Butcher Birds

There's plenty to see here this week -- I think we're on a roll again when it comes to student projects.   Even the freshly started projects are moving along quickly which is nice because it means we always have something new to look at in our weekly updates.

So we'll start off with Aubrey's window.  It's certainly had many eyes on it over the 5 weeks it's been under construction.  Everyone was always asking to see how far along she'd gotten and everyone Oohed and Awed when the sun was cut and tacked into place.  It's just a shame that only a select few got to see it before she took it home with her this week.  As you can see, for a first project this is really the bomb.  (Do they still say that?)  Sadly, the picture doesn't doesn't do it justice.

 

 

Cindy designed this Zebra mirror herself and it's a keeper!  A change will need to be made if she decides to make it again because there's one thing about stained glass we both forgot when she was working on this project:  Straight lines bend easily.   What does that have to do with this Zebra Mirror?  Well, the bottom 4 pieces wanted to pull off when Cindy finished it and picked it up.  But there was a simple solution to fix it-- we just ran a wire around the outside edge of the handle and hid it under the solder which means that now it's nice and sturdy.  But next time Cindy makes this she'll run the center line all the way down the handle and stop the two sides from lining up so perfectly so it will have strength without the use of wires.

What we have here is another look at the window that Cindy completed last week.  I didn't get a picture of it in the actual frame so  Cindy was kind enough to bring it back in so we could let you see the final completed project all installed.  And since I took this picture early on in the evening we have some actual light behind it which allows you to see that the outer glass border is a nice deep red.

 

Roxie has been cutting and cutting for the past 3 weeks or so and now we're seeing the fruits of her labors.  This is the first of her five 3D Butterfly Lawn Ornaments.  These things seem to be extremely popular right now and they're about to start flying out the door now that Roxie is starting to solder hers all together.  I like her choice of colors on this one (and all the others.)  They're really vibrant.

  

Speaking of Butterflies, last week I tried to show the angle of the wings on Bonnie's 3D Butterfly Lawn Ornaments but the picture didn't quite show it.  This is Bonnie's last Butterfly and I think I have the camera low enough so you can see the tilt of the wings.  You can also see the mounting post underneath  that will help anchor this butterfly into the ground.

  

Bonnie's next project is another 3D Lawn Ornament but this one won't be a butterfly.   As you can see from the picture below she's begun working on a 3 dimensional sunflower.   The flower you're looking at will be tacked together and soldered just like a normal suncatcher but there will be a second ring of smaller, inner petals that will sit up at an angle and really make this POP!  Chances are good that we'll see this completed next week.

 

Cindy wasn't content with finishing her Zebra mirror so she started another round Fleur De Lis window.  Can we just all agree that it just wouldn't feel like a real stained glass class if there wasn't a Fleur De Lis window in the works?  Cindy has the FDL center cut out and has begun grinding it  together as you can plainly tell by noticing all the yellow headed pins in the picture.

Look at all of these butterflies! Every last one of them belongs to Roxie and now that she's got them tacked together she'll be finishing them up as fast as she can.  These are nice and bright and will certainly stand out in any garden or yard.

 

Lynn's Flamingo Window is ready to be soldered.  This is a picture that was taken earlier in the class so it differs slightly from what it actually looks like now.  Currently the border is all tacked in place and the brass channel has been cut and added as a finishing edge.  Lynn is so ready to have this piece completed that she already knows what she wants to make next.  I'm not going to ruin the surprise so you'll just have to wait until she starts it.  I love the border that she picked out for this window.  I never would have considered it myself but it works out PERFECTLY!

 

Beaks, eyes, feet and a branch.  That's all that's left for the flock of birds that Patty has been making.  I love all the colors in this-- there was no way Patty could lose with this pattern that allowed her to be as colorful as she wanted to be.  She's a little 'iffy' on one or two of the color choices but I think they look just fine.  Better than fine, even.  We'll certainly know for sure when she begins grinding this to fit next week.

 

Shelley's entered the final home stretch with her Mermaid window.  Everything is cut save for the corners which means that I'm sure She'll be soldering this when she comes in next week.  She's used the same blue glass for her border that she used in the two small fish.  As I always say, you can't lose when you match your border  to a color that is already used in your window. 

Megan!  That was the name that I forgot to add to Terry's pattern last week.  But as you can see Terry didn't need me to add a 5 letter name to the bottom of her window.  She did just fine on her own.  And since it's all cut out and tacked together I'd say that this may very well be a completed featured project in our next update.

 

Myrt had to re-size her window that she had started so we used the same humming birds that she already cut out and constructed this new pattern around them.  Now there's an extra row of vine on the top which makes this version stand slightly taller than the one she originally started making.  This just goes to show how we're able to change things.  Patterns are penciled onto paper, not etched in stone! 

I don't have a picture of Susan's Pumpkin Lawn Ornament because I somehow forgot to snap a picture of it before she left.  Sadly, it had a broken piece in it and since we didn't have any of the same orange glass in the shop we were unable to repair it, but she'll be bringing it back when she returns and we'll get to see it 100% completed.  That I promise you.

Also, yes,  Sonia is still with us.  She's just been keeping busy working late hours and keeping up with her family.  Hopefully we'll get to see her next week so she can finish up her praying hands.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Like Cows In A Window Frame- So Are The Days Of Our Lives

Well, if you recall, we had no completed projects to feature last week so we just looked at everything that was under construction at the time.  Here we are just one week later and we have five completed projects to showcase!  Our students have certainly been very busy and we have a lot to look at so let's get started. 

Terry finished her latest Fleur De Lis window and it's a winner.  Rather than going with a standard rectangular frame within a frame she opted for a scroll work styled inner border.  If you look carefully at the design of this window you'll see that the only straight cuts in it are on the outside edge.  That means that there isn't a straight lead line in the entire panel which helps to explain why it comes off as a very graceful and flowing window. 

 

Bonnie got two of her 3D Lawn Ornament Butterflies completed and has the 3rd one so close to completion that it isn't even funny.  It just needs to be attached to the mounting pole and then washed so expect to see that featured next week.  Here's a look at her Orange Butterfly-- we'll see her second one a little further down in this post.

 

Bonnie isn't the only student to get two projects finished this week.  Cindy managed to get her Brown Cow Window completed and even inserted into the frame she made it for.   After we added a small brass channel to the edge of her panel we slowly slide it into the window frame that she brought along with her and it fit inside like hand in a glove.  I love when things work out perfectly like that.  The picture below is just of the window itself sans the white wooden frame.

 

Cindy's second finished project was this fancy Fleur De Lis that I believe will be inserted into a small table top.   If you look closely you'll see that this is the same Fleur De Lis design that is in the center of Terry's window--  it's just been redrawn in a smaller size with a round background and then cut out of different colored glass.

  

Cindy also began grinding her latest hand mirror and we're going to call it the Unicorn!  Err, no, that's wrong, it's the Zebra(!) hand mirror  We all all know that Cindy enjoys working with tiny pieces so this pattern (consisting of  38 pieces) is right up her alley.   

 

Lynn came in and managed to get all of her Flamingo window ground and then a good 95% of it wrapped.  What she didn't finished wrapping went home with her so I know that when she comes back in she'll be ready to tack this together and then fill in 2 pieces missing pieces of background mountain.  And then it will need just a quick border and then a day of soldering to wrap up this project.

 

Meanwhile Lynn's daughter, Aubrey, put the finishing touches on her Sunset Window which some people are referring to as The Lion King Window.  Either one works for me.  Aubrey certainly selected the perfect set of colors for this project right down to her deep red border.  She'll be soldering this next week and with a little luck she may be able to take it home with her as well.   If you think it looks nice now just wait until you see it with some light behind it!

Martha made the jump from Wednesday night to Tuesday night classes this week and completed wrapping all of her background glass.  She's already got a border color picked out and ready to be cut when she comes back in.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the black pattern lines for the background design under the clear wings.  Once the background was all ground and fit together she simply traced the outline of her completed dragonfly on top of the background glass and it all fit together perfectly with barely any need for grinding at all.

Patty was hard at work on her colorful Birds window this week.  She's beyond the halfway point now (in terms of cutting glass).  The best part about this window is the ability to use scraps that have been hanging around  for a while now.  She really can't lose when it comes to picking colors for this design since colorful is supposed to be what this is all about.  It's already shaping up to be a winner.

 

Shelley finished grinding all of the glass to her Mermaid window when she came in and then she set her sights on wrapping all of her pieces.  She didn't quite get them all foiled but she'll definitely get then finished and then tacked together when she comes back in next week.  Once it's tacked she'll add the final border and be ready to solder this project.

Okay, we're going to back track a bit and look at the second 3D Butterfly that Bonnie's completed this week.  I keep saying that it's 3D (meaning 3 dimensional) but it's hard to show in pictures.  Hopefully this semi rotating view of Bonnie's other butterfly helps you to see how the butterfly is 'folded' in between the left and right wings to form a very loose V shape and make the butterfly look more realistic than it would appear as a flat piece of glass.   Alas, my picture would be better if I had lowered the camera more so I promise another attempt when Roxie completes one of hers.

