Okay, so I first started writing about the Squid like, two weeks ago, and I am still so not done with it. I spent all day Saturday cutting out all of the little suckers and connecting parts on the tentacle, and after five hours of straight cutting, it still looked like I'd done nothing.
That took you FIVE HOURS??
I was peeved.
Sunday it started taking shape; I'd gotten all of the watery bits cut, but at the last minute the shouty Muse told me in no uncertain terms that the dark blue part was just way too dark.
Shouty Muse: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! THAT'S TOO DARK! TOO BAD I DIDN'T TELL YOU THAT BEFORE YOU STARTED CUTTING IT! HA HA, MY BAD!
So I took out the dark blue pieces I had just spent hours cutting, and my next plan is to use the foamy glass for that section. I hope the Muse doesn't give the thumbs down to that, because people, I'm 'a need to go on another glass run if that's the case.
Shouty Muse: THAT'S SLIGHTLY BETTER, BUT IT LOOKED WAY BETTER IN MY HEAD. YOU SURE DO SUCK AT THIS.
Thomas, the designer where I work, to whom I was relating this glass-related sob story, said: "It sounds like you're making a lot of problems for yourself."
Well, duh! Anyone with the slightest amount of sense would have seen that all those little suckers would be a complete nightmare to cut. But no! The squid has been envisioned by the idiot thug shouty Muse in my head, and so it must exist!
Next up: foiling all of these teeny bits of glass and then soldering it together. Who needs a drink?
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Whoa! I bet you all thought I died or something. So long since my last post! Well, you'll be relieved to hear that reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.
What have I been doing all this time? Glad you asked! One thing I've been doing is working with The Scotsman to clear out our loft/attic so I can have my own work space up there. He then took the top from an unused desk and built me a cutting table that's the perfect height for me. Isn't he awesome? Here's the new cutting table workspace:
The cutting table my husband built for me. It's the perfect height. Goodbye aching back!
He also built me a nice cubby holder for my glass:
The glass holder The Scotsman built for me. Best husband ever!
I love my new workspace! I've gotten my new Cutter's Mate set up now too. I'm still practising with it; it's taking a little getting used to.
My new Cutter's Mate
I had an idea for a piece last week and got all excited to try and make it a reality. Here's my initial sketch:
RELEASE THE KRAKEN!
Yes, it's a squid. Why a squid? Don't ask me. My Muse just kind of springs up and says weird things to me sometimes. This time she said, "SQUID!" and I was like, "Really? A squid?" and she was like, "YES A SQUID. IT WILL BE COOL!" (My Muse is kind of shouty sometimes. I think she has to be to override the noise that's usually going on in my head.)
So, yeah. I'm making a squid. A stained glass squid. I think it's going to be cool, just like my Muse shouted!
This is how far I've gotten on it:
Squiiiiiiiiiiiiid!!
The squid itself is mostly opaque translucent glass, and the water will be clear blues and maybe greens. I'll be using, fittingly enough, what's called "water glass" for the water parts. Water glass has ripples in it, and for some reason I just love it. Pretty much all of my pieces so far have been done with water glass exclusively, so adding in some translucent opaque glass is a bit of a departure for me. But I like it!
The only thing that worries me is that cutting out and fitting together all of those little round suckers on the tentacle is going to be a nightmare. Thanks for the super-difficult-to-cut idea, stupid Muse!
I'll post more pictures when it's done. Hope you're all having a great day!
Hi there, sorry I haven't posted in so long. I've been working hard on lots of glass pieces though, most of which I gave to people for Christmas presents. Here they are:
My Third Piece
The pictured piece is actually my second attempt at making this design. The first attempt came out so badly that I decided to chuck the whole thing and re-do it. In my first attempt, the circular bit was so out of kilter that it just killed the whole thing with its wrongness. Cutting circles freehand is hard!
I got the basic idea for this design while watching a documentary on TV about (of all things) the Kinsey sex researchers. One of the people being interviewed was sitting in front of a pair of stained glass doors that had a design similar to this one, and I re-created a tweaked version of the pattern in Adobe Illustrator to try for myself. I used 1/4 inch rounded lead came. The finished piece was about 28" x 18".
As you can see, the lines still aren't completely straight. Even using a cutting square, my cuts are still not coming out as even and consistent as I'd like.
My husband The Scotsman built a beautiful mahogany frame for the piece, and it made a huge difference in how finished it looked. He used miter joints in the corners, which came out looking fantastic. I gave this piece to my Mom and we hung it horizontally because it fit the window space better.
My Fourth Piece
Next up is the piece I gave to The Scotsman's Mum for Christmas. This was one of my own designs. For this one I used the copper foil technique, and I'm glad to say my soldering skills are getting a lot better. I found that I was having a much easier time and was a lot more confident running the lead bead along the copper foil. Unfortunately, as you can see, my straight edges are still not very straight!
My Fifth Piece
This is another of my own designs. I gave this one to my sister. Still with the problematic non-straight edges!
Sixth Piece
This one was an adaptation of a free pattern I found on the interwebs. I gave it to some family friends.
I made one last Christmas present piece, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of it before I gave it away. Curses!
This second piece made me cranky. First off, my cutting skills were still pretty rudimentary (who am I kidding, "were"? Ha!) Cutting angles and even straight lines was something I thought I had to do freehand.
Now, the thing about cutting everything freehand is, it's not very exact. When you don't have exact cuts, your pieces of glass don't fit together properly. The slightest deviation in the first piece throws the second piece slightly out of whack, and so on until you have a piece of stained glass that is not so much square as...blobular.
This is especially so when you're using the copper foil technique. Lead came hides a multitude of sins where inexact cuts are concerned. You don't have that much leeway when you're using copper foil.
Oh, and did I mention? This was my very first experience with the copper foil method, and it is - let me tell you - a lot harder than it looks.
So, with all that said, here it is, in all its uneven, scraggly, blobular glory:
Are the pieces supposed to be all different sizes?
And then, oh lord. The soldering. Can I tell you how danged difficult running a bead of solder smoothly down an uneven seam of copper foil is? My solders were globby, spiky, and altogether crappeh.
As it turns out, none of this mattered, because I ended up breaking the damned thing anyway. Going back in to try and smooth out one of my solder seams, I overheated the central pentagon-shaped amber piece and it cracked.
I think the death of this piece was a relief for everyone involved.
There are things to be said for being married to the Best Husband in the World. Here's an example: last year we were watching Mastercrafts, and they were showing three people learning how to do stained glass. I made an off-hand comment that I'd always wanted to learn how to do stained glass, and promptly forgot that I'd ever told him that.
But did Best Husband in the World forget it? No! He squirrelled that comment away in his brain, and a few months later, sprung it on me that my birthday present was two one-on-one classes with a stained glass professional!
See what I mean?
Anyway, I took to stained glass immediately. Despite the aching back you get from standing bent over a cutting table for hours on end and the innumerable cuts, burns and other indignities your hands suffer when you work with glass, I loved it.
I'm starting this blog to chart my progress with stained glass. Here's the first piece I ever made. I drew the design freehand and it took me two sessions of about 5 hours each to cut, lead and finish the piece.
