Crafty Xmas

Pretty much everyone that didn't move away too quickly ended up with a piece of stained glass from me this year.  Many pieces are what we will politely call learning pieces, which is to say, don't look too carefully at the solder or fit or details in general.  But I got a lot of practice and had a good time in the sometimes freezing garage.  Glass is always pretty.  

The many suncatchers/ornaments: 

There was another small tree, that one with black patina,
that I think I forgot to photograph, along with another holly
and star with slightly different glass.

Big fish with wire eye

Bee!

Fox!  I made another one of 
these too, with a slightly
lighter glass. 

Freeform, semi-mutant gecko for
my favorite lizard gal in FL

Star being inspected by 
curious kitty

Tree blinged out with glass beads.

A few tulips (all with some serious stem issues - ah well): 

The original model - single wire 
stem, so balance is tricky.

Pair of pink tulips, now with double-wire
stems.  One has a truly
bad solder attachment that 
I couldn't fix.  

And a quilt pattern panel for my sister. It has a LOT of pieces that had to fit together enough to at least provide the illusion of a square shape: 

So many pieces! So few
correct angles.  But it worked
out in the end.  

Square-ish

The kitchen no longer looks like a gift shoppe with stained glass everywhere.  And I am itching for somewhat warmer weather so I can start on more projects in the garage!

Stained Glass Artful Mistakes

So yes, mistakes were made.  This blog is called Artful Mistakes for a reason.  

A friend of mine's daughter recently had to say goodbye to her elderly and much beloved cat.  I thought, ok, maybe make a cat ornament, though vaguely thinking, hmm, maybe that's perhaps a weird memorial. And it turns out making cats in stained glass is hard, and even folks that know what they are doing, their cat designs are often sort of creepy.  But I plowed ahead anyway and my design ended up super creepy and on top of that, I did a really, really terrible job cutting the glass. So I got as far as foiling and realizing that there was NO WAY I could make it not horrible no matter how much solder I poured in the gaps.  There is not enough patina in the world to make this okay: 

In real life, her kitty was lovely, and this was clearly no appropriate homage.  

So I turned it into an abstract instead, using the parts along with another blue piece I had foiled and had to replace in a (ultimately much more successful, if far from perfect) panel.  So now it's an ornament with, depending on you look at it, one or two monsters in it: 

Keeping it weird and experimental here at Artful Mistakes.  

Stained Glass Class Fall 2025

I returned to Carroll Community College for another stained glass class this fall.  While my soldering remains inexpert, my glass cutting is somewhat less fraught with breakage.  I've also gotten the stained glass bug enough that I cleaned out my garage and set up a tiny stained glass studio, complete with my own soldering iron and glass grinder, so I am hoping my skills will improve with further practice. 

Below are recent fruits of my labor in class and in the now less musty garage: 

First wire work - added feet!

Green dragonfly

Blue & green dragonfly

dragonfly swarm (2 not made by
me) and view of the purple door
to garage/new studio space

Simple panel with zinc frame

Twas supposed to be
symmetrical and is very
 much not.

Stained Glass Class! - Flower Panel

The next project in stained glass class was creating a glass panel.  I got to choose from various design options, and then took those designs to the stained glass store in Frederick to get supplies - glass for the piece, solder, and copper foil. Glass shopping becomes ridiculously absorbing as you ponder color, texture, and opacity, along with how the colors all look together.  

Armed with supplies, at the next class we set up our boards (wooden borders held in place with pushpins around the paper design) and started cutting and grinding.  I made what looked like good progress in that class - progress that ended up being deceiving. Many of my shapes were close-ish to correct, but you can't fudge the fit for a panel as much as you can in a suncatcher, as it all has to end up in that square space somehow.    

Progress!  Note original blue color
the top right corner

I did like the deep red I selected for the flower, and the texture of the green leaves.  I wasn't in love with the blue - it didn't quite fit - but I was at peace with that.  

What I hadn't counted upon was breaking the remaining blue glass, meaning I didn't have enough to fill in the background.  

The teacher saved the day by volunteering a piece of glass from her stash.  And so the tulip in the sun image became more a tulip in the rain.  

Checking out how the
new glass will look

The new blue and clear glass ended up working well.  And I managed to get all the pieces cut to more-or-less the right shapes.  But my tendency to err on leaving things too big showed in the lots and lots and lots of edge grinding to get all the pieces to actually fit in the frame.  

The teacher assisted with some expert cutting, and eventually, all the pieces fit and I got to take my board home, where at my leisure, I foiled each pieces. Copper foil comes in rolls with one side sticky, so you simply press it onto the piece, hoping to keep it as centered as possible, and then press the edges down.  The copper gives the solder something to stick to.  

Pieces fit into the frame and foiled!

During the last class, we all returned with our freshly foiled pieces and soldered our hearts out.  I managed, of course, to burn my finger once (the glass heats up in the process).  My piece has very thick solder lines because of some large gaps (filled first with extra foil), but solder covers a great many ills and it ended up being fine.  Once front and back were soldered, the teacher helped up add frames (mitreing the edges and sliding them on) and hanging hooks, and voila! I was able to take the finished piece home and hang it in my kitchen window. 

I have a new respect for how labor intensive stained glass work is.  Happily, sun through glass is always pretty, and distracts lumpy solder and other imperfections.  I'm pondering future projects and whether I should invest in a glass grinder of my very own -- but have resolved that first, I need to complete my other class I took this winter: Introduction to Woodworking.  More on those projects next.  

Stained Glass Class! - Bird Suncather

 I took arty classes this winter to keep myself afloat in these weird times and learn something new.  The first effort was in learning how to make stained glass.  

We started a small project in the first class: cutting, edge grinding, and foiling pieces of glass for a simple suncatcher.  My cutting skill was, let's just say, inexpert, so there was lots and lots of grinding to get the pieces into shapes that more or less worked together. 

We soldered the pieces together in the 2nd class, and added a hanging hook.  The end result of my little bluebird of happiness is festive, if not expert: 

Foiled, but not yet soldered

The finished product up in the window, now soldered
together with hanging hook attached

There are skills to both glass cutting and soldering that I've clearly not mastered, but light through glass is always pretty, so I'm pleased with the piece nonetheless.  

In my next post, I'll show you the larger 8 x 11 panel project that I worked on for the remainder of the sessions.