Peace Offering - Complete

Here she is. Completed and framed with sunlight truly bringing her to life. Milo Stephen's painting (shown just below) and now in stained glass. Even if I do say so myself, I think she is gorgeous. It's been such fun working on this piece and seeing her come to life in glass. I just love the glass, especially the red background.



Now I get to enjoy the wonderful state of "makarios", which Aristotle used to define the highest human happiness. I love that feeling when I finish a piece of stained glass.

Peace Offering - Soldered

I just finished soldering "Peace Offering". Sadly, there was no sunlight today, so the picture was taken with artificial light and really doesn't do her justice. This was taken right before I applied some pewter patina, which creates a really nice aged affect to the solder lines. The patina needs to set for 24 hours. Then I will begin the final cleaning, which involves waxing the glass and the solder lines. This not only protects the surface, but adds a lovely sheen. The next picture I will post of her will be when she is framed in the oak frame I have AND there is actual sunlight to show her true beauty.

Peace Offering - Work In Progress, Foil Complete

I just finished putting copper foil around all of the cut pieces in "Peace Offering". She's ready for soldering, which I plan on starting tomorrow. Thought I would show a couple of different views as I'm trying to show the beautiful colors.

I'm really anxious to see the light coming through this one. Well, I'm anxious to see the light coming through all of my stained glass windows when I'm at this stage of the work. The glass I chose for this piece is so rich and colorful. I hope to have it ready for framing this weekend and will be posting more pictures of the final completion stages.

Happy 2009 everyone!

Peace Offering - Work in Progress, Cutting and Fitting Complete

Here is the latest photo of my work on "Peace Offering" a stained glass window commission I received from Milo Stephens for her original painting of this lovely lady.

The cutting and fitting are complete. I will be cleaning each piece as I begin the copper foil process in preparation for soldering.

I am so pleased with how this piece is progressing. The glass is a wonderful representation of the colors Milo used in her original painting (I think). There are some variations, but in the end I think this will be a very nice representation of Milo's painting.

The next post I will do on Peace Offering's progress will be when the copper foil is complete. That will really show the lines and give a much better idea of how this will look once it is soldered.

"Peace Offering" ~~ Progress

Here's a picture of the progress I've made on Milo's "Peace Offering" window. I have the pieces for the dove and her face cut out too, but I took this picture yesterday afternoon when the sunlight was out and the reds and greens were showing up so vibrantly and that was before I had worked on the dove and her face.

Now, I'm working on fitting things together, which is a fairly time consuming process. I know some glass artists that can cut things out and they just fit well right away. I generally need to grind each piece and get them to fit as I work on building the window. When I first learned stained glass, my teacher said that getting all the pieces to fit was where she spent most of her time....and that is what I work on the longest too.

It's so nice to work on something with reds and greens this time of year....very Christmas. I'm glad I changed out some of the glass so the window more closely resembles the painting.

Here's one of the things I love doing with stained glass...all the reds are from the same sheet of glass. The same is true of the green. It's intriguing and I love the challenge of creating the 'shadings' with the same sheet of glass.

As a footnote, we're under a winter storm advisory. It's snowing and the wind is gusting pretty good right now. I'm thankful to be home, safe and sound. We may be house bound tomorrow.

My First Sale on Etsy!

The orange/rust pendant is titled "Blaze".

The other is titled Ocean Sunset, because I can envision the sun setting with the trace of yellow in the 'sky line' with the ocean in the foreground.

A friend from Art Scuttlebutt, Gerry, was my very first customer on Etsy. His wife, Sue, loves my jewelry so he purchased some of her Christmas gifts from me. I'm so touched. He said she wouldn't tell him which of the pendants she wanted so he selected these two for her. I gift wrapped them and shipped them yesterday.

What fun!

P. S. I have photos to download and post on my work in progress on Milo's Peace Offering. That stained glass window has really started to come together. I re-did a couple of pieces to try to capture more of the feel of her painting. I'll work on getting the update posted early this week.

Progress Reports

I'm happy to report that I had a successful outcome of the firing of the batch of 8 Texas Star Christmas ornaments. I'm posting a picture of them and
the next picture of the same ornaments with the pre-cut stars for the completion of the Texas flag look. It's so fortunate for me that Wasser glass pre-cuts shapes that most of us would find beyond difficult to do. These little stars come from Wasser and I love using their glass. I plan on doing a tack fuse to hold these smaller stars in place on the ornaments.

Currently I'm firing the last batch of Texas Star ornaments and Christmas Tree ornaments. This batch of tree ornaments are a little wider on the bottom, at the customer's request. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't show the layer technique I'm using all that well, but the outcome from my first effort was really cool....even if I do say so myself. It was a technique that I learned in the Patty Gray class I took at D & L last month.

For the trees, I stacked 5 different types of glass and as the glass fuses they melt into each other creating a wonderful effect (I think).

The Texas Stars have been challenging. Tomorrow I plan on devoting the greater part of the day to working on the Peace Offering stained glass window. I'm very anxious to see the light come through this one, but then I guess I always am. This window seems special and I'll continue to post my work in progress on it.

Hey Karen....it really wasn't my intent to send snow your way! Boy, it isn't officially winter yet and we're experiencing the harshness of it!

Peace Offering - Work in Progress....and SNOW!

Here is the start of my work on Peace Offering...a window I'm doing for Milo Stephens. I wish the lighting was better as everything looks much darker than it really is. The red and green glass is beautiful as will be seen when the window is complete and light shines through. In the meantime, I plan on posting my work progress, as I did with the Peace Angel window.













And today we had our first real snow of the season. Out where we are, we have about 18" plus drifts! These are pictures of our back yard. The poor basset hounds have a time navigating this stuff. My husband shoveled a path for them, which helps.

Christmas ornaments

It's been a busy weekend. Hosting Thanksgiving dinner, putting up the Christmas decorations, working on projects from my stained glass to fused glass.

Here's a picture of Christmas ornaments prior to firing them in the kiln last night. I'm waiting for them to cool so I can see the actual results! The stars are a representation of the Texas state flag and were ordered as gifts for relatives. The lone Christmas tree ornament was a special request.

Peace Offering, my stained glass commission, is progressing and I hope to post a picture of that later today.

Oh yes, and we are in the midst of our first winter storm....looks like we've got 8" of snow and it's still snowing! Perfect day to be home.

A Diversion Tonight

Tonight I indulged in a diversion.

I started working on the full size drawing for the commission I recently received from a fellow artist, Milo Stephens. She is a very talented oil painter and has done a series of mosaic type paintings of women with their personal stories. This one is "Peace Offering". Milo's painting is on the right, and my design for a stained glass window is on the left.

Milo and I connected through Art Scuttlebutt. I admired her work and she liked my stained glass so much that she commissioned this window. So this will be my next project after I complete the "Peace Angel". Tonight's diversion was to draw the full sized sketch of the window. I did this because Friday afternoon, my husband and I are headed to my glass supplier in Denver so I can select the glass for this piece. I'm so excited to start working on the window itself. I needed the full size sketch to use it for glass selection and to know how much I'll need of different colors.

A little bit about my design process....I use the Glass Eye program to start my initial design. That's how I was able to email various designs (jpegs of the design) to Milo. She liked this one and it will be 9" x 24". I am blessed to be able to do this window for her. So, I took a break from working on the Peace Angel, so I could get my drawing ready for my glass shopping on Friday.