Stained Glass, Exhibit D

(Does exhibit really have an "h" in it?  Bizzare.)

Anywho, I am getting near the end of my stained glass project!  It's been fun, and I really don't want it to end.  But I am also glad this last class is over.  It gave me major hand cramps that lasted until well into the next day.  The good news is, I am done with all my foiling (see below).  The bad news is I didn't get to start soldering, so there aren't any fun stories about third degree burns.  Darn. 

(Does soldering really have an "l" in it?  Seriously, who decided these spellings?)

Before I get going on a tangent about the nonsensical spellings of the English language, let me run you past how my hand cramp class went...

Step 1: I finished all my cutting and grinding last week and got everything laid out. I had hoped to start soldering this week, but I completely forgot about the step in between: foiling.  Each piece of glass must be wrapped in a sticky, thin tape made of copper foil.  The foil will give the solder something to melt onto so the pieces stick together.  So the entire night this week was spent foiling my glass.  That's it.  Step 1. That's all there was.

I'll break it down for you a little bit, though, so you can see how foiling works.

Part 1 of Step 1:  Gather the tools.  Tools for this week included a roll of 7/16" copper foil with a black back (I guess there are different colors on the back of the foil tape which affect your final product in some way I could not discern from the description the teacher gave me.), a FID (yes, that's its actual name, and it might be my new favorite word.  I am certainly going to remember it for scrabble.), and a tiny pair of scissors. 

Part 2 of Step 1:  Windex and wipe off all the white residue from the edges of the glass that was created by grinding it.  The tape won't stick if the glass has residue on it.  I probably should have worn gloves for this step because I kept forgetting that running your finger along the edges of glass might not be wise.  The cloth wasn't enough of a barrier, evidently, and I ended up with quite a few neat little slashes on my finger tips.  Not as impressive as third degree solder burns, I know, but at least it's something.

Part 3 of Step 1:  Line up the edge of the glass piece right in center of the tape.  This requires a lot of contorting of ones head side to side and going cross-eyed, trying to figure out exactly where the center is and making sure the tape doesn't go on crooked.

Part 4 of Step 1:  Wrap the entire piece in tape then cut the tape (or rip it since picking up the scissors was entirely too much effort).

Part 5 of Step 1:  Now use the fid to smooth down the tape onto the edge, and the flat front and back, of the glass piece.  You have to rub quite hard and make sure it sticks in the dips and ripples.  Although you'd think this becomes monotonous, wrapping and smoothing the tape on piece after piece of glass, I found it very soothing and catharctic.  However, you have to grasp this tiny pencil-like fid quite firmly and exhert quite a lot of pressure, and after a while my knuckles got sore and I got a hand cramp in that meaty part of my palm.  I can still feel it 2 days later. 

(Does exhert have an "h" too?  What the heck?!)


Here's how it looks all foiled:

And now for an entire discourse on the absurdity of the English language, starting with the word "trough" ......

Stained Glass, Exhibit C

This week at stained glass, it was a lot more of the same--tracing, cutting, grinding, more grinding, and recutting. Only a lot less recutting, thank goodness. I think I only had to recut one piece! And the others went so much faster. I figured out how to cut closer to the inside of the marker line so as not to have to grind down as much. I found a better grinder that was faster. And I just overall didn't suck quite as much. I also got to learn how to use a few new tools/techniques.

Here's how it went down...

Step 1: Start tracing and cutting.  I tried out a different model of glass cutter today and liked it way better. It has a wide grip, like a gun instead of a skinny one, like a pencil.  That way you can exert downward pressure with your whole hand instead of just the tips of your fingers.  Way easier and more accurate.  Yay!



Step 2: Grind some more.  I had a few background pieces I had cut that were way too big for some reason, so I had quite a bit of grinding to do.  Fortunately, I found a better grinder so it took less time.

Step 3: Search for glass.  I decided to change my design a little bit.  I had planned on using a bright red to make the little squares around the border of my sun design and use white for the long pieces of the border.  But when I laid it out, it was very blah.  So I swapped where the red and white would go.  However, there was a slight problem:  I could only find tiny scraps of red in the glass bins.  Nothing big enough for the long edge pieces, let alone the center sun piece.  And they were quite a dark red, like red wine.  I needed something brighter.  So my great teacher, LuJean, found a big panel of bubbly red glass that had been taken from an old building upon restoring it.  It was perfect!  It was transparent, had texture, and was just the right shade of red.

(Isn't it pretty?  It looks almost orangey, like fire embers, with the light shining through.  But from straight on, it just looks like a nice strawberry red.)

