Stained Glass Pieces Made in 2021

Grape Cluster Sidelight Panel

My bridge partner, Barbara Arthur lives in a lovely house that she and her husband Dave build in a wooded area in Waterloo in the '70s. It is kind of an open concept hippie home with high ceilings and lots of natural wood and glass. She approached me with a commission to develop a sidelight panel for the area beside her front door.

Developing the pattern was a small miracle. She and I did all the consulting and Dave did all the disapproving. There were few guidelines so the theme was pretty open-ended, with a suggestion of something Hawaiian as they had lived there, or something with nature, or something kind of abstract.

The panel opening was very long and narrow (13 x 80 inches, almost 7 square feet) so almost impossible to find a suitable pattern. It would have to be something that you could repeat over and over. The following photo kind of caught our attention and I played with it in Microsoft publisher making a bit of repetitive design to give her an idea of what it might look like. It seemed like it might work OK and Dave gave us the go-ahead. 

There were other considerations like they wanted privacy but also wanted for both of them to be able to see out at their respective eye levels if someone came to the door. I also knew there would be structural challenges with something that long and narrow so came up with the idea of placing oval bevels between each of the 4 sections. Would we place the oval lengthwise or crosswise? Decisions were made and I developed the pattern below to scale and took it to their house along with some glass samples. Once there I discovered that the area outside the front door had a roof over it so very little light was coming into the house. The design was going to be done in turquoise and clear glass with sparkling red strawberries as a focal point. When we held up the red glass it looked really dark in the low light. They had also given me incorrect dimensions for the opening. This wreaked havoc with our best-laid plans.

So back to the drawing board I went and after all the work I was no longer excited about the design. While mulling this over in my head I went looking again online for other ideas. When I saw the bevel pieces below and checked their size I discovered that the area they would take up was about the same size as the strawberry cluster was in the original pattern. Since this bevel was also pastel that meant it could work in a poorly lit area though it was going to cost about $80.00 for each of the 4 bevels. It took a while to convince Dave that grapes were also something from nature and could replace the strawberries.

 

I then redrew the pattern and got the approval to proceed to make the window. It was really challenging to get the sections to line up as we had decided to flip the design on every other section. I had to use pieces of zinc as well as the oval bevels between each section for stability.

 

Since the grape clusters were light blue and light green I searched for glass that would match. I was not able to get any more of the turquoise, swirled, baroque glass that Barb really liked but figured out a way to use it in the window. I placed the clear ovals at Dave's vision height but replaced three of the ovals with the turquoise baroque and used some smaller pieces in each section. I came up with a pastel mauve glass for my 3rd colour and Barb approved of this so long as it wasn't pink. She actually brought me sample pieces of the wood on her door, inside wall, outside wall and area under the eaves to consider as I was making the window. I used a variety of textured clear glass for the rest of the background.

When putting the 4 pieces together I took great care to keep the long sides straight and the corner angles at 90 degrees. I was very worried that the window would not fit or would get cracked in transit or when we tried to lift it in place. I was very relieved when it was secured safely in place and I must say it was a eureka moment. The colours had worked perfectly and suddenly a warm glow filled the room. I was over the moon with the results and so were Barb and Dave. It has to be seen in person to be appreciated but in the long run, we decided it would help them to sell their house when the time came.

 

Universal Yoga Window

Congratulations on your wedding Nate and Emily - October 17/20

How your joy overflows in this photo. It has been a pleasure for me to make this piece of stained glass in honour of your love.

 

I had quite a time trying to figure out what might work for both of you, not knowing Nate very well it was tricky to come up with a combined interest, but I knew you loved yoga so when I mentioned this to your Mom and Dad they told me that Nate also does yoga and that you have a yoga room in your house so I now had a plan.

I was able to track down a lot of silhouettes of yoga figures online and then found lotus flowers and the universal OM design. It is difficult to do fingers in stained glass because you need seams at every point and it is hard to cut, grind and foil really small pieces of glass. Luckily I was able to find two silhouettes that could work. Once I got a better idea of the window size in your yoga room and corresponded with Nate about installation, I came up with a final design using the images below.

I wanted to incorporate your names and wedding date into the piece as I had done for Jillian and Mike’s and also like the KevLynn framed piece your parents have in their family room. I used to do this by sticking a resist on the glass, carving away the letters with a heated exacto knife and then getting the piece sandblasted, but there is no one in this area who does this type of sandblasting.

So I devised a way to do the etching on a special coated glass by using a hand tool that is meant for engraving your signatures onto metal equipment. It is a tedious process that requires going over and over the lines you want to make until the surface coating is removed from the glass and the milky white underlay shows through. It is not an exact science.

I was going to do this etching inside the lotus flower petals but that would have made the flower look kind of weird and harsh so I drew the shield below and had just enough coated mauve glass to fill the space. The challenge then became matching the flower colour with the shield.

While making the pattern, I use a special rapid resizer computer program to enlarge the various images and then print them out in the proper scale. I then trace them onto the larger paper and fill in shape lines that I know will work for stained glass. The size and placement of the images was key to the feel of the piece and took several redraws. Structurally there need to be seams off of all the points (hence the stained glass look) and then I add in other seams to give the piece balance, flow and hopefully the lines will blend into the background.

Your mom had told me that you like things that were ‘simple’ and not cluttered so that was one of my goals. With such a barren background I got the idea to put in the globs for bubbles to fill out the piece and they also add structural stability.

 

Since the figures were silhouettes they needed to be a solid colour. I decided to use textured pastel glass for the figures to make them softer and more interesting. One needed to be mauve to match the shield and I chose turquoise for the other as your mom said that was one of Emily’s favourite colours. Then I was able to find a glass for the lotus flower that contains both of these colours. I used the classic Lotus and Crow pose for the figures since Kevin showed me a picture of Emily doing the Crow pose and the Lotus one brought back the memory of a poster called “Making Love in the Lotus Position” that I had on my wall at university. Don’t ask me if I ever succeeded!! All I can say is try it while you’re young.

I am told that having just 3 colours in a piece makes for the best artistic effect and I try to adhere to this in all my projects. With this piece being so stark, it was hard making the colour choices. I had a really difficult time choosing the background glass as well. I knew you wanted simplicity and lots of light. I considered using textured clear glass but in the end, I opted for the glass you see below. It is called Baroque iridescent glass and is distinguished by the wavy swirls. It really is quite stunning and fills the area with warmth while meeting my need for the third colour. You will love how it shines and reflects gas-like hints of green, mauve, pink, turquoise and blue.

 

I knew that the glob pieces I was going to use for the circles/bubbles would match beautifully with the iridescent glass and the pastel in the figures. I used the same mauves, greens and turquoise colours you see in the baroque glass and their placement is random. You might notice the one lonely, large, green glob in the top right area? Well every piece has to have something you would have done differently. 

There can’t be perfection. I guess I was pretending that it would be the same green shade as the other large one in the bottom left. Such was not the case once viewed in the light. Well maybe it can stand for the uniqueness of your relationship or my warped personality. You choose!

While I’m being honest and giving away my artist’s secrets, you might wonder why the bottom of the shield is darker than the top. Originally the shield was only one piece, same colour as the top part. While doing the etching the pressure caused the piece to crack across the middle. I was able to salvage the top portion by creating the curve and I then added another piece for the bottom. I thought it was the same glass until I finished and rejoined the shield. In the light it was suddenly darker on the bottom than the top. This is a coated glass that I’ve had for years and it is no longer available so I had to live with the two shades of mauve. So that is what led me to changing the centre glob into a dark purple circle and etching in the OM sign. Using a second piece of the dark purple made the first darker one look better. It is the same size as the faceted jewel so is a balancing factor.

Speaking of faceted jewels…. they are hand cut, come in many colours, cost about $20.00 each when they are 50mm wide and are mostly made in Germany. I love the clear ones because the facets will bring rainbows into your room when the sun passes through and these will dance on your walls while you are doing your yoga. These rainbow colours just happen to match the iridescence in the rest of the glass as well, so now you have the rest of the story.

 

But that is not the end as my windows would not be complete without Arthur’s skill in making frames, painting the wood and installing the glass in the frame. This is a labour of love for him as it is not his choice of project. You can’t buy frames as they need to be a custom size and have a large groove for the zinc edged glass to slide into. They have to be attractive and viewable from both sides. (By the way, the raised jewel is the right side, the one you want facing you when hanging.) Then comes the challenge of shipping the glass without breakage. He cleverly makes up a wooden box with a screwed-down lid in case it has to be opened during customs. The fit is really tight so the glass won’t move around and the wood prevents it from getting damaged in transit.

 

So I present you with my creation, Lotus Love (the name just came to me as I was remembering my 

university poster) and hope it will bring you pleasure. One of the things I love about stained glass is the way it looks different in different lights so it changes over the course of the day. In this vein, I wish you many years of love and happiness over the course of your life together. May you deal with the changes and challenges head-on. You will know joys and sorrows, laughter and heartache but are blessed to have each other for support and encouragement.

What a great start you have in your life because of your mutual joy of doing yoga. I was just looking up some of the benefits of yoga and was blown away by the possibilities. There is no denying the health benefits that extend into both the physical and mental health realm. Hopefully you will keep this habit up over the years and reap the many physical and therapeutic benefits. I would say that those who yoga together, stay together!!! I wish you the peace and healing of the universal OM. It is such a joy to see you so happy and in love. This love bubble is such a great vibration. It is a powerful force that imparts your positive energy to those around you and makes this world a better place.

Let me share some magical wedding moments from our family. Sorry we had to miss your day be-cause of covid but hope to see you in the not too distant future. Namaste. (included here were photos from my own wedding and those of my 3 children)

Post Mortem

The commentary above was sent off with my window which Arthur very carefully packaged wrapped in bubble wrap and fitted tightly into a plywood box that was screwed shut. You could dance on top of the parcel. In the past, we have sent stained glass packaged this way with good success but we mostly did this by bus. With covid bus were cancelled so we put it into the post using UPS. Sadly the glass arrived in Providence, Rhode Island and was broken into many pieces. It looked like they had dropped it from high up or given it a good bang with something.

This was very disappointing for me but after I went through a period of mourning I had Emily and Nate ship it back to me so I could reclaim some of the pieces and the wooden frame. The faceted jewel and zinc were worth at least $50.00. Even though we had paid $200 insurance for this delivery they failed to cover any of our costs.

I just told myself that I have the skills. I have the time. I have the money. I can rebuild. So off I went to remake the window. It was time-consuming and difficult to take the window apart. I managed to salvage the lotus flower and a few pieces from the two figures. While rebuilding the window I redesigned it a bit so that it would fully fill in the space where it would hang in front of their window. By adding on side panels I decided to etch their names into circles that would lend stability to the panels at either side. I was not thrilled with the darkness of the shield below the lotus flower in the previous window so I now decided to do that in a textured clear glass which I then picked in the new side panels.

Arthur had to remake the frame and we have decided to drive the window down to Rhode Island in person. It was a lot of extra work but my sweet niece is worth it. And the rebuild window is actually better than the first window so all is well that ends well.

Tree and Mountain Scene

We are really looking forward to our trip out west this fall to attend the wedding of my godson, Keegan Hoculak and Krysten Fawcett in Edmonton, Alberta. When discussing what theme to use for the stained glass wedding gift I was about to make, Karina and I narrowed it down to something with trees in it. As you can imagine it is almost impossible to do a very realistic tree design in stained glass because of the thousands of branches, leaves and needles found in trees.

I came across the tree pictured below with suggested colours and developed a pattern that would work. There are a lot of pieces so I knew this was not going to be an easy project. I really liked this pattern because it's large, powerful, tree is the central focus (and I'm told that Keegan loves trees) but it also shows a lake and mountains in the background. This is a very typical western scene. I did simplify the number of pieces somewhat in the final pattern by combining some of the pieces in the background. The original design looks a bit like a puzzle but I wanted the tree to dominate the design and the background to stay in the background.

I started in the upper right-hand corner developing the leaves and had to make a decision on which route to go with green shades. I usually choose various shades and textures in the grass green spectrum or the lime, mossy green spectrum. Since the original painting uses both spectrums and because I can no longer acquire the streaky semi-transparent green-clear glass I love, I followed that lead. Having made this decision to keep changing the shades and because of the many curves in the pattern the project took a very long time. Every piece in the design had to be fitted whereas in many other projects I am able to put the central design together then trace around it on a large piece of background glass and then just make the cuts in that piece. This method leaves pieces that just need light grinding as the seams go up against existing seams.

Next, I found a variegated brown glass that was not too dark or too light it. It also has a rough texture that suggests bark, but again, the many twists and curves and narrow pieces, susceptible to breaking made it difficult. I made the sky in the same shade of medium blue in water glass at the top and streaky-clear glass lower down. The water glass suggests swirling winds that kind of fade into the blue below.

The next decision was choosing the colour for the water and the mountains. I was so happy when I found a piece of medium blue glass that suggest the incredible turquoise waters you see in the mountain lakes in streams because of the minerals you get in the runoffs there. I then decided to add a 4th colour to the piece by choosing a spectrum of mauve and pinky glass for the mountains. I had been saving a roll edge piece of bullseye lime green glass for something special and it worked perfectly for the ground.

 

At this point, I thought about adding a lime green glue-chip border around the window. I had been trying to figure out how I could include their names and wedding date as I had done on the pieces for my nieces, Jillian and Emily and got the bright idea to include that information on an inside border. 

 

The best way to do this is to put mac tac over the glass, carve out the letters and then have the pieces sandblasted. But there is no where to get sandblasting done in this area so I proceeded with the more clumsy technique of using a tool that one uses to scratch your names on metal to scratch the coating off of the glass.

This proved to be nothing but a disaster. The coated glass used for the carving is very expensive and hard to acquire and I had a limited amount in stock. The etching tool kept breaking and I had to buy a new tool but the tip kept wearing down and needed sharpening. The glass kept chipping then so I'd have to redo it and then it would crack when I tried to solder. I would solder the narrow band pieces in, only to find another crack so I'd have to take this seam out again, all while trying to hold this big window up while melting the solder off etc. I kept trying until I ran out of glass and options. Finally, I had just enough glass, if I used the clear bevels that were going to go in the corners, to make this inside border in the same mauve colour.

So I am sad I was not able to add the wedding touch to the piece but it does make a grand statement in the end. I finally got to do my tree. Once Arthur got the piece together and framed I found yet another crack in the grassy ground area around the tree - likely from all the handling I had to do as described in the above paragraph. I have made plans to drive one way to the wedding so the glass can be delivered safely. Our son is going to drive out and fly back while we fly out and drive back. This will be our first trip driving across Canada and I'm thinking it will be good to face those flat, boring prairies one way only. I hope bad luck does not continue to haunt me.