ElkBurger Helper

Lara made this simple yet stunning Peace Sign/Lotus Suncatcher because it's one of her friend's Logo.  The real beauty of this is that this required almost no tinkering at all-- the logo worked as a stained glass pattern with only the smallest of tweaks.

 

 

 

Lara's also finished her Flowers & Books but it's the wire work which really sets this off.  Since she is making this for someone who saw the one that Lara made for herself she has decided to not attach the small gnome that she had made from the scraps of this piece.  She may attach it later on if the person who receives this decides that she wants a tiny gnome on her books.  

And this is the tiny Gnome that Lara made.   It actually only stands less than two inches tall.

Lorrie finished her Dragonfly Window while at home and sent me this picture so everyone could see just how nicely this window came out. She was under the gun when it came to time with this piece but she completed it with hours to spare. It may have been close but it was done on time and that's what counts.

 

 

 

 

Linda L cut out a new Beveled Panel using a nice light blue background (when it's off the table) and a thin yellow border to frame it out. She wasn't having the best of days because she was dealing with glass that just wouldn't cut for either her or myself but in the end her perseverance paid off as she only has a few pieces of border left to foil before she solders this piece.

  

 

 

Betty took the pattern for Let's Dog Window and cropped it down until she had just a single Dog Head Suncatcher Pattern.  She's got seven of them cut out already as well as two more of her Daisy Suncatchers.   She's the Suncatcher Queen! 

 

 

 

Ann's got a great deal of cutting completed this week with the Dove being completely cut out and a good quarter of the fractured background cut out as well.  The key to this type of window is moving just a little bit as a time and making sure that everything is numbered because trying to figure out where an un-numbered piece goes will take a great deal of time. 

 

  

 

Kandise began cutting glass for her Flower/Address Window and is working on the flower side right now. I have to say that I was VERY impressed with all that she completed in just one class and in the accuracy of her cutting. I do believe that she has a firm grasp on using her cutter and pliers.

  

  

Cindy's quickly knocking out a large Butterfly Suncatcher with plenty of pieces-- some of them being small.   And that should instantly tell you that this is something that this is a Cindy project because she's one of the few people who likes to work with small pieces.  That said, she's going to have a lot of fun then when she comes in again next week to work on the bottom of these wings!

 

 

Lorrie's making headway on a different peacock from the one she began two weeks ago. That one hasn't been forgotten, it's just been put on the back burner until this one gets completed.

 

  

 

  

Judy's Indian Head Suncatcher is really coming together now that she's grinding her pieces but I noticed that the feathers on the head of this woman were never going to stay attached as they were drawn.   Hinge points are very problematic in stained glass but by adding more curve to the feathers and placing them deeper into the hair Judy has alleviated the problem in a very non assuming way. 

  

Paula's Sun, Moon and Clouds Box top got it's borders cut and attached. Once that was done Paula set upon soldering the box top and got the front side completely soldered as well as some of the back side. She also got the box sides cut out so perhaps this will be completed upon its return.

  

 

Susan D has a myriad of Humming Birds all cut out, ground and waiting to be foiled so they can be tacked together. Once these are assembled she'll be moving on to the flowers and leaves for her tribute window.

  

 

Keri is making a Chicken Suncatcher as her first project and in this class she was not only able to cut it out but also get it ground as well. She's taken it home to foil so this could easily be completed upon her return.

 

 

 

Let's Flower Window now has its front side soldered. What you're seeing below is the back side which still needs solder but I'm sure that this will be completed when she comes back in because Let has no problem soldering in her shop at home.

 

 

 

Bee's wrapping the top Tiger portion of her LSU window and once that's finished she'll be able to tack it together and then cut borders for it.   She's a little unsure of what she'll exactly be using for a border color but that will be figured out easily enough. 

 

  

 

 

We have another Butterfly this week that Linda F is working on but this one is a nice colorful window. She's working on soldering it now so this could very well be one of our completed projects in our next post.

 

 

 

Cheryl needs to get the Magnolia Window that she's been working at while at home finished so she's put her Beveled Window off to the side for a bit until this is completed. Its close now that the border has been cut and attached and she'll be touching this up at home after which it will hopefully be completed. 

  

 

Zoe has decided to turn he Luna Moth into a large Suncatcher rather than a Panel. Since she was able to finish grinding her moth she'll be ready to solder this upon her return when I'm sure she will complete it.

 

 

 

Martha's Beach Scene Window is moving along quicker than I thought. Since she's got so many focal points in this I think it's going to be best to tack individual sections together as she moves along. The palm trees, the individual chairs, the umbrella, the dolphin and the pelican should all be tacked together separately to make fitting the sky, the sand and the water easier. Why? Because a window with this many pieces is going to expand when everything gets wrapped in foil and by soldering some of it together we can prevent shifting.

