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 - 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.

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.

First Glass Paintings

Tonight two painting projects are in the kiln. I'm embarking on the Peter McGrain Vitri-Fusaille technique.



This first one, my Fuego plate/bowl, is one that I've always meant to display like stained glass....only in a bowl. I just defined the lines with paint that should fire black. I think that will make this piece really stand out. Once that's complete, I can slump it in the bowl mold....hopefully tomorrow.


This next one is my aspen branch. I worked on the outlines and I may do more to this after the paint firing. I'll have to see how the black outlines turn out and I may do a bit of a wash to it to incorporate more shading.

Right now less is more for me when it comes to painting on glass. I'm going to have to experiment and see what works.

Oh and I started to work on my commission for the Milo Stephens "Peace Offering" today. I'll post pictures of the work in progress on this piece too. I've been anxious to start working on this one!

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.