Category: Glass

Things I’ve made with stained glass, including copper foil, lead, mortar (concrete), mosaics and resin on glass.

It’s a BIG one!

So I had to clear off most of my work table for the pattern for this next window project. This will be going into a large window (31″ x 48″) for privacy in a powder room. We discussed the glass to be used over the weekend and settled for art glass in shades of gray, white and orange (no clear). I have to special order the clear backer glass that I will use to mount the individual pieces in place. I had considered making this with lead or copper foil, but after researching issues of strength with a window this size and discussing with my friends who will take this home, this will be a resin pour! The size will bring some challenges along with it because I will need to be able to reach all sides of it when I pour the resin, but I think it will be a fun project.

Pattern with basic color scheme
Pattern to scale

A New Project

Some friends are doing some home renovation and have asked me to make a glass panel to decorate and provide privacy in a 31″ x 48.25″ window in what is to become a new powder room. I was planning to do it with resin, but when they shared the design they chose with me, I started having second thoughts.

Waterlilies Pattern
Frank Lloyd Wright – Waterlilies

It’s actually just the top half of the pattern (in order to fit their window). When I saw all that clear glass area, I realized that it would be difficult to achieve the level of privacy they would likely desire for a big window by a toilet! I might have to dust off my soldering iron and see if I can do it with copper foil.

I’ve never made such a large panel without a solid background, and I’m pretty sure a piece this size would require some significant reinforcement. I’m also not the best at fitting pieces for a copper foil project that has to fit an exact opening, so my confidence is a bit low that I wouldn’t end up with a disaster on my hands if I did it with copper foil.

Perhaps I could use a light blue background instead of clear. Even still, the large rectangles at the bottom won’t provide a lot of privacy. I would have to use opaque glass, which I don’t believe I have on hand. I will have to think about it for awhile.

More Rainbow Rows

I use the plain glass from half of an old window to make smaller projects, like these Rainbow Row pieces. The old window glass is used as the base / background for the little scene. I then cut stained glass in various colors. I use a photo of Rainbow Row as a reference to help plan the colors and shapes of the houses. I also noticed that one of the houses in my reference photo has a little garage off to the left, so I’m going to see how it looks with that added on the top panel.

Arranging the rectangles for the houses on the base glass
Adding detail – windows and doors
Adding roof / tree trunk detail

Today I finished cutting out the rectangles for the houses (I had already started some of them) as well as the doors and windows. I glued the house rectangles in place and arranged the other details while it dried. I will glue the windows, doors and tree trunks another day.

Recycling

It’s really nice to be able to use old, recycled windows in my projects. The down side is I spend a lot of time prepping the windows so they are suitable for the projects! I’ve been working on these two windows since I finished my fireball sun, and I still have a few days of painting to do.

Scraping the old paint

I take old windows – these particular ones are one rectangle over another – and I get my husband to help me chop them in half. I then use one half with the frame for mosaics and cut the glass out of the other half for small projects like my ornaments / suncatchers / Rainbow Rows / SC Flag pieces.

I fill the holes with outdoor patch / filler
Sand down the surface after patching
Wipe down and paint all the surfaces of the wood frame

Fireball Sun Poured

Today I finished filling in the small gaps in the blue sky background on this sun, which I decided to call “Fireball”. I didn’t glue the background glass in place (just the glass for the sun). That was foolish, but I did it because I was impatient and didn’t want to wait a few days before pouring the resin. If I glue the glass in place, I have to wait for it to completely cure / dry. The benefit is that there are a lot fewer bubbles when I pour the resin.

Resin poured
Bubbles!

To get rid of the bubbles, I had to stand over the mosaic for a couple of hours and blow them with my heat gun. I ended up just running the heat gun over it every 5-10 minutes. Hopefully no more have popped up since I left it, but it seemed to be done with the bubble phase after about 1.5 hours. This is pretty long – it shouldn’t generally take that long to set, but I was very quick with the mixing today since I didn’t have any pigments, etc to mix in and I was only working on this one project. I used 16 ounces of resin and only had a very small residual amount left over.

Now we wait!

Every sun needs some sky

So I spent a couple of days figuring out how to make the background, or sky, for this sun mosaic. I had planned on a completely different approach, but after looking at various types of glass, I decided that the background I had in mind was too “busy” for the glass I chose for this sun.

I chose the glass on the right

To help me make the decision, I set the whole window over large pieces of “sky” glass. I really had planned on making the background out of many, varied shades and types of blue glass, but ended up deciding that the iridized Spectrum (one of my standby favorites for lots of things) would be best against the multifaceted colors of the glass I used for the sun.

Now to cut it into a zillion pieces!
Starting to fill in the sky

I spent today cutting the larger pieces for the sky / background. It will likely take a couple of days to fill in the smaller spaces between these.

Still a lot of holes to fill!