 

And speaking of Roxie, here's a look at 2 of the 3 Butterflies that she managed to grind this week.  I forgot to snap a picture of her red butterfly before she bagged it and put it in her purse to take home with her so it could be foiled when she returns for her next class.  I promise you'll see the completed version though!

 

And speaking of wrapping, we'll wrap up this post with a look at the Ballerina Window that Terry began working on after she completed her Fleur De Lis Window.  You can see that she's cut her pieces short on the bottom and that's because she will be adding a name to this window that I forgot to draw into the pattern.  It's a simple fix and she'll most likely have that part completed when she returns (knowing Terry).

Wow, it was a busy week in classes and next week is shaping up to be more of the same.  No one is standing around wasting time, that's for sure.  I always love to see what our students will come up with next and I'm generally surprised just about every week.   I can't wait to see what next week brings us.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Voilà!

 Wow, this past week brought us a lot of rain, thunder, and lightning.  And the severe storms kept our attendance down to a bare minimum so we actually have no completed projects to look at, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing to see.   Read on!

Martha had ground and tacked together her Dragonfly during her last class and this week she not only cut out her background glass but she got it all ground as well!  With the tough part over this window is well on it's way to completion.  We even remembered to cut the dragonfly into the background before Martha wrapped everything!

Patty finished her Lady In a Tub last week so she started from square one this week on her latest project which we're called the Birds In A Row window.  She traced out her pattern and is (obviously) working from the left to the right.  Three birds down, seven left to go.  With no limits to the colors she can use on these birds I can safely say that this will be, without a doubt,  a very colorful and eye catching window.

 

Bonnie continued working on her three Butterfly lawn ornaments.  She has all three cut out and all three ground and has taken all the pieces home to wrap throughout the week so she can start soldering when she returns next Thursday.  It's hard to see but Bonnie grabbed the bull by the horns and made some modifications to the original pattern.  The butterfly on the left has 10% fewer calories pieces.  Where's Bonnie's 3rd butterfly?  Well I forgot to get a picture of it so you'll just have to wait to see it in our next post.

  

Speaking of butterflies Roxie has got six (or is it five?) butterflies cut out and ready to be ground.  Or at least she did when she came in.  She now has 2 of them ground and the green one that was only a pattern traced onto glass last week is now all cut out and ready to face the grinder when she returns. 

 

Shelley made excellent progress on her Mermaid window this week.  She got her two fish and all of the water cut out AND she also managed to get a good 75% of this window ground.  The flower on top and some of the water under it still needs to be fitted into place but the majority of this window is ready for foil.  Shelley has decided to go with a blue border and the yellow flower will cut into it which explains why the water ends suddenly on the top.  I think the border is really going to make this window stand out nicely.

I'm guessing that classes will be back to normal this coming week so we might very well see a completed window (or two?) when we return.  If not you'll certainly see a lot more progress on these windows that you've just looked at along with more than a few others.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Anna Lisa Joy

We had a short week here due to the 4th of July landing in the middle of our classes but that didn't stop a lot from happening which includes two completed windows.

Patty's Women In A Bathtub Window is all set and ready to hang.  She used iridized globs for the bubbles and although they show up nicely when you see the window in person, they don't really photograph well.  But that doesn't stop this window from looking great.  A "Job Well Done" is certainly in order for Patty.

 

Our second completed window was made by Terry and it's also got some water going on in the subject matter.  Terry's Heron Window looks great and you can even see in the thumbnail below that she's taken the time to dot her eyes.  I remember when Terry was worried that the colors she used for the water and for the birds might be too similar but as you can see there's plenty of contrast and her Herons blend into the water at all.

 

Terry didn't stop there though.  She's also been busy making this very curvy Fleur De Lis Window.  There's not a straight cut in sight on this pattern and when you see this all ground and fitted together you're really going to be surprised with just how graceful and flowing this window actually is. 

 

Bonnie came in expecting to make one or two 3-D Sunflower Lawn Ornaments but after she cut out her pattern she realized that we didn't have the glass she had her heart set on using for the project.  So she started cutting out Butterfly Lawn Ornaments instead.  She's got 3 of them underway here with 1 being completely cut out.  She'll be grinding next week, that's for sure.

 

Cindy brought the window frame in that she plans on installing her Cow Window into and we both took some measurements and decided that a thin clear textured inner border followed by a thicker red outer border would really look good for this window.  I'd say that this will be completed when Cindy returns but that won't be next week because she's going to be away.  That means we'll have 1 cow, well done, in 2 weeks.

