Bayou Salé GlassWorks: Dotted Your Eyes For You

We started 2 new students this week so you know we'll be seeing butterflies here. But let's start with a returning student who we haven't seen in a while.

Fran has been keeping pretty busy lately but she has numerous projects to do so she's back in class. She returned this week with a window that I'd forgotten she'd been working on-- her popular Diamond Fleur De Lis Window. Made with Iridized Black Baroque Glass for the FDL and the border, this window always stands out. Fran came in and gave her soldering a once over to smooth out any rough areas and in the end her window turned out PERFECT. I can honestly say that she has the soldering process down pat. It's without a doubt a beautiful window.

Next we'll look at the first of our2 Standard Butterflies this week. This was made by Martha and let me tell you, Martha has taken to cutting glass like a fish takes to water. From her very first score line I knew that she would have no problem making stained glass. And her bright red and yellow butterfly proves that I made a good judgement call.

Shelley is our second new student of the week. She decided to make a baby blue butterfly with the same yellow body that Martha had picked. Now I hate to sound like a broken record but Shelley also had no problems when it came down to cutting or grinding her glass. Look at the uniform and smoothly curved pieces that make up her butterfly. You couldn't ask for better work on a first project.

Now, Roxie has had more than a few of her projects on our cutting table so when she makes a butterfly she wants hers to be more challenging. The two Butterfly Lawn Ornaments that she cut out this week are each made out of 22 pieces of glass. She'll also solder this together so the butterfly is 3D with its wings pointing upward. I'll make sure to get a few different angles when these are completed which will most likely be soon knowing Roxie.

Aubrey is moving along wonderfully with her Silhouetted Trees Window. Everything but the sun is cut and she's even got the bottom 2 layers of the land ground and fitted. Right now she's busy grinding her branches and once they're done she'll wrap them and then tack all of what we see here together. Then we'll set the glass that forms the sun behind the piece and cut out each of the pieces for a perfectly aligned sun.

In our last post I asked what you call a cow with just 2 legs, but then I noticed that Cindy's Cow Window has NO legs so..... Q) So what do you call a cow with no legs? A) How about Ground Beef? (OMGSMN*) That being answered, Cindy's cow is very much taking shape now. She's been grinding it (as you can tell by the pins) and the background which is going to be a black and white checkerboard is about all there is left to cut. This will be a perfect Kitchen decoration.

Lynn has made some major progress on her Flamingo Window. In fact, everything is cut out save for the branches in the upper right and the lower left. That means that Lynn will be at the grinder when she comes back into class. We had a slight incident with the sky but we have a wonderful work around that we'll reveal when it's all complete. I have to hand it to Lynn, she isn't afraid to forge ahead and move right along.

Patty has all of her Lady In A Bathtub ground and ready to be wrapped. There's still the small flower and the leaves to take into account but that's barely worth mentioning and will be handled when she returns for her next class. Mark my words when I say that Patty will be wrapping this up soon!

Sonia has most of her praying hands complete but it didn't go as smoothly as she'd hoped. While she was grinding one of the pieces she managed to cut one of her fingers bad enough to require a band-aid (you can see the bandage in the picture). It didn't slow her down at all though. there's just 2 pieces of background glass and then a border and this will be completed!

Lastly, Terry's latest Bird Window is really moving along. She has the majority of this window ground and fitted together and since all the glass is cut (save for the border) I think this will be all foiled and ready for solder before we know it. She's cut out some off-white eyes for these birds and I've placed black dots of glass paint onto the centers of them (thus effectively dotting her eyes) that she'll 'fire' on using her oven in the new kitchen that she's just had installed! Something tells me that this wasn't kind of cooking that she planned on doing though...