Check it out, Susan has finished her Plate Window which she designed herself! She had seen the plate-in-a-window idea online and when she saw the Flower Plate Window that Linda L had made about a year ago Susan decided to run with the idea and come up with something of her own. She wanted plates as flowers with a vine running behind them and that's exactly what she got! She worried about the splits in her border pieces but she did a beautiful job figuring out where those cuts should reside. Perfection all around.
Well, this is a first and I'm sure that it won't be the last because after Cindy completed her Blue Bowl this week she immediately began coming up with a color scheme for the next one that she plans to make. Now this can't me used for food, lead free solder or not, but as a decorative piece it really rocks! I'm also expecting other people to begin making these as well. The best part of this is that there's no pattern required-- just a stainless steel bowl and some random assorted cutting and fitting.
Susan D also finished the Bird On A Branch that she'd begun last week and since she's made five of these now I think we can safely conclude that she can complete one of these each and every week (as well as working on a second and third project as well).
Truth be told, I love when students come up with their own patterns and Let (our newest student) designed this herself while she was at home and brought in the finished piece so I could take a picture of it. Circular projects are far more difficult to make over square or rectangular pieces and that makes her Peace Sign even more impressive.
As you can see, Lisa's no longer working on single feathers but combining them into 'Feather Bouquets'! This is her first and my hat goes off to her for NOT making the mistake that many people would make when picking colors for this. Most people would make two identical fathers which would result in a large clump of one color where the feathers overlap. Lisa steered clear of that by making one feather brown and tan and the other blue and tan. This allows you to clearly see a distinction between them resulting in a colorful and easily recognizable pair of feathers.
Robert can make a beveled border Transom type window with the best of them at this point. In just seven days he assembled and soldered 3 more windows to add to his collection. Some of these will be installed running taller than wide but they fit within the confines of this blog better in this direction without losing any of their charm so that's what you're seeing here.
Never one to sit still, Cindy also completed a Landon Water Tower and Blue Angels Box. Blue Angels, you say? Yep, look in the sky (above the water tower) and you'll clearly see the silhouettes of six F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet fighter jets. The picture on the right shows the lid partially opened.
Betty took our standard Bee Lawn Ornament design, shrunk it down, flattened it out and turned it into a rather delightful Sun catcher. You can't lose with this design and Betty knows that because, as you'll see further on down below, she's got two more of these almost completed already.
Susan R completed her second Rose Bud Ornament but I forgot to snap a picture of it. I figured that I'd just throw the one she made last week into Photoshop and change the color from red to pink but this was the best I could come up with. I was able to easily (and believably) change the flower color to blue, orange, purple, yellow, violet, or even green(!) but pink was elusive to me. Nonetheless, even though the color is off by a mile, the design itself clearly matches what she made this week.
Meanwhile, Susan D is taking advantage of these hot summer days and firing up her kiln to about 1500 degrees to create wonderful glass Bracelets. These innocent looking baubles have something which isn’t innocent at all: touchability. Light COE-96 glass fused with assorted shards of color. A delicate, almost silk-like feeling. One size fits all while maintaining a deliciously relaxed fit. These are innocence and mayhem all at once.
As you can see, Let is already well under way with her newest project. These two Cardinals nestled in a series of branches are about to become her latest and greatest window. She's moving along at lightning speed both in class and at home but the quality of her work never reveals the speed at which she's making these windows because her pieces always fit together perfectly.
Susan R showed me a picture of a geometric suncatcher that she wanted to make but the picture was out of square so we didn't use that as a pattern. I've always had trouble making these circular spirals perfectly so that you could use a single pattern piece to make the entire design but this time something clicked in my head while drawing it out and I stumbled upon the secret to rotational patterns. And I'd say that it worked because Susan used one pattern piece to cut this all out and it already fits together wonderfully before she's even taken it over to the grinder.
Speaking of geometrical patterns, this one has been making its way around the internet and I should have guessed that it would appeal to Cindy. She started it when she walked in the door and by the time the night was over she only had two more 'bands' to go before she can begin wrapping her Polygonal Spiral. It's like a math equation exposing its inner beauty. I wonder if I can find a video of this rotating somewhere online...