 

And while she's been making her cow window Cindy has also managed to cut out this Fleur De Lis project.  She's got it all ground and ready for foil so this one should be finished soon as well.  This will be finished as a circular piece and if you've really paid close attention you will have noticed that this is actually the same Fleur De Lis that is in the center of Terry's window as well.

 

Myrt decided that she wanted to make the Humming Birds, Flowers, and Vines Window that Cindy made a while back.  Alas, she needed it to stand considerably taller than Cindy's was.  Stretching it out would have distorted the design too much so what we did was add 3 more flowers, a few extra leaves as well as an extended vine and we ended up with the pattern that you see below.  Myrt got her birds cut out and will resume the rest of this window during her next class.

 

Last, but certainly not least, we take a look at Roxie's latest Butterfly Lawn Ornaments.  She came in and got three more completely cut out and a forth started.  That means that next week she'll have 6 of these ready to be ground (unless she decides to cut out any more!)

So there you have it.  Everything that was fit to print about what happened here in classes during the first week of July.  See you next week!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks

If You're Skipping Class You Aren't Cutting Glass

Oddly enough, this is one of those rare weeks when none of our students had completed any projects.  I was wondering what I was going to use as a picture for the announcement email when low and behold Myrt sends me an email of all the crosses she had made while she was at home!  Talk about great timing.  So let's take a look at the seven crosses she completed near the end of May.

Martha came into her second class knowing that she wanted to make a Dragonfly Window.  She wasn't sure if she could do it as a first project but I convinced her that she'd do just fine making that particular window.  And her cutting of the Dragonfly itself proves that I was correct.  She barely had to grind the wings at all to get them to fit!  The rest of this window, which is all background, will be nice and easy for her.

  

Cindy came in with some grinding to do on her Cow Window and after it was all fitted together she began foiling all of her pieces.  Before she left she had it all wrapped and ready to be tacked.  She's going to be adding a double border on this window and she needs it to fit inside of a wooden frame that she'll bring along with her next week.  Sizing this window will be of the utmost importance.

  

Well, now that Aubrey has most of her window ground and wrapped she'll be able to tack it together and then cut out the yellow sun that will be setting behind the trees. It already looks amazing so I can't wait to see it with the final pieces all in place.

  

Meanwhile Lynn finished cutting all of the glass for her first window and has moved over to a grinder to get everything fitted together.  When she comes back in she'll certainly have this all fitted into place and will most likely begin foiling her pieces.  She's moving along wonderfully on this window. and her colors work really well.

 

Patty has made major progress on this Woman In A Bathtub Window,  She cut it out quickly, she ground it quickly and then she wrapped all the pieces quickly as well.  She added the leaves and the flower last so she could ensure that the stems (which are just cuts in the glass) lined up perfectly with the vase. After she adds a border and some solder this window is going to be finished.  She even has her next pattern lined up so I wouldn't be surprised to see this one out the door within the next 2 weeks.

 

Shelley decided that she wanted to make a Mermaid Window for her project and came up with a few different designs.  This was the nicest pattern by far and the beauty of it is that it's not a difficult design.  She has 24 pieces cut and 29 more to go before she can start grinding this.  I'm going to predict that the remaining 29 pieces will cur much quicker now that Shelley's more sure of her cutting abilities.  Expect to see some grinding started on this when Shelley returns.

Terry's Heron's have been 'borderfied' and now she's ready to rumble solder.  Have you noticed that I called them Egrets last week and now Herons this week?  Truth is I'm not sure what they are aside from pretty.  But do you want to know what I love most about this window?  I love the fact that the land in the background is curved and not just a straight line following the horizon.  I never think of doing that on the patterns that I draw and I think I need to start doing it!  That said, I like the rest of Terry's window just as much as her curved shore line.

 

And we'll wrap this all up by saying that Sonia's Praying Hands just about complete.  After tacking the hands together she then cut a clear (but rough textured) background glass.  When those 2 large pieces where tacked on to the hands she started looking at various colors for her border.  I thought the light eggshell color worked well but that it was a little plain.  In the end Sonia decided to go with a thin border of the eggshell colored glass and then a thicker green border that pulls its color from the robes.  And, as always, a double border just makes a window look so much more complete than a single border does.  Of course you already know that  I always like a fancy border.

 

We have another Holiday week coming up so we're going to be missing one of our busiest days (in terms of students) this coming Wednesday.  We'll still have classes on Tuesday and Thursday so expect another post within a week.  Everyone have a GREAT and safe 4th of July!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks