Category: Glass

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

A mermaid taking shape

After I finished pouring the last layer on yesterday’s batch of coasters, I decided to stay close and spend some time on the mermaid mosaic.

Rough sketch with a Sharpie marker on the back side of the window.

I made some tweaks to the sketch to move the mermaid’s head down away from the frame a bit, though I think I need to do a bit more adjusting to even out her body. The sketch is just a rough guideline, though, so no worries about making it perfect. I chose a light blue iridized Spectrum stained glass to use for the mermaid’s tail, though the iridized coating doesn’t really seem to show through very well once the resin coat is poured (in a later step). I still love the blue color of this glass even if the iridized look won’t be as prominent. I use it in a lot of my mosaics.

Starting to fill out her tail.

I started selecting the pieces of glass and arranging them from the tips of her tail and working up toward her head. This took about an hour before I was tired / worn out and needed a break. Now I’m starting to worry about what to do about her hair. 😉 There’s always tomorrow.

Thinking upside-down

Today was more cleanup on the window frame (I have to paint one side at a time), a bit of planning for the mermaid, and another layer in the next set of coasters. Below is actually the back side of the window. I sketched a rough outline of a mermaid I’m hoping to make before I put a coat of paint on the frame. When I’m done using the sketch as a guideline for the mosaic, the Sharpie ink will wipe right off with a wet paper towel. I also chose the glass (a blue Spectrum iridized) I want to use for the mermaid’s tail. I had to think upside down to do all of this today – the mermaid will end up facing the other direction and the coasters are built in backwards layers.

Rough outline of a mermaid drawn with Sharpie marker.

While the paint was drying on the frame, I mixed up 200 ml of resin for the next layer of decorations in the coasters. I poured a thin base layer for the coasters yesterday, so this is for layer #2. I had a little extra left over after pouring layers in 9 coasters.

For my last set of coasters, I poured the water before I added the sand background. I decided I wanted to try reversing the order and add the shells and sandy beach background first this time around.

I also wanted to try adding the white pigment at the edge of the sand where the water meets the beach, so to speak, to make it look more like the bubbles you would see when the water washes up in waves. I mixed some white pigment and drizzled it along the edge of the sand in 5 of the coasters, so I will have four without the bubbles to compare.

These will need to cure at least overnight before I can add the blue green pigmented water layer.

My least favorite thing

Today is a prep day. I have to do a little cleanup / painting on this window frame, clean up my resin measuring cups and pour a base layer of resin in my next batch of coasters before I can do the fun, creative part.

I’m thinking about doing a mermaid in this window.

When I started using resin, I used disposable cups for measuring. That seemed wasteful, so I switched over to these silicone cups that I can clean and reuse indefinitely.

I use old gift wrap to cover my work surfaces when I work with the resin.

When I’m done pouring the resin, I just leave the stir stick in place to dry for a day or two. Once the resin cures, it is easy to just pull the stick out of the cup, bringing with it any leftover resin in the bottom.

I then cut off enough duct tape to fit two fingers in and use it to pick up the rest of the cured resin from the inside of the measuring cup. It comes right off and leaves a nice, clean, ready to use surface.

In the above photo, you can see the little drops of cured resin stuck to the sides of the silicone measuring cup. Below is how it looks when I use the duct tape to remove the drops from the cup.

I decided to pour another base layer of coasters while I was at it. Now I just have to wait for the paint to dry and the resin to cure before I can continue.

Back to windows

I set this window aside for the past several weeks while I was focusing on making memory beads. Now it’s time to get back to something fun. I found these bright glass nuggets and they just screamed, “Valentine!!” at me. For this window, I used glass nuggets, diamond dust glass chips, tiny red glass globs and some chunks of clear shiny glass.

Laying out the basic design.
Resin is poured and blown with the heat gun. I used 8 ounces of resin for this window.
Filling in the background after pouring the resin.
Putting on the finishing touches with smaller glass.

After posting this, I realized I meant to make some swirls in the background with the tiny red glass bits, but forgot. I guess there’s always next time!

Seahorse #2 Poured

So it took a lot longer than I planned to pour the background for this cute guy, but it’s finally ready to cure. I used approximately 40 ml of resin, and had planned to do it in stages so I could tape the edges, but I decided to try another approach. I think I am getting the hang of containing the resin a bit better. Next time I should tape the glass before I start the mosaic.

Poured the resin – now to wait for it to cure

Seahorse #2 on its way

The upside to redoing a piece you cracked is you can improve the things you weren’t satisfied with the first time around. This little guy hasn’t been glued yet, but he will be – hopefully over the next few days. I used a darker color of beach glass because the resin coating really cut down on the color of the first seahorse and I didn’t feel like it stood out as much as I had anticipated. I also noticed that the resin seemed to add a lot of “bulk” to the first seahorse, where I was going for a leaner line. I might have let the pieces float a bit when I poured the resin (will have to make sure that doesn’t happen this time around), but I also elongated this little guy a bit to compensate. I will likely rethink the background / border a bit, as well, though I haven’t figured out where I’m going with those yet.

Rethinking the process

View of the tape from underneath

After cracking two finished pieces while cleaning off the excess resin from the underside, I decided to rethink the process of dealing with the resin seepage. Clearly the backer glass I’m using is prone to flexing, and I’m putting too much muscle into the scraping. I decided to try to avoid having to do so much scraping in the future by taping the undersides of the edges of the next piece. I also experimented with some resin pigment, as it looks like my favorite source of coloring has been discontinued by Michaels. I even wrote to their customer service department with a desperate plea, only to be informed that there was no more and would be no more. Oh well…..

Overall, the tape seemed to help quite a bit, though this one is still too tacky to completely examine. Today was spent getting the next glass out of its frame to try another seahorse.

The painter’s tape peels off easily