Ann is back! Her walk through Spain was an incredible experience and now she's even more inspired to get this colorful 3D Cross Window assembled. I had thought the cross was going to be tacked on top of the pieces but Ann actually wants it to be raised from the window. We'll do that with posts and I have an idea for the cross itself that I want to run past her when she returns next week.
June's Nurse Window has been tacked together and she even managed to get the background for it all cut and ground. The background glass is next to impossible to see in the picture because she picked a wispy white glass which disappears when it's resting on top of the white pattern paper. Trust me when I say that it will show up wonderfully once this is hanging in the air and off of the table.
Betty's got two (well, technically three) other projects that are each very close to being completed. As I mentioned up in the beginning of this post you can see here just how far along she is with her other two Bee Suncatchers. Also, Betty has her Pendant Fleur De Lis all tacked together and has the front side of it completely soldered. With only the second side left to go I'm fairly sure that we'll see this one hanging up in our next blog post.
I jumped the gun last week when I said that Barbara had six of the eight panels ground for her Flower Panel Lamp. She actually 'only' had five of them ground. This week I can very factually state for the record that she only has one more panel left to grind before this lamp starts coming together in a big way.
Barbara also has two irons in the fire with this Hibiscus Window being
the second project that she's working in one week. It's all cut out and
she's even got a large chunk of it ground already. That's some quick
work indeed.
Judy has all of her Teddy Bear Window ground and the first thing I need to say is that he most certainly no longer looks evil. It's all about the eyes when it comes to faces and this bear is no exception. We also removed the super dark (almost black) snout pieces and although we don't have the new pieces cut I'd say that Judy could easily use the same glass that she used for the rest of the bear and he would look great. She's begun wrapping this and once it's tacked together we'll place different sheets of glass underneath it to see which color Judy will end up picking for the snout.
Here's a fun picture of Steve and Russ joining two heavy pieces of copper rod together with solder. A simple spot of lead would never hold so Steve has overlapped a good 4 to 5 inches of rod, secured them in a vise, and used a blow torch to melt the solder onto both pieces for a nice secure joint. Copper solders extremely well but the more of it there is the harder it is to get hot since it's also an excellence conductor of heat. That's why Steve has a torch involved here. What is this going to be? I'll hopefully reveal that to you next week when the framework is completed. I don't want to ruin the surprise.
Mary Grace has her second Peacock tacked together and will begin cutting out her background pieces when she returns next week. We're going to re-adjust her two brown branches so that they come out to the edges of the window and perfectly match the first version of this that Mary Grace made. Rest assured that the re-cutting of those two branches won't take any time at all.
As promised, here's a look at the next Bird On A Branch that Susan D is working on. With just the leaves left to cut out she's well on her way to getting this installed into her 'Bird Window'. How many birds can you fit in a single window? I promise to get an answer to that when I talk to Susan again.
Linda L's third Beach Scene is all cut and ground which means that the only thing left for her to do is wrap three more pieces of glass and then solder it. This will undoubtedly be finished when Linda comes back in next week.
MiMi's final Hexagon Window is tacked together and has its front side completely soldered! I'm positive that she'll get the back side soldered and have this ready to be installed well before class happens next week. So then, that means that this is it. Pop open the Champaign and let's toast to MiMi's mental well being after spending a year and a half on the same project which involved thousands of the same piece over and over and over and over and over and over and over... Look out stained glass world-- MiMi is free to do whatever she wants to now!
Steve got his second Sunflower Suncatcher ground, wrapped, and soldered before moving over to his copper wire frame that required the use of a blow torch. If I'd have realized that the only left to go on this was the wire work I would have finished it for him! Next week for sure.
And with all of her pattern traced out in its entirety, Sheri is ready to start working on one of the flowers in her Peony Window. Top or bottom flower I don't know but we'll surely find out upon Sheri's return.
And there you have it. This is an early post due to the fact that Monday is a Holiday and I didn't want this post to be hanging over my head. Expect another tip at the end of the week which will put us back on schedule.
