Two Old Goats

We're a bit late getting this out so we're just going to start right out with our completed projects. Myrt's Cat in a Window Window is finished and looks great.  Although I pick dark borders for my windows I have to admit that it would have been a bad choice on this project.  The red curtains frame out everything perfectly and going back to white for the border was a stroke of genius. 

 

Ann's latest Stylized Cross was made as a complete window rather than a suncatcher and her use of clear texture for the border is beautiful.  The heavy texture frames the picture nicely.  Ann cut out all of the glass for this window by herself with no help at all and all I can say is look at how straight her lines are, especially along the clear border and the blue background.  That's beautiful work.

 

Betty's Clear Textured Fleur De Lis Window is a hit.  We have numerous students wanting to make this and Betty herself is making a second one.  This one is perfect.  Betty's work is stunning and her choices in textures have paid off handsomely in this window. 

 

Mary Grace completed her Peacock Suncatcher while she was at home.  When she brought it in we only needed to go around the outside edge with solder and then add a hook to hang it from.  This is a nice subtle but rich color scheme for an elegant looking suncatcher.

 

Sue made excellent use of Van Gogh glass in the collar of her Mardi Gras Jester Suncatcher.  I put just a little light on the front of her project and it lit up like it was on fire!  Sue's really got her act together and makes wonderful projects all the time.

 

This is Carol's Mardi Gras Stained Glass Window and it's a perfect example of how colors can change the look of a project.  Look closely and you'll see that this is the same Fleur De Lis that Betty made up above!  Colors can really change the look of a window especially when going from all clears to colors.  Carol was unsure of the yellow background but I think it fits perfectly in with the Mardi Gras color scheme.

 

Jeanne's Ship in a bottle looks just like, well, a ship in a bottle!  She's made this for her brother and it looks as good as a stained glass ship in a bottle could ever hope to look.  Jeanne is a perfectionist and it shines through in every project that she makes.

 

And Linda L's pair of Mermaid Lawn Ornaments are perfection as well.  One way to judge good work is to put two of the same projects next to each other and look for the differences (which are, inevitably, the mistakes).  These two Mermaids are a perfect match no matter how hard you try to spot a difference.

 

  

I'm thinking that this is Betty's Butterfly, but last week I thought that Rowena made a butterfly when it was actually Paula's.  They say that the mind is the first thing to go, don't they?  At any rate, it looks great and is a wonderful Lawn Ornament.  The more I think about it the more sure I am that this is Betty's creation because I showed her how to angle the wings.  See, it's all coming back to me now.

 

Here's a look at Shelley's Duck Head Window that she completed at home.  Luckily she sent us a picture so we could share the finished window with you.You'll see later on in this post that Shelly is far along with her new project already.

Beck B's large Horseshoe Cross Suncatcher is all cut, tacked together, and ready for solder.  There's a great chance that she'll complete this when she returns and I cant wait to see this hanging in the sunlight because I have a feeling that this is really going to get Becky stoked!

 

Susan has the front side of her second tiger Window completed and has moved on to the back side.  All of her work is perfection in this window and her soldering matches that high standard.  I've noticed that she's even conquered her previous problem of pulling extra lead into her joints so I'm saying that her work is top notch now.  We may even see this completed when she comes back in.

 

Mary Grace began work on this Easter Bunny at home and she's doing great!   By the time she left class it was almost complete so Mary Grace will need a new project shortly.  Next week she'll clean this up, paint on an eye and add a post to this to finish it off.

 

Brenda's Eating Disorder Window has changed it's colors!  Due to the amount of glass she had to work with for borders we decided to reverse the colors and put the black on the inside.  And in the end it worked out wonderfully.  This just needs it's final border attached and then some solder before Brenda brings it on home.

 

Here's a look at Becky S's latest butterfly which she plans on making into a suncatcher rather than a lawn ornament.  The only thing that has to change is the addition of a hook.  Becky has all of this cut and ground as well as having most of it wrapped.  Look out because this butterfly is almost ready to fly.

 

Bonnie's Study of Straight Cuts is all cut out.  She'll be grinding her pieces when she returns and it looks as though she'll only need to do some skimming to get these pieces fitting together.  Her use of Baroque glass is well balanced and I really like this look of this window.

 

Jeannette's Peacock is moving along quickly and as I said before, this is the hardest part of it.  The 'teardrop' part of her feathers are all tacked together and this week we got to see her cutting some of the feathers that fill in between the teardrops.  Jeannette's really impressing me with this window.

 

Shelley's latest window is making great progress already.  Her Fleur De Lis is almost completely ground and this is just her first week into this project.  Shelley is learning that if you take your time while cutting you save time on your grinding which always comes out in your favor.  Minimizing your time at the grinder is the best way to get a window done quickly.

 

Cindy's completed the grinding of her first 4 sided butterfly but she's decided to make a second one as well so this week Cindy cut out and began grinding another set of four wings. As you can see she's got a lot of it ground already.  There are just eight pieces left to go before she put these all together.

 

Martha's pair of Duck Windows are almost complete now.  She has one completed and the second just needs a coat of solder on the back side meaning that we'll definitely see these featured among our completed windows when we return for our next update.  I love Martha's colors and her work has grown by leaps and bounds.  I prefer quality over quantity and in that Martha delivers in spades.

 

Vickie's pair of Fleur De Lis Windows are all cut out and the borders are ready to be wrapped and tacked.  The glass she's used is one of my favorite colors of glass so I'm a bit biased to what I think of these windows.  I don't think you can lose with this pattern and these colors.

 

Terry's lower half of her Swirl of Flowers Window has all of the clear background cut out and now she's moved onto cutting out the flowers and leaves.  This is going to be a stunning window and I can't wait to watch it come together in the weeks to come. 

 

Here's a look at Betty's second Textured Fleur De Lis Window.  With just the border to take on to this Betty should have this soldered before you know it.

 

 

Linda L's Air Force Logo  is coming into fruition now.  Her pattern is cut out and she's ready to begin cutting glass now.  She plans on raising the background framework higher and that's easy to do,  We'll see how high it goes in weeks to come.

 

And that about wraps the events in the our shop for the month of January 2016!  Where does the time go?

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks

But...but...but...

I've always stressed that pinning your project down as you grind it is an important part of getting your windows to assemble correctly.  It's been an constant battle but almost all of our students now use pins while grinding.  Although that's great I still need to stress how important it is to push your pins into the project board so they stand in a nice straight line.  I see too many pins pushed in at angles which still allow the glass to slide on the pattern.  In the picture below you can see an example of how your pins shouldn't look.  The pin on the right has actually been bent to help secure the glass but once the pin is rotated the glass will be free to slide about which means that the finished project won't fit together correctly.

 

The following is an example of how your pins are supposed to look when they have been pushed into your project board.  They are parallel to the edge of the piece and firmly touching the glass as well. It may sound like a trivial issue but in the end it makes a huge difference to how things will fit together for you.

Okay, so onto our first completed project of the week.  Cindy's Harley-Davidson Window is, well, perfect.  The colors, the design, and the craftsmanship all come together to make a perfect piece of stained glass.  A lot of people worry about all the extra lead lines that need to be added to make text possible in glass, but as you can see it's the color that defines the text more so than the lines.  This is beautiful work and I can tell that Cindy's pins were perfectly placed.

 

Carol made this stained glass box with a simple little tiny set of instructions that I emailed to her a little over a week ago.  :-)  Okay, they might have been a bit verbose but she accomplished the task with them and now has this beautiful Rose Box under her belt.

Cindy also made this Alabama Window with most of it being accomplished while she worked at home.  Although this window is considerably smaller than her Harley-Davidson Window  I suspect they have close to the same number of pieces between them.  There are an awful lot of of rhombuses* in this window!

Linda L's first Mermaid Lawn Ornament is completed and already staked and ready to post.  She's got two more of these in the works and they all look great!

Here's a look at Mary Grace's latest Study of Rectangles.  I've always said that black patina works great with clear glass windows and this is no exception.

Our last fully completed project this week is Rowena's 3D Sunflower which she completely assembled by herself while at home.  She did a beautiful job on it and instead of making it Lawn Ornament she put a hook on it and will be hanging it in a window.    Remember that ANYTHING can become a lawn ornament so, likewise,  a lawn ornament can always be turned into a suncatcher if you just add a hook to it rather than a post.

Now we move on to our works in progress starting with Bonnie's variation on a study of rectangles.  There are a lot of connecting lines in this window so perfect placement and perfectly straight lines are going to come into play big time here.  A worse case scenario on this window would be when the lines don't match up, but Bonnie is such a perfectionist that I know we have nothing to worry about.

Betty is working on not one but two versions of her clear textured Fleur De Lis Windows.  One is almost ready for solder while the second one will need background and borders cut.  She'll deal with that when she comes back in.

 

Brenda has her Eating Disorder Window ready for borders (why does that sound so odd?)  She got her background cut, ground, wrapped and tacked together while she was in class this week.  She's going to use a double border featuring black glass and the teal you see in the picture.

 

Ann's Stylized Cross Window will certainly be completed when she comes back in because she got her border cut and attached this week.  But can she get both sides soldered during a single class?  Well, she doesn't have to because she also managed to get the front side of this window soldered this week as well!  Now that's what I call progress.

 

Charlie has not one, but TWO of these windows all cut and ground (and they're much larger than you might think).  He has one of them foiled already and the second one went home with him so he could work on foiling it while we were on our Stained Glass Cruise with the Tuesday night ladies (and Becky from Thursday morning).   These will will get a double border next, but from here on out Charlie will be working on them one at a time rather than as a pair.

 

Jeannette is making great progress with her large Peacock Window.  I've always felt that the tail feathers are the toughest part so that's what I had Jeannette start with.  As you can see she has them all cut out and has even begun grinding them.  Once these are tacked together the rest of this window will be a piece of cake.

  

Next we take a look at one of Janet's six lamp panels.  I wasn't paying attention and missed my photo opportunity for a completely ground panel but I think the picture below pretty much sums up what this lamp will look like.  With four(?) panels ground I suspect that Janet will be soldering these together before you know it.

 

Shelley tried to get out of class without my taking a picture of her latest duck window but I ran out to her car, placed her unsoldered window down on the grass and took a picture of it outside.  As you can see it's looking good! 

 

Vickie has her Fleur De Lis' started in a big way.  The FDL's are tacked together and one of them even has the background glass cut out already.  She's taken one of them home with her and she hopes to be able to grind the background before she comes back into class.  I think we'll be seeing borders added to these when she comes back in.

 

Linda F began working on this butterfly lawn ornament and only has one piece left to go before she solders it together.  She didn't like the way one of the pieces fit so she threw it away and will re-cut it when she gets home (where she has her glass).

 

Natalie's Pelican Window is very near complete here.  She's got one border ready to be attached and will follow that with a second border when she returns.  Then she'll move on to the soldering process.  Don't you love her background glass?  It looks just like a painting.

  

Although you can't see it, Terry's started cutting her clear glass background for her large flower window.   It's almost six feet tall so she's made a very wise decision to cut it in half and make it in two sections for added strength and transportability (there's a new word for ya!)

  

And Cindy's also begun making another Spinning Butterfly Suncatcher.  She's already very close to having it all cut out as you can see in the picture.

 

Martha's Duck Windows are looking VERY good!  This week she got her two skies all tacked together and her border pieces all ready for wrapping.  That leaves only channel and soldering left to go.

 

Myrt's Kitty in a Window Window has its front side all soldered.  She'll get a brass channel attached to this and then begin soldering on the back side of this window when she comes back in.  Before you know it Myrt's going to need another project to work on.

 

Sue's Mardi Gras Jester is all cut, ground and ready for solder.  The mirrored collar really makes this stand out and I can't wait to see it completed.

 

And lastly we see that Linda L has her second (of three) Mermaid Lawn Ornaments all tacked together and ready for its final pass of solder.  She hopes to have the last two soldered before she comes back into class and I have no doubt that she will.

Next week we're going to talk about skimming as opposed to grinding.  They both involve passing your glass through your grinder but they are very different techniques.  Come back and read all about it!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

* A rhombus (most commonly referred to as a diamond)