Category: Glass

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

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

Finishing a Seahorse

When I’m ready to “make things permanent”, I start mixing / pouring the resin. After that, I spend a couple of hours tending it to ensure no ugly bubbles form on the finished surface and to decorate a bit more. Tending the resin equates to blowing it with a heat gun and moving things around with wooden pokers, as well as wiping up any excess (especially around the edges) with a sponge on a stick. I remembered to elevate this piece so I wouldn’t have the pain of removing the paper again.

Above: Just poured.      Below: after a once over with the heat gun.

Below: Finishing the decorative details (shells, glass frit, glass chips, etc). Also making minor adjustments to positioning.Now it just has to sit for a couple of days to cure, then I will clean up any drips, etc from the sides / back and get a better photo.