Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

Those birds.  Those colors.  That design!  We've had more than a handful of students keeping their eye on Patty's bird project as it was being made and now that they're completed I'm going to miss having them around the shop.  The color choices are all perfect and the work itself is impeccable (get it?)   Patty did a great job on this and all I can say is, "Wow, they even photograph wonderfully!"

We had a new student this week so that means that it's Butterfly time!  Brenda is someone I've been hearing about for a while now so when Terry asked if she could bring her sister in to start classes I said, "No Way!"  Well, actually I told Terry to bring her on in.  I just want to see if anyone reads all this stuff I type out each week.  lol  Anyway, Brenda's butterfly worked out perfectly.  She didn't have a single problem during any of the steps that it took to make this so I can't wait to see what she decides to make for her first project.

Ann now has a good three quarters of her first Geometrical Window ground.  She'll most likely complete grinding this when she comes back in and then she can start grinding the second one that matched this and is already cut out.  We also worked on the pattern to her larger 3rd panel this week and it's going to look great.  I think we'll be seeing that one soon considering how quickly Ann is moving on these two windows.

Bonnie's Humming Birds and Flowers window has a very delicate and elegant look about it.  The lead lines actually form the stems that weave all throughout this pattern which does three things: 1) it gives us plenty of freedom to position the flowers and birds anywhere we want to make the pattern feel more 'balanced' , 2) it gives the pattern a graceful quality, and 3) they make cutting the background easier since the pieces aren't very large.   This is going to be one beautiful window.

Cindy's got 2 more Zebra mirrors in the works and this is a look at her first one.  She's made a few adjustments to her pattern to make sure the handle stays securely attached to the mirror.  There's nothing worse than stained glass that falls apart!  This is the second mirror that she's made in this design and all I can say is that sometimes you learn from experience.  That's why this mirror is going to turn out perfect right from the start.

Lynn has only 6 pieces of background left to cut and then she'll be working on her border.  And we all know that a border is an hour long project at best.  So I think she's going to be doing some soldering on this window real soon now!  It really sparkles and the beveled doves look great! Wait until we see this with some light behind it.

Martha has two of her three Fleur De Lis windows ready to be tacked together.  She also picked a background glass for her third window and has decided to make that one square rather than rectangular.  If you look closely at the picture below you can see that Martha didn't use the same background glass for these two panels.  The one on the left uses Glue Chip glass while the one on the right is cut out of Krackle.

 

Roxie is making headway with her 4 hummingbirds.  She's got all four of them ground and then she even got a fifth one cut and ground before she took them all home to wrap.  All she needs now is some foil and Bonnie is going to help get some to her before they come back to class on Thursday.  I only managed to snap 3 out of 5 of the humming birds because she's using the same pattern to grind them all.  That means that I only had a few seconds to take a picture before the pieces all went into a ziplock bag so Roxie could start on the next bird.  On a side note, sorry about not answering the phone Roxie-- it was nothing personal, just those &#%@ cell phones!

This here is Twister the Cat and now that there's only the background glass left to cut I figured I'd best get this little guy's name drawn out so Shelley wouldn't have to waist time waiting for me to do it during class.  Shelley modified her pattern slightly since we last saw it and I really like the 'cuts' she's made.  None of them take away from the detail of the cat yet they make the window easier to make.  We like that a lot.

Keeping with 'cats' we'll now take a look at Susan's LSU Tiger Window.  You can see that she's moving along nicely and she even has all of her background cut out now.  If you enlarge the picture (by clicking on it) you'll see that I traced out a large white section with a green trim to show that the glass is indeed cut and ground.  It's just lost sitting on the white pattern paper.  I can tell Susan is having fun making this and that is what these stained glass classes are all about.

 

And our last piece this week is a rather breath taking pattern that is almost completed already.  Terry got the idea for this window while looking at a box of soap!  She took the design, enlarged it, made a few modifications so it could be done in glass and this is what she brought in with her.  Everyone agrees that it looks stunning and I can't wait to see it completed.

I guess we're back up to date so we'll ba back with a new update either Sunday or Monday.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks