Guh and arg and phooey...

[calic0cat]

Tax season. Blech. Hopefully, I'll finally track down those missing charitable donation receipts tomorrow night so that I can get the stupid income tax return taken care of (ie., get it dropped off to have it done). A couple of charities sent me the receipts right after I donated last year, and I put them somewhere safe, where I'd be sure to find them when I needed them for income taxes.

Someplace that I'd be sure to find them. Good plan.

Now if I could just figure out where the heck that was. :P

Anyhow, still working on the next couple of things for posting, but unfortunately this weekend is looking a little ugly. There's a church dinner Saturday and my mom's trying to twist my arm into wasting my day helping with the prep work. :P Sunday is also busy, though for a more pleasant reason - tickets to a local production of "Cats" Sunday evening. Crossing my fingers that I'll get something finished anyway, but... *shrugs* Don't hold your breath, folks.

However, in between tearing the house apart looking for income tax stuff, I was playing around a bit with my new digital camera (the wonderfully compact Canon Powershot SD30) and, since someone previously asked about pics of my stained glass work, I thought I should (finally!) post a few:




One of the first projects I ever completed: a box-style lamp from opalescent glass. The pastel-shaded glass is commonly known as "Easter glass" due to its similarity to dyed Easter eggs. Both this and the next lamp were made using the copper foil technique.



My next major project was the Tiffany-style lamp above. The white Kokomo glass that provides the background is thick and wavy and was a real b*tch to cut. I still have a lot of scrap that didn't "run" correctly when I broke it after scoring. There's actually five different colours of tulips on the shade: purple, pink-&-white, red, light pink, and black-&-white. The opacity and texture of every colour is different. The green and light pink were the only two that didn't have any kind of texturing. There's somewhere in the neighbourhood of two hundred pieces in that shade, and it's a very tiny lamp - barely big enough to read by. It stopped being fun by the time I foiled and pinned the hundredth piece to the mold. I'll never make another Tiffany-style shade again.



Believe it or not, this started out as a five-dollar plain clear glass bowl (for punch or fondue or something, I think) from Walmart. Add a couple of hours of free-hand drawing with a glue-gun, about fifteen minutes in the sandblasting chamber, and voila! One festive frosted bowl, decorated with poinsettias and holly leaves above and a giant bow on the base, perfectly suited for holding fruit punch at the family Christmas/New Year's party.



And another holiday project: a wooden tray with a wintry mosaic inlay. The horse's body, sleigh, driver's clothing (which looks black here, but is actually a deep, rich, purple), and the pine trees, are all cut from Spectrum Silver Coat glass. It's coloured glass that's mirrored on the back so that it reflects lots of light in situations where the light can't actually pass through the glass. The snow, sky, sleigh runners, horse collar, hooves, mane and tail, and the driver's face and hands, are all opalescent glass. Some of the snow and sky glass is textured and some is slightly iridized. The variety of textures, colours, and finishes, adds to the mosaic effect.



I really don't have a whole lot of my copper-foil work around to photograph, since most of it has been given away as gifts (fan lamps and suncatchers, mainly) and the long-delayed projects from last year's Moonridge Auction are out in my work area waiting for the backordered glass to arrive so I can fill in the missing pieces and finish them up (the bevels finally came in, so I may just give up on the still-missing Wissmach 503-D opalescent granite and do a little creative redesign - this is getting ridiculous).

I'll post a few pics of my fused glass projects separately.

Comments

[dysis.livejournal.com]

_Wow_. These are just _beautiful! I'm completely in awe - it must have taken you an amazing amount of time!

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

You really are a very crafty person! I'm impressed.

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

Wow... that was your FIRST project? O.O You brave thing, you! I think the first piece we tried was a totally flat fan shaped night-light thing. I loved stained glass, but was rather surprised at what a really messy hobby it is; we haven't done anything in years. This is really beautiful work!

[yanagi-wa.livejournal.com]

Paper has feet. *nods firmly* Really.

The glass work is just lovely. The amount of time invested is mind boggling, but well worth it.

[angel-kiddo.livejournal.com]

glass work is lovely ^^ I'm to clumsy to do it, but I do give my mom and dad some ideas in the designs they do sometimes. Yours are lovely! If that was actually your first proyect, you'll do very very well indeed in the years to come. Keep it up!
M-K