Stained Glass Blob Blues

I went back to class with the same teacher to learn how to make a stained glass window. It's really not a huge leap from grout to soldering but it is more difficult. BTW, there is some discussion about if the word is soddering or soldering. I am guilty of saying soddering but I just have to remember this Urban Dictionary entry and I'll never forget. Ow!

Here is my first stained glass piece done in the Tiffany style:

I took off the frame to show you the edges so I can try my very best to explain this process. Unfortunately I don't have the equipment to show you what I had to do to make this but I can google an example.

To begin with I had to cut all these separate pieces and try to get them to match. The lower petals of the flower and the white pieces filling it in were a bitch to cut. They had to fit like a puzzle. A perfect puzzle. At least to my standards. When I was done using the glass grinder, I was almost in tears because my pieces looked like I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The teacher promised me the soldering would be kind but I know I could have done better. Someday I may be able to make stained glass church windows but not without many good cries inside the church itself.

Soldering looks like this: (This illustration is from Lancaster Stained Glass.)

Each piece of glass has been taped with a kind of copper foil amd then a flux was painted on. The blue tape here is just used to hold each piece together as the person soldering uses the hot soldering iron mixes the foil with the roll of wire. This part of the process is easy but mistakes can still happen. If you heat the glass to much it explodes. If you fret over the soldering to much it looks burnt. Hence the title of this post. I left giant blobs between my pieces of glass. I wish the blobs hadn't been so blobby but, again, like I said in my very first post in this blog, I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder. It may look okay to some and could be a design choice but I would have chosen to thin out the blobs.


Here's where I cheated on this project and I'll admit to it. Once I was done soldering, it was all silver and shiny. I painted the patina on so it looked older. This design choice made it all come together nicely:



Here is my finished piece again catching some sun:


Blobby or not, I like it. Like someone said in class, it looks like an old fashioned quilt square. I love the colors I used. I can't wait until I get to try making another stained glass piece. I have one more to show you in a future blog and I hope there will be more to come.

Still Unfinished

I'm still working in chronological order through all the mosaics I've made (sort of) and I want to show you one that I started and will someday finish. I started it right after the pickle jar and I was making it the same way. I used a picture like the one below:

I printed it out and taped it to the inside of a votive candle holder and started to mosaic over the picture, onto the glass.

As you can see, I taped the image onto the inside of a curve so that's why the inside of the candle holder is stuffed with tissues and a toilet paper roll. I wanted to push the image into the curve.

I'm not quite done with the petals of the poppy but even when I do that, I'm not sure what else to fill in the spaces with. Maybe more poppies or maybe leaves. I don't really know what I want to do and that's why this project stalled. I do know one thing. I want the grout to be black. I bought some black grout from Michael's and I've never used anything like it. It seems like a sanded grout so it shouldn't give me trouble when I get to that poin. Fingers crossed.

Now let's skip the rest of the mosaic talk. I have told you all that I have a cat named Emma but I also have a cat named Artie. He doesn't usually get in the way when I make mosaics so that's why he's not mentioned but I'll bring him into this. Here he is trying to sleep:

Isn't he cute? He's my little, stinky boy and I love him. He's an old, stubborn boy too. He likes to fight with Emma and this chair he's in is a prime poin of confrontation. Looks like Artie's won.... for now!

Complete, yet Unfinished

My project is all done, sort of. Voila:

I used a glass cleaner and I shined it up nice and then I used a tile sealer over it all. I didn't feel the need to take pictures of that process because it's rather simple and boring. You don't need to see me put sealer on a sponge and dab it over the grout. All the sealer does is adhere the sand in the groat together so it won't come off and water won't ruin the surface. It's all sealed up good and that's hard to show so you'll just have to trust me. And I am trustworthy!

If you haven't noticed already, at the corner of the keepsake box I dripped some primer paint. Someday I will get around to sanding that spot off and maybe repainting it. I'm not in a hurry to paint the rest of the box. All this project was really about was to practice cutting the plate and gluing it to the surface of the keepsake box. I think it went well because I learned tons about using a wheel cutter and what I would do differently. Go me!

My next project that will be fun and I will totally document it for the blog. I will be reorganizing my glass collection. I've been steadily collecting mugs, plates, stained glass and other stuff and I was keeping it in my basement. Over the summer the basement flooded so I have to organize the slightly muddy stuff and the stuff that was piled on top of other stuff. I just know that during this process I'll be rediscovering awesome stuff that I forgot I bought. I'll get cool ideas and we'll all rejoice.

In the meantime I will still be showing off other completed projects but I do have one uncompleted project I can show you now that I found a few days ago stuck between some magazines.

I put it in the window to try and show off the light going through it but there it's much light outside right now. I'm too lazy to take the picture again so I'll explain what you're seeing. This was technically my first mosaic. In class, my teacher was trying to show us how easy it was to cut glass with a scorer and a wheel cutter. The lesson wasn't just about learning to use the tools but it was also about not being afraid of being cut by the glass. She told us that if you have a fear of being cut by glass then you should leave class now because you will get cut. A lot. And I did. I was first student to draw blood while making this pear and I proudly showed it off. Not to be outdone, the lady who cut herself after me actually held up her finger and grunted like Tim Allen on Home Improvement. Several times. We all moved away from her.

As you might be able to see, I drew an outline of a pear on the glass and then cut pieces to fill it in. I used a lighter green for the leaves, a darker green for the pear itself and then I used a peachy colored glass to give the pear an accent. It looks like the window reflection you'd see on an apple. I don't really care if most pears don't do that. I like it. It has character like me!

Someday I'd like to find a picture frame to glue it into and fill in the space around the pear and use it as a suncatcher. If I ever do that, I'll be happy to blog it all. :o)

Grouting 101

Let's GROUT!

Yes, wurwolf, those are my hands. I am covering them to protect them from the lye in the grout... even though it looks like I'm getting ready to give a prostate exam. These gloves are a nursing home special so I feel very safe for anything that comes my way!

Here is the batch of grout that I whipped up. This is a sanded grout which means it does contain sand. You'll see why that is nice later.

Now, every batch of grout that I mix up is a learning experience for me. The consistancy of the grout to supposed to match that of mashed potatoes but since I've never had sandy mashed potatoes, I have to use my best judgment. It looks like I got close with this batch. YUMMY!

To start grouting, you simply glop it onto the mosaic and push it into every space between the tiles. This is where the gloves are nice. This is a messy job but fun. It's the poin where you start to see the whole project come together. The places that you one saw as problem areas while cutting and gluing, you see the grout fill them in. Everything comes together. Then the gloves come off!

Once the grout is between every tile, I like to use this shish-kabobby stick thing to clean off the surfaces. I pick away at the places with the clumpy grout or uncover the tiny pieces that the grout has hidden away. This part of the process can be compared to being an archeologist digging for relics or a dental assistant scraping plaque off teeth. This is where the sanded grout is nice because it comes off easily. It dries and when you scrape into it, it becomes a nice sand that cleans off easy. I like to do this part of the project in two days. Day one with the soft, wet grout and day two when it's hardened and nearly set.

I'm going to work on day two today and blog the final part of the project when it's all nice and clean and ready to be sealed.

//latex gloves for wurwolf!

FIRE!

Because one person requested it, I put a tea light in the pickle jar and lit the little sucker up. Here are some pictures:

I like it! It's all bright and colorful and cool and awesome! I should put this in the window and light it at night so people driving by can be jealous of it.

My Tie-Dyed Pickle Jar

So far I've shown you two mosaic projects that I made in class. Once class was over, I still had the mosaic bug so I looked for projects to work on completely on my own. I found a pickle jar in the fridge and hastened to empty and mosaic it.

My teacher told us about what she does when working with glass and it seemed simple enough: Tape the picture you want to the inside of the glass and mosaic over it. I Googled some tie-dye images because I knew they'd have tons of color and I wanted a small image so it would be pixelated (sp?) when I enlarged it. I chose this image:

I taped it to the inside of the pickle jar and used bits of stained glass and tesserae. I liked the effect of the tesserae. Without light it looks one color but with a light behind it, it's an all new color. Around the top of the pickle jar I used those little glass blobs you can buy for flower vases or fish bowls. I liked the glass blobs because they were black but shiny like hematite rocks.

I have yet to find a decent way to cover up the jar ridges but I'm in no hurry.

Usually I discuss the things I would have done differently. I don't have anything to list here. I love it!

I will mention that it was a challenge to glue this on a curve. The WeldBond dried fast but this project took a while as I let it dry. I had to turn the pickle jar little by little. I must add that working with those little yellow peices and turning the jar did seem like I was working on corn-on-the-cob at times.

I could use this jar for several things but right now I'm using it for part of my giant pen collection. I could also use it as a votive candle holder or a money jar but right now it looks very cute next to my computer holding my Toy Story 2 pens:

Glue Boogers and Cat Hair

I'm going to take a moment in this blog to explain some mosaic terms I've been omitting so if I use those terms in the future, you'll know what I mean. Everything but the "sand" in my first project is stained glass. The weird tiles with the lines carved into them were called vitreous glass tiles or tesserae. They are Italian made even though the ones I buy seem to come from San Francisco, CA.

In the checkers board I used a coffee mug and in my current project I'm using a plate. While you may think that they are just mere coffee mugs and plates, they are actually called pique assiette (or picassiette). The term was created in 1938 after some French guy named Raymond Isadore who covered his entire home in pique assiette. His neighbors hated him and the eye sore he was creating so they called him "le Pique Assiette!" which means "plate stealer!" Obviously the term is now used for the plates, coffee mugs and other found glass so non-French speakers can sound intelligent when discussing mosaics.

This is where I began my project early yesterday. As you can see, I already cut out the flowers and I was getting ready to chop up more pieces to fit in around the flower on the top of the keepsake box. The wheel cutters are still a part of this process. The glue I'm using is called WeldBond. It's like Elmer's Glue but stronger. Much stronger. Glue-your-own-fingers-together stronger. It dries very quickly.

Emma helped. She watched the entire process. She liked the part where I cut the plate inside the plastic tub. She could see the pieces fly all over and she would sometimes lunge at the outside of the tub. I guess it must have been a slow day for birds flying into the window yesterday.

She was very cute. I don't think she left me all day. Next time, however, I'm putting a hairnet on her tail. She was always trying to stick it in my way.

And here is the finished product. Finished but not grouted. I'll do that in the next few days. I'll blog the process of that too.

Overall, there are things I would do differently. This plate was hard to bust apart. It didn't cooperate quite the way I would have liked. And plate rims are a bitch try and cut out. I hope I didn't ruin the wheel cutter. Those are expensive along with everything else attached to this hobbie.

The one thing that I found working too well was the gluing process. I'll have to remember for the next time that the strongest adhesive agent around is glue boogers and cat hair. This entire project would not have been made possible without it.

Until next time, "MLAAAAAAAAGH!