 

 

 

Melissa worked on grinding her flowers and is this window looking great or what? I know what she's picked out for her border and for her background and she's got the perfect pieces of glass for both. It won't belong now.

 

 

 

MiMi got the first third of her Lamp tacked together just as we predicted she would. She was worried about the space between the pieces but they are absolutely uniform throughout and fit the pattern perfectly. Now that there's solder holding the pieces together she can easily see that there was nothing to worry about at all.

 

 

 

Sheri's Koi Fish Window got all of its fill-in pieces cut out, ground and even soldered into place. That took a lot of time (because it always does) but she was still able to pick out a beautiful clear textured glass and get the border cut out as well. That's what I call GREAT progress!

 

 

And that's what I call a wrap!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

We Don't Want It To Be All Wonky

Cindy's first Personalized Sports Window was completed this week and those letters are going nowhere! She painted them onto the glass with enamel glass paint which was then fired in our kiln to literally melt the enamel onto the white glass underneath it. Once everything was finished and she had colored and waxed her window Cindy used red nail polish and an artist's fine paint brush to make the ball look as though it had red stitching on it. I'm calling this a home run for sure.

 

Linda L made a beveled Cross Window out of all clear glass textures and then decided to leave the solder silver since it went so well with all of the clear glass that she used. It was a perfect choice for a perfect widow!

 

 

We have a new student this week and that means we get to look at a butterfly! Keri picked green wings with a brown body and I believe that it's clearly evident that she had no problem at all making a perfect Butterfly!

Mary Grace has another Frame under her belt and it's a twin of the first one that she made. I'm not entirely sure how many more of these she plans to make but she also got a lot of green, gold and purple strips cut out so that she can piece together at least two or three more of these frames.  

 

With the first third of her Lamp all wrapped in foil MiMi has coated her lamp mold with Tacky-Wax and then positioned all of the pieces into place. Even already, this looks amazing. When she comes back in she'll tack this together and then be ready to work on the second third of her lamp.

  

Martha believes I hate her because her pattern has so many tiny pieces in it. Well I'm not going to lie and say that it doesn't but more detail always means more pieces. I'll state one other thing for the record on this-- it's going to be spectacular!

  

 

Paula has begun working on a Happy Sunny Sky featuring a rainbow, cotton candy clouds and a hint of the moon in it as well! This is actually going to be the top of a box which means that she will completely finish this 100 percent before she begins working on the pieces that make the box bottom. 

 

 

 

June's Multi-Colored Cat is shaping up wonderfully and I really do think that this is easily going to outdo the multi-colored elephant that she made just a month ago. Her colors are nice and vibrant and she's grinding as she goes which means that although it may appear that she's working slowly, she's actually getting two steps done at once.

  

 

 

Lorrie got the entire front side of her Dragonfly Window soldered and then moved on over the the back side where she got about a third of that soldered as well. Consider this to be a done deal when she comes back in!

 

  

 

  

Look at all of those beautiful flowers!   Melissa is now wrapping glass and once these flowers are foiled she'll tack them together and then begin the arduous task of filling in the background.   She'll do that by placing chunks of the background glass under the birds and then tracing around them.  Once she has everything that she traced cut, ground and wrapped she'll tack them into  position and begin the process again until the entire background has been filled in.

 

  

 

With all of her Luna Moth ground Zoe has started to foil all of her pieces.  She's going to tack this together before working on the background so that the pieces of the moth won't shift around while lining up the background.  We want everything to be perfectly straight and symmetrical or this window will certainly lose a large amount of it's charm.

  

 

 

Susan D's has a lot of humming birds in the works here and they are actually  part of one large window. She's moving full steam ahead and once these are tacked together she'll move along to the flowers that will share the spotlight with these birds.

 

  

 

 

With the second side of her Flowers and Books almost completely soldered Lara will surely get the wire work completed on this when she comes back in.  You can already see one piece of long wire in the picture that she's pre-tinned so that she can cut it to the correct lengths and then solder them into position to form pages and flower details. 

 

 

 

Bee's LSU/Tiger Eyes have really come together. The LSU portion has been wrapped in copper foil and can now be tacked. Once she foils the top tiger section she'll be ready to get a border on this!

 

  

 

Sheri has her Koi Window tacked together which means that we will be working on filling in those pesky missing pieces upon her return.   With the pieces secure we will be able to put glass under this and trace around the openings to get a nice clean, perfect fit.

  

 

This is Cindy's second Sports Ball 'Window' but this one will actually have no background glass and hang as a large sun catcher. The blue glass that she used to fire the name Luke into wasn't fusing glass so the texture and the shade of the blue changed after being fired which was problematic to Cindy since there are four other pieces of blue that make up the ribbon. To fix that we are going to fire some more blue glass and then re-cut the left and right sides of the banner which will ensure that all of the pieces match perfectly.

 

  

 

Cheryl got all of her background glass cut out for her LARGE Beveled Window and even has the borders cut for the top and bottom of it. I suspect that those will be tacked into place along with the left and right borders when we next see this.  Soldering is very near now.

 

 

 

Here's a look at Mary Grace's third Picture frame which is identical to the first two. That means that the twin picture frames that she's already made will soon become triplets!

 

  

 

 

Kandise has traced out everything for her Flowers and Numbers Address Window and will be making this in two distinct sections.  She'll start with the flowers which reside on the right side of the pattern and treat that side as though it were one complete window   That means that she'll actually tack all of what you see below together before moving along the the left side of the window which contains the numbers.  This will go together the same way that Bee's LSU/Tiger Eyes window did but this window runs left and right rather than Bee's top and bottom.

 

  

  

Ann has extended the fractured background of her new window to fit the larger circle that she will build it within and then we sat down and figured out just how big the Dove should be that will reside in the center of this window.  Yep, Ann will be cutting glass when we next see her!

And there you have it!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks 

I Said a Little, That's a Lot!

Martha's colorful Musical Notes Window was completed this week and it looks spectacular. Colorful and musical all at once. If you play the notes you'll find that this is the beginning of 'Come Together' by The Beatles. (Or is it??) No matter, Martha did a wonderful job all around on this and I think it will sing to everyone that sees it. 

 

Paula's Butterfly was done in record time which is impressive when you consider the amount of pieces in it.   It took her far less than three weeks (more like two weeks) to make this stunning iridized Butterfly.   The quick turnaround from start to finish does not in any way suggest that the workmanship on this is lacking.  It's as perfect as perfect can be right down from the colors up to her impressive soldering.

Zoe's Luna Moth has been all cut out and she's begun grinding the pieces already. She'll put the moth together as though it were a suncatcher so that it doesn't shift around when she begins working on the background and its fancy border which needs to line up perfectly for this to look its very best.

 

 

 

Linda L has a number of these cross bevel sets and has decided that it's time to put them to good use.   In this class she learned how to design a simple yet stylish Cross Panel and then got everything cut, ground, wrapped and tacked together.   Now that's what I call an extremely  productive day!  

 

  

 

 

Linda F got all of her Butterfly Window ground but I sort of threw off one of her pieces by trying to help but instead made things worse.  Rather than re-cutting the large piece of glass that I ground too short we altered the smaller piece in the upper left corner so that everything fit together perfectly.   If you look closely you can see how the glass doesn't follow the pattern underneath it.  After getting the left side together we then altered 2 pieces on the right side so that the Butterfly would be symmetrical again.   Sometimes the best way to handle a situation is to look for a less obvious  solution which in this case was to alter and re-cut a much smaller piece. 

 

  

 

Judy began this Chippewa Indian Woman Suncatcher and also got very far along on it in just one class.  It's looking like this will be completely ground when you see it again in our next post. 

 

  

 

 

Annette began foiling the pieces that she had ground for her LSU Window and even tacked them together. This ensures that nothing will slip out of place and will make grinding the remaining pieces go a bit easier since there won't be as many pins holding things down. All I can say is that this may be THE biggest feather in Annette's stained glass hat when she's finished with it because it is already stunning.

 

Not to be outdone by any of our other students, Lorrie set to work on a Dragonfly Lotus Window by tracing out her pattern onto poster board, cutting the pattern pieces out, and then even cutting this much glass as well! Don't you dare sneeze or you might miss out on her finishing this beauty of a window! 

 

 

 

As predicted, Bee finished cutting and grinding the bottom portion of her LSU Window in the blink of an eye. She's going to be wrapping pieces when she comes back in but even now, without foil revealing where the lead lines will be, you can clearly see the tiger as well as the LSU in this window. Team spirit indeed.

 

  

 

 

Shelley's Cats are beginning to look like squared off cats now (as they should).  Maybe it's the addition of the blue collars but rest assured that they will look even more catlike when you next see them because they will have their little pink noses cut and ground into place. 

 

  

 

Let's Flower Window got it's border cut, ground, foiled and attached this week. It's hard to say if this will be completed when she brings it back in because Let will be out next week due to a well deserved vacation.   Alas, the end is near for this beautiful window.

 

 

  

Cindy's closing in on scoring with two different Sports Window projects.   The nameplate for her Soccer Ball has been fired and is ready to be added to the bottom of that piece while her Softball Window only needs the border foiled and then some soldering done to it.  Since Cindy works on her stained glass while at home I won't be surprised if she has at least one of these completed when she comes back in. 

 

 

 

 

Cheryl's Beveled Window is really coming together as the largest of her pieces have been cut, ground, foiled and tacked together.   She's got only eight pieces left to go before she can add the final border and those eight pieces may very well be attached by the end of her next class.

 

 

 

Mary Grace has another frame under way and only needs to solder this and then add the three piece stand that will enable this to be displayed on a table rather than hanging on the wall. 

  

 

And just like that, the Blog was published later than normal!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks