Practice Makes Perfect

Christine was back with us this week and she showed up with 3 completed magic wands. During class she made 3 different matching stands. She said she enjoys making them and I have to say that I understand that completely. Although they may not be very practical, they are a great project because you make it up as you go along. It's very creative.

Jane is working on the border of her Peacock window now so this should be finished soon. Jane flew through this window and it's looking great!

Jane has 2 irons in the fire this week as she is also working on this Fleur De Lis window. She only needs to cut 6 pieces of background glass and this will be ready. Something tells me we'll see it completed before she arrives for her next class.

Julie is moving along wonderfully with her first window. This is her second week on it and she's all set to start working on the background next week.

Janice is about to wrap up this window. It won't be ready this coming week but it will certainly be finished the following week. After she adds the final border and the 4 triangle corners this will be ready to be soldered. They say practice makes perfect and this proves it!

Grace has it all together now. The only thing left to do is solder this and decide on the 8 small accent pieces. It's been a long haul for Grace but the payoff is right around the corner now. And the experience she's gained making such a large window is invaluable.

Gerald's window is ready to be washed, colored, waxed and installed. That won't even take half of a class to do. (Besides, I said I'd do it for Gerald since it will be easier to do outside with the hose during daylight!) Look for the finished picture of this one in our next blog entry.

Does this look like a fat cat to you? I don't think so but it seems to be getting a bad rep during class. We're leaning towards NOT putting a border on this but we'll see what happens next week when it's all tacked.


Th-th-th-that's all folks!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Lions, Giraffes and Elephants (Oh My!)

Classes are picking back up as you can see by the number of projects we have this week. There's been a steady rain each day here in the bayou and it seems to have brought some students back into the fold. :-)

Jane completed her Jungle Scene Window and there's no mistaking any of the animals in it. It's yet another job well done by Jane. All it needed was to be colored so this wasn't all she worked on this week. Keep reading to see what else she's been doing at home.

Gerald had a quick project he needed to take care of this week. The clear plastic in his kitchen light fixture had turned milky with age and was no longer lighting the room very brightly. Although we didn't have any clear, textured glass big enough to replace it in one piece Gerald was able to join some textured glass and make it work nonetheless.


Julie is our newest student and tonight was her first real stab at making a window. It's a big one (41" x 24") but a great pattern to start with. She managed to pick out all her colors and then cut out a good portion of her window and then grind it. The center rose isn't ground but Julie has taken the rest of the pieces you see below {click on the picture for a larger view} home with her to wrap during the week. Next week the rose will be ground and she'll probably have the ribbons and laurel wreath sections cut as well.

Gerald finished his light fixture Wednesday night and resumed working on his front door Iris window. The back side is almost completely soldered and I suspect that next week we'll see this piece completed. I can't wait to see it in the door.

Cheryl's Kitten is looking slimmer to me this week-- maybe because it's all ground and wrapped. She only has a handful of pieces left to go before she finishes this window. I have no clue what she plans on making next but it's getting to the point where she should start considering it!

Grace has flat soldered the front of her window and then removed the boards that kept the window square so she could add the first of 2 borders that will finish off this panel. She went with a nice deep blue for the first border and will go back to a smoke gray for the last border. She'll begin soldering this next week for sure!


Janice started working on her last window (of this design) for the 2nd floor of her house. When she came in she had nothing to show but 4 bags of pieces. She discovered that one of the bags wasn't wrapped yet which should have slowed her down but it didn't. After wrapping them she tacked the centerpiece together and then ground the red round/oval accent pieces. The bottom half of her background was cut ground and wrapped as well and then Janice called it a night (whew!). This one is moving fast, just the way she likes it. :-)

And in the end we have Jane who cut the body, neck, head and leaves for her peacock panel after her Jungle Window was completed. She's been working on this one while at home (as she usually does) and I'm amazed at how fast she's going through this progress. But it really helps when it's something that you really want to make as is the case with this.

There's more coming next week as we have several projects very near completion. Stop by and check things out again in 7 days-- you never know what will turn up next.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Cheryl's Fat Kitty

We have a lot of finished projects this week so let's jump on in.

Janice has another of her windows under her belt. With only one more of this design to go she'll soon be able to say farewell to this pattern forever. :-) She's almost finished with the next one since she has all but the background and border all cut out, ground and wrapped.

Fran finished her large Mardi Gras Mask and decorated it with 2 strings of beads. The darker iridescent black beads got lost against the mask but when she alternated them with silver beads they stood out just fine. Here's the first of 2 masks that Fran completed Wednesday.

This is the other mask Fran finished. It may look familiar because it was actually done a while back but we discovered a design flaw that made it come apart. There was a straight line along the star portion of the left eye which folded in half. We were able to rewrap a few pieces and add a wire along the eye hole which made it nice and sturdy. This one will stay together forever now.


I promised you a butterfly in out last post and here it is. Julie did wonderfully and went with Spectrum red granite back wings, a yellow antique body and a yellow cats eye glob for the head. I think we're going to be seeing some great things from Julie in the near future. We still don't have a pattern for what she'll be making next week but she still has plenty of time to decide on what she'll be making.

I finished this window which we call Volker's Window to replace a different window that was sold at the Farmer's Market last week. The window was named after the the customer we originally made it for to avoid any confusion with the numerous other flower windows that we've made over the year.
Here's the cat window in a window that I talked about in the last post. I didn't care much for the cat in the pattern that Cheryl showed me so I changed it a bit. Now she says that it's a fat cat but that she likes it. I didn't think it was fat at all, just well loved by its owner. :-) The cat itself is all cut out and ground-- Cheryl packed it up so she could wrap it at home before I managed to snap my picture. Look for more progress on this one next week.


Grace has her window spot tacked so she's moving right along as well. She's considering putting this in the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival's art exhibit. I'll bet money that if she does it will win an award. This is one impressive window!

Jane has begun working on her version of the Peacock window. She's doing the actual peacock that I made a few weeks ago because it shorter than the one that Cheryl did. But she's not going to do the fancy border that I did. She likes the original one that Cheryl made and I have to agree with her. All that deep blue surrounding the peacock really gave it a lot of contrast which catches your eye.These are the teal peacock feathers that Jane cut out this week which you don't see in the picture above. Jane had a very productive week. :-)


And last but certainly not least we have a look at Gerald's Front door oval. The front is completely soldered now so this is going be completed within 2 weeks. A window this size isn't easy to wash so I'm expecting it to take a few hours just to color it and get it waxed. If he gets this all soldered next week he'll be making great time on this window.

And that's what happened here in the shop during classes. It's good to see everyone coming back in and catching up with all that's been going on in their lives during the past few hectic weeks.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Progressing with Projects

Cheryl's Wedding Box is completed and looking better than ever. I took 6 pictures of it but none of them caught the color of the iridescent border glass that she used. Trust me when I say that this looked even better in person. Cheryl's next project will be a window involving a cat and a stained glass window. It will all make more sense when you see it. :-)


Grace has her entire window wrapped. I don't have a picture of it all wrapped so look at this small section that IS wrapped. (whoops!) She'll begin tacking her window together during her next class. I think she'll be happy to be doing something different for a change!

Jane made great progress on this window while she was at home. She had actually started it 2 weeks earlier but ran out the door with the pieces all boxed up before I managed to get a picture of it. Jane's quick with picking up her projects but I always end up with a finished picture. This one should be completed next week.

Janice has the front side of her window all solder and the back side is 3/4's of the way finished. One more of these to go (which is all cut save for the background) and she'll be able to sit back and enjoy looking at them! We had a slight problem with Gerald's window when we slid it around on the table. One of his pieces of water hit the floor and broke. Since we didn't have another piece of blue baroque in the shop we fixed it by lowering the water on the rest of the pieces. Then Gerald proceeded to cut the background for this window. By the end of the class he was all cut and ground. This window is almost ready for solder now!

We'll have a new student (Julie) coming in for our next set of classes so expect to see a butterfly in the next post. Julie plans on working her way up to a peacock window and judging by her enthusiasm I'm betting she's going to do it soon enough!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

July In A Nutshell

The last 3 weeks of July was a slow period for classes and with only 1 picture or so a week I just held off to post the pictures all in one shot. With school beginning again and vacations coming to an end I think we'll have more students in on a regular basis.

We've been participating in the Franklin Farmer's Market on Saturdays (7am - 12pm) and Tuesdays (1pm - 6pm) and have made a number of new items to sell there. This was made 2 weeks ago and is certainly colorful. It's a variation of the Peacock window that Cheryl made in June (which cane be found in the June section of this Blog). The Peacock is certainly a hit-- it gets a lot of comments at the Farmer's Market. And Jane is making a variation of this one (with different borders) as I type this.

Fran made two Fleur De Lis windows using iridescent glass for the Fleur De Lis' and the borders. She did most of the work at home and did a great job.

This is a picture of one of Fran's Fleur De Lis one week earlier. What a difference a week makes!

Grace spent most of the month wrapping all the pieces for her window. She was also away during a good portion of the month so it didn't take her nearly as long to wrap this as it might have sounded. Nonetheless, there are a LOT of pieces in this window! As she enters August Grace only needs to wrap the clear glass Fleur De Lis' to get ready for tacking this together. There are 8 small rounded accent pieces that need to be cut also but she's not sure what color they'll be yet. She'll decide that when she gets a better look at her window.

Meanwhile, Janice worked steadily away on her last 2 windows of this design. This just needs the 4 pieces of background glass and a border and then it will be complete. Next week Janice will begin soldering her window and the following week it will go home with her.

Cheryl worked on her latest wedding box. It may be hard to make out here in the picture but once I tell you it's two hearts intertwined you'll have no problems discerning the pattern. Once she grinds, wraps and tacks the background all she'll need to do is add a border and a box bottom to finish this.

And like magic it's now one week later and Cheryl has ground the background glass, wrapped it, tacked it and added a border. She also soldered it and added a hinge to the top, which isn't visible because it was done correctly :-). Without a doubt, this will be finished next week. (I ought to know-- I have the picture of it completed already!)

I'll make another entry on Thursday to help get things caught up. That's what happened in July here at Bayou Salé GlassWorks. Come back soon!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks