Abstract Under-Water Wave, Octopus Inspiration

Hi everyone! I did manage to make one piece before I left on holiday (and remembered to take pictures of it, miracle of miracles.) This piece was inspired by a photograph I saw of a tube wave as seen underwater. I used some of the new ring mottle glass my darlin' Scotsman picked up for me as a surprise. Click on any of the images to see a larger version.

Abstract underwater wave

Ring mottle glass, with a piece of wispy white glass below it

I gave it to my Mom and we brought it in to be framed. Unfortunately you can't really see the frame, it's a wood frame that has a kind of weathered gunmetal grey finish that goes really well with the glass colours and the un-patina'ed lead solder (I didn't use the black patina, so the leading is kind of silvery). 

Unfortunately also it wasn't a super sunny day when I took the pictures, so you can't see how the glass glows when lots of light is coming through it.

I think if there's one thing I've consistently found in making stained glass, it's that photos really can't ever do a glass piece full justice. Pieces of stained glass are almost like living things; they change and do different things as circumstances change.

And now, here's the inspiration for my next piece:

I got a bunch of absolutely gorgeous antique stained glass at the Milwaukee Stained Glass Studio while I was back home (more about that in a minute), including some pieces that I think will be amazing as the skin of this octopus. 

Why am I embarking on this clearly nightmarishly difficult design, after all of the trials and tribulations I went through with the squid? Because obviously, I am insane to even consider it. This one is about 100x as ambitious as the squid.

I guess I just can't stay away from the tentacles, folks. Wish me luck.

Before I go, I want to tell you about this dream-like glass shopping trip I had at the Milwaukee Stained Glass Studio. You know the part in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when they do the big reveal of the candy room? 

Imagine that, only with glass. 

They have a huge stock of antique stained glass that they got from the estate of a very, very wealthy stained glass hobbyist whose motto was apparently "There's no such thing as too much antique art glass." I think he may have had a teeny bit of a glass hoarding problem (something I would know absolutely nothing about. Stop looking at me like that, I NEED every single piece of glass I've got. Need it. Shut up.) 

Anyway, sadly, the wealthy glass hobbyist passed away, but happily, the Milwaukee Stained Glass Studio got to buy his entire stock of glass. They have a WAREHOUSE full of this precious stuff, all different kinds of art glass, the kind that no one is ever going to make again. 

My god, I could spend several fortunes in that place. The only thing that restrained me from going even more bonkers with my credit card was that I knew I was going to have to carry anything I bought back to Scotland in my carry-on case. If that hadn't been the case, people, well, it would have been a bit of a financial apocalypse for Your Narrator.

And that's about all the news here. Hope you're all enjoying your Saturday!

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Smith Museum of Stained Glass!

Hi all, I've been away on holiday back to the States. One of the highlights of the trip was our visit to the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows at Chicago's Navy Pier.


I highly recommend you stop in if you find yourself in Chicago and you're a fan of stained glass. Admission is free, and you certainly can't beat that! As always, photographs can only provide an approximation of what stained glass pieces look like in person. Just figure, whatever you see below, it looks 100 times cooler in person.


Here are just a few of my favourite pieces from the Museum:

Fairy Tale of the Bear Attacking Other Animals, 1997.  Mosaic designed and fabricated by Khaim Pinkhasik.

Autumn Landscape, c. 1890. Design attributed to Agnes F. Northrup, fabricated by Tiffany Studios, New York. Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, Chicago. 

  

Flowers in a Ribbon Frame, 1880s. Designed and fabricated by Belcher Mosaic Glass Company, Newark, New Jersey. 

Dragon Window, 1991. Designed and fabricated by Theodore Hile (born 1950) and Robert Fronk (born 1958), Peoria, Illinois. The reuse of fragments from other windows is intentional in this collage style window. Some experts have called this type of assemblage, "postmodern stained glass".

Evening Landscape, c. 1910. Design and fabrication attributed to Louis Comfort Tiffany, Tiffany Associated Artists, New York. 

George Grant Elmslie Window, 1920. 

Detail, George Grant Elmslie Window, 1920.

Landscape With Waterfall, c. 1920s.  Design attributed to Agnes M. Northrop and fabricated by the Tiffany Studios, New York. 

Detail, Landscape with Waterfall.

Landscape with Yellow Sky (c. 1915).  Designed by Agnes F. Northrop and fabricated by the Tiffany Studios, New York .

The Four Seasons, c. 1907 - 08. After Alphonse Mucha by an unidentified artist and fabricator, possibly Mucha himself or under Mucha's supervision. 

"Sharks Teeth," c. 1890. Unidentified designer and fabricator. This highly abstract composition consists of a great curled vine in a frame of carefully color matched roundels enclosing a field of "shark's teeth", arrayed in graduating colors from white to various pinks to yellow and rose. Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, Chicago.

Fairy Tale of the Snowgirl, 1994. Designed and fabricated by Khaim Pinkhasik. Based on the Russian fairy tale told to Khaim Pinkhasik as a child, the nocturnal scene depicts Father Winter in full white beard in a snow filled landscape, the center of which is a Christmas tree with its star full ablaze. In the foreground, Daughter Snow is holding a lantern while all around her animals of the forests come out to look.

Two Flower Panels, Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, Chicago.

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LAUGHING SQUID!

Featured!

I'm really excited, y'all. My squid stained glass piece was featured at Laughing Squid!

Laughing Squid is an online resource for interesting art, culture & technology. They have a huge number of followers, and they always post stuff that's really cool. To be featured on their website is an unbelievable honour.

What a boost. They like me!  They really like me!


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Mid-Century Modern Inspired (Waste Not, Want Not)

Hi everyone! It was subtly represented to me by another work friend that a piece of stained glass wouldn't go amiss for her upcoming birthday, and who am I to say no?

A sunny day in Scotland?! Somebody take a picture, quick!

I got started on this little piece last weekend and it's almost done - I just need to finish the lead came "frame" around the outsides of the piece.

For the background bits, I used this lovely textured glass that has an opalescent sheen. The circles are all scraps left over from other projects (my Grandma, rest in peace, had a wooden plaque on her kitchen wall that said, "Waste not, want not." I bet she approves.)

Another angle - love the textured glass background bits

The piece feels kind of mid-century modern, which isn't necessarily what I had in mind when I drew the design. But since the mid-century modern aesthetic is one of my favourites, I didn't mind at all.

When I finish this piece, I plan to smooth down the solder on the small circle on the left. That got a little blobby there.

This is the start of an extended glass-making frenzy that I'll be in for the next couple of weekends. I'm going home to America to visit my family and friends very soon, and I want to bring home pieces as presents for at least 5 people, so I've got my work cut out for me. I've got all the designs drawn and the glass bought. Wish me luck! I'll post pictures as I go along.

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Birthday present for a pal

It's a friend's birthday very soon, so I made a quick little piece for her.

I drew the design freehand very quickly, then cut it, foiled it, and soldered it in one Sunday afternoon. The only footnote I can really add is how easy it is to work with the 60/40 solder. Compared to the 50/50 solder I struggled so much with on the squid piece, the 60/40 was an absolute dream to work with. Here's the new piece:

Taken from below, with a little light through it. Not much light, mind you - this is Scotland, after all!

Taken straight on.

The piece is about 8 inches tall and 6 inches wide. It consists almost entirely of scraps left over from other projects.

For how quickly I banged this piece out, I think it's pretty nice. I hope my friend likes it! Pin It Now!

[UPDATED] The Kraken has finally been released, plus some complaints about solder

Hey everyone! I finally finished the squid. I would have done it last weekend, but The Scotsman and I decided to spend the long weekend up in Ullapool, a beautiful little seaside town on the west coast of Scotland. We go up to Ullapool regularly. The first time was on our honeymoon, and we liked it so much that we just keep going back.

Wayyy up there!

One of the main reasons we keep going back to Ullapool is the bed and breakfast where we always stay: The Tamarin Lodge. Folks, if you ever find yourself in Scotland and want a luxurious, modern, clean and reasonably-priced bed and breakfast, this is the place to stay. The breakfast they serve in the morning is a thing of beauty; they have their own flock of chickens, and the eggs are that fresh.

So that's why I slacked off last weekend, despite the fact that my darlin' Scotsman had gone to get me some more solder while he was in Alloa (the nearest place that sells stained glass stuff.)

Now, I have to put in a word about the type of solder The Scotsman got me: unfortunately, I hadn't specified to him what kind of solder I wanted, and he got some bad advice from the store owner. He ended up getting the 50/50 solder instead of the 60/40. The different numbers denote the amount of lead to the amount of tin. 50/50 is half lead, and I found it much harder to work with than the 60/40 (60% tin) I'm used to.

All in all, the 50/50 solder was a real bummer. It bubbled up a lot, leaving pockmarks in the lead bead, and was really hard to get to lie in an even, non-blobby way. It also didn't seem to want to adhere to the copper foil, even though I'd fluxed it very thoroughly. It was not my favourite thing. So, if you're ever wondering which type of solder to get, I'd strongly advise getting the 60/40. Also, I now have a TON of 50/50 solder I don't know what to do with. Wanna buy it?

OK, enough preamble. Here's the finished squid:

(UPDATE: I've added a couple of pictures of the squid taken from outside of the house. I don't know why, but my camera is making the red parts look really, really orange when I take the pictures from inside. I guess I need a photography class too!):

THE KRAKEN HAS BEEN RELEASED!

Unfortunately, as with all stained glass, the picture really doesn't do it justice. The reds in the picture look very orange, but they're a darker red in real life. As you can see, I'm also still having issues with getting anything like a straight edge. But whatever!

Here's one taken from outside:

The red parts are much redder, the light parts are much less yellow, and you can sort of see the mottling in the glass. Stupid camera!

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, despite the non-straight edges and my troubles with the solder. Here's a detail of the tentacle:

Tentacle action!

One last one, again taken from outside:

Squiiiiiiiiiid!

When you're as new to stained glass making as I am, every new piece is a learning experience. This one was definitely not an exception. I learned a lot on this one, not least because it was a really challenging design. 

To finish the piece, my plan is to go out to the beach, find some driftwood, and make a frame for the squid out of that. I think it'll look pretty cool!

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Out of Solder

Hey there! I bet you were wondering, "Gee, I wonder if she ever finished that squid."

Well, kind of. I got all of the pieces foiled up with copper foil, which, let me tell you, took a long, long time. When you foil your pieces of glass, you have to be really careful to get the piece of glass exactly in the centre of the foil, or it shows through on the other side. Then when you get the foil exactly placed on the glass piece, you have to burnish it down with a fid so that it sticks to the glass properly.

"Fid." I like that word. Here's what a fid looks like:

You burnish the copper foil with the flat bit at the end.

Since this squid piece has like a zillion little pieces of glass to foil, this took me, as I've already said, a long, long time.  But I really love when you get all of the pieces foiled. Each one looks like a little piece of jewellery in a copper setting.

All copper foiled up. 

Ain't it purty?

After that, you paint flux onto the copper and use your soldering iron to (theoretically) run a nice, even seam of lead along the copper bits, soldering the pieces together. In practice, my solder lines are not always as nice and even as I'd like them to be.

All in all, I got about halfway done with the front side of the piece, when I completely ran out of solder.

Looks like I'm going to have to return to the stained glass supply place before I can finally finish this piece. Curses!

Out of solder! Curses!

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