Always...
So, Susan finished her Shrimp encrusted Fleur De Lis Garden Decoration on a 3 foot stake this past week. (Say that 3 times!) Soldering it together wasn't hard at all, what was time consuming was the wirework. Those legs and antennas may look simple enough but I always worry about them too much and end up taking far longer than I should to get everything attached in a way that looks natural yet unplanned even though the planning process is extreme. Still, I think we managed here.
Roxie has 2 out of 4 of her Hand Mirrors completed. These 2 mirrors are a great example of how colors in glass vary. Both use the same brown glass but some of the pieces almost look like they're amber rather than brown. It's this shading variation that can makes certain glass look so natural. Flat, plain colors are too even and consistent to look natural which is why these mirrors look so great. That and the fact that Roxie is a perfectionist.
Cindy's latest Tiger Eye De Lis window is looking just as good as her last one did. Practice makes perfect! Which is a far better way to look at it rather than saying If at first you don't succeed try, try again. At any rate you can't miss that Tiger eye in the middle of her Fleur De Lis, can you?
Ann's been busy weeding her garden by grinding her flowers and background for a perfect fit. It's really starting to take shape and you can see just how colorful this window will be when it's lit up.
Speaking of colorful, Anita's window proves that black glass doesn't have to be dull and dreary. Using black for a background color usually makes the rest of the window stand out more dramatically than it normally would. The fact that no light comes through the black glass ensures that the focus of this window will be her center emblem and inner borders.
Fran has got one of her Fleur De Lis windows all tacked together and ready to be soldered. You can also see that she has 2 more Fleur De Lis' cut out and ready to be ground. She's thinking about reducing the size of this window by about 1 inch so the borders won't waste as much glass as they do at this size. It's not going to be enough of a change to really notice but it will greatly reduce the amount of waste that's created when she cuts her borders. And it will eliminate the need to join 2 separate pieces of glass sometimes don't match very well on two sides of the border.
Myrt has all of her Traditional Window ground and she's begun wrapping it. She will tack this together when she comes back into class and then start adding her borders. The double border is a definite now and she knows that one of the borders will be black. That we'll see next week.
Since Patty has completed her last cabinet door she has decided to do a Dragonfly Window. Wait until you see the wings on this dragonfly! She'll be cutting them out of iridized clear granite and then she'll use the brass filigrees you see in the picture to make it look at though she spent weeks cutting and grinding when she only actually work on 4 pieces of glass.
Terry is embarking on new Fleur De Lis and this one is going to be studded with clear round globs. It will take a bit of grinding to get this to fit together but I know that Terry can certainly do it. The trick to this window is to get it ground and fitting together BEFORE she starts to grind the globs into place. With the Fleur De Lis portion fitted and pinned into place it will make the rest of the grinding MUCH easier.
And we'll exit this Blog Update with a look at Sonia's Pokeno Girls as they walk away without a care in the world. She's got the bottom of the window and the left side completed and she'll have the rest of the background finished when she returns. We re-drew the extra lead lines on the pattern to even things out since the original had a few lines that were unnecessary and threw the balance of the window off. But that's not a problem anymore.
Although this post is late we're still up to date. I blame the bad weather playing havoc with our internet connection for the slight delay.Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks
