This weekend I went to a catholic church in Isadore for a funeral.

I am not catholic, so I find the services fascinating.

This one was beautiful, the priest and the congregation sang it.

Another reason it was beautiful…

There were twelve giant stained glass windows, depicting different bible scenes, early afternoon light glowing through them. By the time I could respectfully take pictures the light had changed.

I fell in love with the little details of each window.

I have pictures of them all but I will only share a few…

Don’t worry… I wasn’t clicking pictures until after the service!

I have some DOOR links to put up later.

I hope everyone who has a free day today is taking advantage of it…

We are digging up a pipe in the back yard, Oh joy.

I am sure that we will squeeze some beach time in.

Tomorrow the kids go to school!

Oh sweet freedom!

Sitting with my family, listening, singing hymns, and watching, this weekend lifted my spirits.

I know that is an odd thing to say of a funeral, but it did.

What lifts your spirits?

I am behind on my reports. I finished the M with the cherries and completed an S with cherries. I have almost finished the F with sunflowers that I designed. Today I am taking it to the shop with me where I will patina it and polish it and then say GOOD RIDDANCE!

The colored pieces all cut and foiled….

The almost finished piece.

Not sure yet where I want to stick the little bee.

I really couldn’t come up with a way not to put drag lines in it, so I tried to make them part of the design.

Watch, today I will take it in and my mentor will say.. “Oh here you could have just done this…” URG!

IN OTHER NEWS!

We have some squatters.

It is so odd, the spot they chose in the tree is so low, 

Only about a foot over my head.

The kids are constantly playing around that area.

The bird just sits and watches them.

I can’t wait to see what develops.

Hope you all had a great holiday weekend!

Wanna see what’s in the works now?

I’m going to show you anyway.

It’s one of the fourteen inch rounds I am making for my sister.

The branches and other leaves are cut out now too and mostly foiled…

I’m too lazy to take another picture right now.

 I get to go to my first photo class tonight.

It is LIGHT The third leg…

I know, sounds, interesting doesn’t it.

I am off to try and learn something, and I might stop hiding behind my chair long enough to say hello to someone.

 I haven’t decided yet.

The play list for today:

Indigo Girls

Chicago greatest hits

Fiddler on the Roof

and

Indigo Girls.

Alright I was thinking about the hypothetical and it occurred to me that we are living with one GIANT hypothetical on a daily bass right now.

Yes, yes we are.

If you had the opportunity to choose the first woman president or the first black president, which would you choose?

I know!

Tough one.

Well put it out there people!

There is what I can show you of IT…

It is three feet by two feet six inches.

The biggest thing I have ever done.

(I WON”T be doing anything that large again if I can avoid it.)

I will try to get a picture of it after its hung up.

I’m actually a little tired of looking at it right now.

Tomorrow is a day off and then it will be time to do the

three fourteen inch rounds to finish the order.

It was a good day.

Hope yours was too!

All cut out and foiled.

This is my copper foil… foil comes in  different widths and different colored backings.

The glass in the back ground is the piece I was going to use for my letters.

I had a small snag though I ordered two pieces of it,  they only sent me one.

I am NOT happy about this.

Damage control was in order.

My mom and I took a drive to Cedar to visit my friend Nancy at her studio and get a different piece. Hopefully it will workout.

Her studio is great. We had fun going through her portfolio and gabbing, probably for longer then we should have.

Now it is back to work.

The bottom part of the sign is all soldered.

Now I need to finish the letters and then attach the top part of the sign.

I’m getting there.

Hope you all are getting things done you need to too!

So I lost a day due to an unforeseen agonizing stomach flu. But now I am back on track and getting it done.

There are all different ways to transfer your pattern to glass… I love using transparent glass because all you have to do is simply lay it over your pattern and trace.

I try to be as frugal as I can when cutting, glass is expensive stuff.

You have to be very mindfull of your Sharpie lines… if I draw directly on the pattern line I always cut just to the inside of my Sharpie line.

Being careful now will save lots of frustration later.

I used my circle cutter for the sun head… LOVE it, don’t know what I did without it!

Another of my most used tools…

I am constantly brushing off the table when I’m cutting. Tiny shards left on the table can scratch your pieces if you aren’t careful… also… they are no fun to set your hand down on…

Only one boo boo today… well one bleeder.

Hazard of the trade.

Got the face painted on one side.

Got the top piece cut out, I used a large hammered clear glass.

I was going to go with blue water glass, but I found a really beautiful glass by Uroboso that is a mottled red, orange and yellow. I am going to do all of the letters in that and I didn’t want the color from the blue to interfere with the letter colors.

That’s my progress, after a short break I will be returning to cut out all of the blue pieces.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TODAY?

This is what I’m working on right now…

I couldn’t get it all in one shot because its big,

and I didn’t have enough room to back up.

The letters aren’t going in those exact positions

I just put them there to see what they will look like.

They will be more evenly spaced and curve in just a little.

TO save time and money for the client

I am using a different technique on them then  the rest of the piece.

The suns happy little face will be painted and then baked on.

I still don’t know what color the letters will be either, this concerns me.

Do you like it?

I’m working on a BIG glass panel right now.

I’ll post the pattern later this afternoon.

K8thelate asked to see our work areas or desk. I don’t have a desk, I have several work benches and a lap top that will travel.

This is the bench I work on most.

There are glass globs and bevels in the drawers, metal findings that might want to add to something I’m working on.

There is my tool can, it holds my cutter and all of the different pliers, fids, x-acto blades and markers I need to do anything. Not the best holder, but for now it does the job.

My soldering iron is there, that white box like thing on the right is a fume trap so I don’t kill myself on lead and chemical fumes.

The glass jars have miscellaneous junk in them, plastic penny machine bubbles and sea shells.

You can just see the corner of my brain light when I am feeling in the mad scientist mood.

The Chickadee is what I am working on right now and I am not happy with myself because I cracked a branch just before I took this picture.

This is just random things I found or that were given to me  I like, something to distract the monsters with, sometimes I use them in my outsider art or mail art.

Some fun stress balls I don’t know what I’m going to do with yet…

Other random STUFF

King Kong posters and a piece of mail art from my brother in law… It says “You can’t buy the necessities of life with cookies.”

My surge protector , which is usually full of cords depending on what I’m working on.

This is the chickadee at a couple of stages, cut and foiled and waiting for lead, you can see the pattern I use for it, under the glass.

Then with lead on it. I let one spot get TOO hot and broke it which means I am going to have to break  out the broken piece and recut it… a BIG pain and a rookie mistake.

Can you tell I am not happy with me…

This is my light box,  I haven’t used it in awhile, the stereo is on it. A rack full of small pieces of glass from various projects that I haven’t filed away yet.

My T square… invaluable.

I also have a grinder table and another large work bench that right now is piled full of glass and messy looking so I’m not showing it… I will next time. Because SPRING is finally here, I am hoping I can get out of the basement and into my garage workshop. Then I will post a picture of EVERYTHING.

Sorry I’m late Kate but there it is!

THE REQUESTS’ ROLL ON…

Okay, So my workshop/studio is a complete mess… it’s in transition. Right now it is patiently waiting for me to fix the floor in the building outside, and then I will need help disassembling my work benches and carrying them out there. So instead of showing you all of it right now, I thought I would show you some bits and pieces of it  and then when the outside is all settled I will show you the wonderfully organized and well lit studio that it will become and you will all think I am an amazingly neat creative person instead of an incredibly sloppy one. I know there are those of you out there who know me in real life and know the latter to be true… bite your tongues please…

Glass globs, magnified glass, mirrors and small bevels waiting for projects… never know what I will want to use.

 Glass that is too small to be put with the big pieces and a pile that needs to be sorted into mosaic boxes that I haven’t done yet. The plastic tubs are glass scraps from my finished projects that are to big to throw away and waiting for mosaics… Some of them will be used this weekend because I will be going to the annual mosaic weekend at my friend Rosie’s.

Of course I will be blogging on it.

Miscellanious things I find that seem like a good idea at the time… Plastic animals and people, keys and bottle caps, all of these things can be used some where believe it or not… really, they can!

Acrylic paints… used by both me and the kids, can never have too many.

Okay so those are some of the tools, Let me show you some of the pieces that are waiting to be worked on. These are things I’m doing for myself. It always seems to take longer to do those because I set them aside and work on other things for other people, that just seems easier to do.

Frog panel. I am actually considering putting some three dimensional glass wings on him… I think they would look good. He’s kind of stuck right now because I cut the first piece of olive green glass for his leg and decided I didn’t like it so now I need to find a green I do like.

These are two panels from a six panel lamp, the other four panels are reeds only… It is going to replace the ugly lamp on my night stand when it is done… looking at it now I want to go finish it… hmmm… nah, It’ll wait.

Okay this is in our front door. I did this piece a few years ago when the kids had one of their frequent “Oop’s, I didn’t mean to do it Mom.” Moments…

I have to find some time to sit down at the scanner to show you all any more since most of the pictures I have of the things I’ve done were taken before I had my digital camera. Also… I have requests for baby pics, grad pic, etc… I’m working on it … really I am.

Ang

Oh Rach, I promise when the studio is all in good working order again I’ll do a nice post about it… Sorry for the cop out. Ang

Hey!  I do have a piece that is on here, I posted it awhile ago… when I first started blogging, I’ll put that up too… since some of you may not have seen it.

It’s a fish I did for my Pop for Christmas.

I like making fish.