itch to get back to the drawing, so going to heed it. More soon.

Posted in Uncategorized

i have another blog, and it has been located by other bloggers, and now i have this neat little community of bloggers that i interact with. and it gave me th idea, perhaps not shockingly, to search out other glass bloggers and maybe create a community that way too.

first of all, i had a heck of a time finding a search button on wordpress… crazy. you would think that it would be very very prominent. when i finally found one, and did the search, it comes up with 93, 874 posts contain the words “stained glass”. I go through them and hit the next button, and a new page comes up and it says “zero” results.

wth? (trying to cut down on my swearing. did you notice the h, instead of the f? lol)

I was less than impressed with the 10 blogs that were listed. none were more recent than 2010. half did not have photos. very uninteresting posts. i will have to take that into consideration as I post. this might be an uninteresting post.

I then did a search for stained glass art and had a little bit better luck.

my question is how did you find this blog, dear readers?

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: blog, reader, search, stained glass

didn’t see that coming at all!! my 30 day sabbatical turned into a 100+ day sabbatical. I have had the urge to work glass, but hadn’t managed to actually get it done. I have farted around here and there, plus I moved the entire glass shop out of the back bedroom into the dining room. then there was the Great Urine Debacle in Jan which required the removal of the carpet in the old glass room, and its replacing with vinyl. BUt that is a different blog.

One of the reasons I haven’t started any new projects is because I have this repair I need to do. I have had the thing for months and months. I feel bad. But I have officially begun the repair as of last night.

Original piece.

Unfortunately, the pieces have separated along the seam of the top leaf and sky. Where the wire anchors are. Too much weight on the lover half, without any support. Initially, I thought I could jsut push it all back together and add some support, but that wasn’t the case. And last night I realized that the branch that holds the leaf is full of cracks which were not apparent before because of the texture of the glass. so that entire piece is going to have to be replaced as well.

What I am doing is framing the entire piece. The whole thing will  be inset into clear glass, and then framed in zinc and wood. The little leaves are all coming off and will be soldered on top of the piece, giving it a more 3D effect. Fingers crossed, it will all go together fairly easily.

pulling foil. this is the easy part. It gets much more complicated, lol.

Removing solder is a pain in the ass. the traditional way, with a wick, just doesn’t work for me. the ladies at Makin Glass said they use a piece of aluminum can to get between the two opieces and separate them. Tried it. After a little finessing, it worked fine. I use a 1/8″ tip which is not the best for removal. need to order a larger tip while i am thinking of it.

To extract the glass from the acorn, I am goign to have to break the glass out, without breaking the surrounding glass. Tricky.

I can't believe I thought it was a good idea to do this in the first place...

this part is actually fun.

You do this part by scoring the heck out of the glass, like a checkerboard and then tap it out. You have to be really careful to not transfer the percussion to the surrounding glass, fracturing it. This whole repair project is a good argument for more space between pieces, rather than a tight fit. Once you break some of it out, you can pull pieces out with the pliers, until it is all gone.

Like I said, tricky.

Now I need to fit all the outside surrounding pieces into place. I am using the original pattern. Which poses problems because the piece is not the same size as the original pattern. I probably should have waited, and traced out the outline and then done the other pieces. Ah, hindsight, gotta love it. But I didn’t, and the pieces are cutt but not ground, so I will make it work (thank you tim gunn).

More as I go along.

Posted in Uncategorized

Hello 2012!! So so so glad last year is behind me and officially over! GAH!!

I have made a resolution to stop using so many exclamation points. Unless they are absolutely necessary! (kidding…)

Xmas gifts fo glass made their way safely home to their new caretakers and have been hung with care.

Hawaiian Fling in her new home

and so is Divers...

I find that I really enjoy seeing the pics of the art up in their permanent locations. Keep them coming.

Update on the Saga of the soldering iron. I can’t remember what i posted here, so I’ll do a quick recap. Soldering iron temp was fluctuating wildly. ordered new tips; they were absolutely not the correct ones. Finally located a dealer for hakko in the US. Wonderful customer service (for the quality of the service, alone, I would recommend them). Sent the iron and regulator unit off for a check up. Turns out that it was the tip. The repair order said the tips and housing were “heavily oxidized”. so I called them up to ok the repair and pay for it (complete new tip, ceramic core and house $24) and ask what I could do to further extend the life of the tip. The iron is almost 6 years old. When I told the service rep the age, she laughed and said, oh, you got your monies worth out of that tip. Which is good to know. so kids, clean your tip, keep it “wet”, use your sal amoniac block, and when you get a crusty build up, use a soft wire bristle brush to gently clean the debris from the barrel.

I have decided to move the glass workshop out of my back bedroom, to the Dining room. I do not dine in the dining room. And it takes too long for the heat to get to the back of the house. I have sold my dining table and chairs, and will begin the move next weekend. The back bedroom has never felt completely right. I’ve  been in it for 6 months, plenty of time to acclimate, but still no go. Once I get it moved, I’ll be starting one more underwater scene. I have some good ideas and am excited to get going on it.

I have put up the pattern for Lord Ganesha on Etsy.com, you can see it here. I will be adding other patterns as I make them. The original “divers” pattern will go up, the one with the light rays. I might watercolor that, since I don’t have a finished piece in that arrangement. Having fun with it, and that is what it supposed to be all about, right?

I think that is it. I am putting off getting ready for the day. I suppose I should get to it. Happy New Year!

Posted in Commissions, For Sale, Inspiration, Patterns

Taking a break in January. I have sent off my temp regulator to be checked out by the wizards at Hakko. Hopefully it is something that is a relatively easy, and low cost, fix. Please. The tips I ordered turned out to not fit. wtf? I typed in the model number and bought the tips that came up as a result… but they weren’t correct, and the company took them back, without a fuss, so that was great.

I’m going to concentrate on some patterns. I will be offering some of my patterns up on etsy.com, for sale. Ganesha for sure, probably the sea life I just did, and the whale. I want to draw some stuff, some Buddha pieces and smaller hummingbird windows. Very enthused about that. Please look for the patterns there. once i get them up, I’ll post a link.

Wishing everyone a very merry christmas, and a joyful new year.

smooches, glasswench

Posted in Custom, For Sale, Patterns