Step 4: Learn a new tool!  I got to the part of my design where there were a lot of long rectangular pieces and small square pieces, all straight lines. So I got to learn how to use the straight-line cutting thingy. It slides along a rod that is fixed to the table so it makes a perfectly straight cut. Once you use it on 2 sides of your glass, you have a right angle and all the other pieces can be cut off with the straight-line cutting thingy. It was very handy and saved a lot of time on cutting and grinding. 

Step 5:  Another new tool!  Once I got all the long strips cut, I had to make them the right length.  So I used this straight-line measuring thingy and a cutter to give them a perfectly flat, square end.  I marked the glass with a template, lined it up against the straight-edged lip of this tool, and trimmed along the other straight edge.  Voila!  Perfectly square!

Step 6: Progress!  I managed to get all my glass pieces cut!  (I accidentally wisely chose a design with very few curved lines and not very many pieces. Some of my poor classmates will be cutting little crescent shapes and arches until winter.)  So the last thing I did was piece it all together, see if any pieces were too big and would nudge the ones next to them, and grind down the offending edges.

Here is a sneak peak of what the finished piece will look like...




Next week:  Fun with 3rd degree burns! (Also known as, I get to start soldering).


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Stained Glass, Exibit B

This week's stained glass was a testament to my high level of determination.  Because...lets just say there was a big learning curve.   Last week, you may remember, we chose our design, picked out the glass we wanted to use, and cut the design sections out like pieces of a puzzle.  This week we went to work cutting the piece out.  Although I have cut stained glass before, it was a long time ago, probably 12 years ago.  Evidently I didn't retain ANY of that knowledge because I screwed up on at least my first 7-8 tries last night.  It's a lot harder than it looks!  Especially cutting curves with points on them (as in the rays of the sun surrounding the big round piece in the center of my design).  I kept accidentally clipping the tips off.  Or grinding them too far down.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me walk you through the fun:

Step 1: Get out your board where you laid out your design and glass pieces.  Try to remember which pieces of glass you had intended to go where. 

Step 2: Find all the instruments you'll need.  You know, that cutting thingy, and that plier thingy, and that other plier thingy, and that brush thingy.  (All technical terms I memorized from last week.) Oh, and a Sharpie.

Step 3:  Lay a paper puzzle piece on the glass and trace it with the Sharpie.

Step 4:  Start cutting the curve at the top. 
Step 5: Use the smaller plier thingy to break off the curved piece.
Step 6: Repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 since the first attempt ended in little tiny shards.
Step 7: Repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 since the second attempt ended in a snapped off tip.
Step 8: Repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 since the third attempt wouldn't come off at all.
Step 9:  Go find some new glass since you used up all the pieces you had.
Step 10: Start cutting (again).
Step 11: Go find the teacher to show you how to do it since you just ruined another piece.
Step 12: Success!  You finally got the curved piece off!  Now try the straight cuts down the sides.

(These are not my hands, by the way.  But seeing as how I couldn't photograph my own hands, thank you to whoever posted this picture on Google images!)

Step 13: The straight cuts are easier, but not a guaranteed success.  Take it slow, push down hard, keep your eye on where you're headed so you don't...oops, you just cut into the piece.  Start over!
Step 14: Use those bigger plier thingies to snap off the excess glass.
 

Step 15: It's a miracle!  You finished one whole triangle of glass in the last half hour!  Now lay it out against the design and see if it fits. 

Step 16.  It doesn't fit.  It's too long.  So go grind it down to size on the glass grinding thingy.

Step 17: Try a new piece of glass since you just ground down the tip too far.
Step 18: Honestly!  This is way harder than it looks!  But if you finally managed to grind down your 10th attempt properly, good for you.  Now do it all over again with the next 32 sections of glass.

So that pretty much sums up my evening.  A lot of cutting and a recutting until I got the technique down.  A LOT of close up grinding down of edges, hunched over the grinder.  Then walking back and forth to my design to see if the pieces fit.  Then cleaning off the marker and starting the next piece.  But I feel like I finally got a good rhythm, and next week will go way faster.

Here's how pathetically far I got this week:

Stained Glass, Exhibit A

In case you're not an avid reader of my one post a month, I've just started taking a stained glass class.  It's at Holdman Studios, an art center at Thanksgiving Point run by my sort-of/obscurely related through marriage/twice removed not-quite-a-relative Tommy Holdman, a super talented local stained glass artist.   Last night was my first glass, uh, class.  Here's how it went down...


Step 1) Choose a design.  I'm not into those flowery Victorian designs, which were most plentiful in the stack of options.  I'm more into the clean lines of the Arts and Crafts movement.  This was the closest design they offered us novices:


Step 2) Number all the pieces on your design on the giant light table.  Giant light tables = cool.


Step 3) Choose your glass.  This was the hardest part.  It's really the only creative part of the process.  Well, so far.  It's the most important because you could finish and decide your window looks stupid.  What would you do then?  Smash it and start over, of course.  So choosing my glass was stressful.  Also because you have to handle glass.  Glass, in case you don't know, is sharp.  You shouldn't, say, reach into a bin of glass scraps to see what's at the bottom without using the rubber-coated safety gloves the teacher instructed you not to forget to wear.  But hey, glass cuts are clean cuts, right?  So they should heal up fine.  In the end I decided to go with colors that would match my eat-in kitchen, where I'm most likely to hang my window.  My kitchen is a robin's egg blue and red and white.  So here are the glass pieces I chose:

(That dark one is actually a bright red. It just looks black.)

Step 4) Trace your design onto really hard-to-cut paper.

Step 5) Give yourself a hand-cramp cutting out all the pieces of your design from said paper.  You have to cut on either side of your pencil mark, making each puzzle piece slightly smaller than your paper design.  It's a LOT of cutting.  I needed a Coke something awful half-way through.  But the cramps helped stopped the bleeding, which is a good thing, right?



That's as far as I got last night.  Next week I think we will get the chance to seriously slice ourselves as we cut the glass.  Stay tuned!

Fabric Birds On a Branch Tutorial

A few months ago, I saw a cute blog post that had a picture of little hand-sewn, stuffed birds perched on a branch. It was a decoration for her baby's nursery. Well, wouldn't you know it, I have a bird theme in Pippa's room, so when I saw a wall that needed a little sprucing up, I decided to try this idea. Originally (the post I saw said) it was a bird mobile, with rows of birds rotating and dangling above the baby's crib. But she changed it up to be a piece of art on the wall, with the birds perched on a branch. I liked this idea better and so I set out to make my own version, based on the Spool Sewing website's pattern. Unfortunately, none of the blogs I searched out who tried this project gave many details about how they did it. So I decided to make my own tutorial on how to make your own hand-sewn, stuffed birds on a branch. Just so you know, I'm not much of a do-it-yourself-er when it comes to sewing; I'm a fairly inexperienced seamstress. I'm more of a have-your-mom-do-it-er. But I do know the basics of sewing. So when the sewing machine itself doesn't foil me with tangled thread, loose bottom stitches, or the bobbin having to be reloaded (all of which always happen to me, dagnabbit), I can usually manage to sew something simple. And seeing as how my mom is several thousand miles away, I just had to buck up and try it. Surprisingly, it turned out great! So if you're not terribly confident in your sewing skills, don't be intimidated. My tutorial is really clear and detailed and easy enough for even a not-so-brilliant seamstress.

Here's how it looks when it's finished...

And here are some close-ups of the sweet little birds...





So cute, don't you think? Pippa loves it. Every day I point around the room to the birdies and say "Tweet, tweet, tweet," she tries to copy me. But it comes out more like, "Tee tee tee!" since she's only 10 months old. It's ADORABLE, I tell you. I wish you could hear her. Anyway, I'm sure you're wondering when I'm going to get around to the tutorial part. Well, I did a guest post on my sister's blog Beehive and Bird's Nest with the entire tutorial. So rather than repeat myself here, I'll just link over to her blog for the how-to portion of making birds on a branch. Don't you love how Ive just added one more step?

Hand-Sewn Birds On a Branch Tutorial by Arianne

Have fun!


Here are some pictures of her room, in case you want to see how it all came together...

Her crib and wall stencil (designed and made by Big Daddy):

Her bedding, which is what inspired the bird theme (sewn by my mom):

The birds on the branch art, as well as her alphabet letters:

And finally her dotted bird/flower hooks, which used to be on the wall where the bird branches are now, and which are now relocated to above her closet.

Getting Organized, Part 2

Preceding my three-legged silver jewelry stand bought at a cheap, teeny-bopper store, was a purple, sparkly, three-legged jewelry stand bought at a cheap teeny-bopper store. It didn't have enough necklace holding hooks, so I got the silver one, and the purple sparkly one became my new hair accessory holder. Before the purple, sparkly hair accessory holder was a bowl. A gold bowl. All my hair accessories were in there: Clippies of all sizes, barrettes, hair bands, head bands, bobby pins, etc. All jumbled up in a big wad. It drove me nuts. So I was pleased as punch when I recommissioned my old purple sparkly jewelry holder as a hair accessory holder. Except for one problem. It was three-legged. It was three-legged as a jewelry holder, and it continued to be three- legged as a hair accessory holder. And if you need a recap on why three legs suck, here it is: Whoever invented three-legged things has never heard of the laws of physics. Albert Einstien explained in the 4th law of thermodynamics, "If an object with three legs comes into contact with any other object, person, force or thought wave anywhere near or far from its vicinity, it will tip over. If there is a sink or trash can nearby, it will tip over in that direction." So just as I eventually came to despise my silver, sparkly, three-legged jewelry holder, I came to despise my purple, three-legged hair accessory holder. And I came up with this solution:



It couldn't have been easier to make. I actually completed the whole project in one session instead of spread out over days and days in between feeding the baby and taking the kids to swimming lessons. Here's how to do it:

1) Buy a length of ribbon (mine's about 2 feet long, 1 1/2" wide). I chose a ribbon with holes to make it easier for the clippies to attach to it.
2) Buy 2 artificial flowers. Something flat on the back is preferable. Detach the stems.
3) Buy another bit of ribbon (I reused the 1/2" red ribbon from my jewelry holder). It should be about 6-7" long.
4) Hot glue the ends of the ribbon to the backs of the flowers.
5) Make the narrow ribbon piece into a loop (like those pink cancer ribbons) and hot glue it to the back of the top flower.
6) That's it! You're done! Just attach your hair clippies, barrettes, etc., (it doesn't hold hair bands, unfortunately, unless you want to loop them over your flower. But I decided to just put them in a drawer.) and mount it to a hook or nail on the wall.

This little piece of organization cost me about $4 and partially covered up a spackle job on the wall left by the previous owners. More importantly, it may have prevented a future stroke on the party of Big Daddy, who despised my stupid, tipping-over, three-legged, purple sparkly jewelry hair accessory holder with a passion nearly as much as I did. Ok more. Much more. Hence the impending stroke. So, hooray for organization!

Getting Organized, Part 1

Last week I was infected by a strange bug. It took over me and left me feeling odd and not like myself. It caused some bizarre symptoms too. I suddenly wanted to clean instead of nap. I no longer wanted to continue the love affair with piles that I nurtured so carefully during my pregnancy. I actually wanted to get rid of stuff instead of save it.

The most notable symptom of this bug was the overwhelming desire to organize. Deep inside I am a very organized person. I like to clean, I like to put things where they go and have a place for them. Going to The Container Store is like Disneyland for me. But mostly I keep this desire to organize bottled up inside, thickly padded by the desire to sleep, read, watch TV and get on the computer when I have free time.

This week was different. I DID SOME STUFF. So I'm going to highlight some of the super-mom, ultra-organized, crafty person projects I did that left me feeling very impressed with myself.

Part 1: My Jewelry Holder.



I bought a jewelry holder a few years back at one of those teeny-bopper jewelry stores. It looked vaguely like a wedge of cheese married a carousel. It had a tray for bracelets. It had little hooks to hang necklaces. It had little holes to hang earrings from. It was just right. Except that it also had three legs. Let me tell you something about three legs: Three legs is the reason why chairs and tables and everything else has four legs. Three legs suck. Three legs tip over and dump all your jewelry on the floor every time a slight breeze passes your dresser. So after the eighteen thousandth time of cleaning up my jewelry and putting it all back on my jewelry stand, I decided to come up with a better idea. So I ripped off my sister's* jewelry holder idea, made a few adjustments, and this is what I came up with:






The nice thing is, it filled an empty spot on my wall as well as creating a neat, easy-to-access place to put all my jewelry. Here's the How To in case you're interested:

1. Go to the craft store and get a poster frame with your 40% off coupon (mine is 22x25"), some ribbon to match your room decor (1 1/2" and 1/2" widths), spray adhesive, quilting tacks, a roll of cork board, and some push pins. You can also buy some fabric to cover up the cork board if you don't like the look of cork board. Just don't go with a crazy pattern as your jewelry won't stand out against, say, paisleys or plaid.)
2. Remove the glass and cardboard backing from the frame.
3. Carefully place the glass somewhere your husband won't step through it. Flat on the garage floor, for example, is not an ideal spot. Don't skip this step. Especially if you have plans to use the glass for another picture whose glass has broken. And especially if your husband has a habit of walking around the garage barefoot.)
4. Spray both the back of the cork board and the cardboard backing with spray adhesive.
5. Lay the cork board on the backing crooked.
6. Realize that spray adhesive bonds instantly and you won't be able to adjust the cork board.
7. Carefully try to peel the cork board off the backing.
8. Realize that working with cork board glued to cardboard with spray adhesive is about like trying to work with wet crackers.
9. Find a chisel and remove the many pieces of cork board left sticking to the cardboard backing.
10. Go to the craft store and get some new cork board.
11. Con your husband into helping you lay the cork board down. Just tell him you heard somewhere that it's easier with two people.
12. Fight a bit about whether or not a rubber roller is needed to smooth down the cork board. (He will be right about this, of course, but you can get by without one).
13. While you are fighting, go fetch a broom and dust pan to clean up the glass shards from the glass insert you didn't prop up somewhere out of the way.
14. Fetch some tweezers and apologize profusely as you remove glass shards from your husband's feet.
15. Lay out the stripes of ribbon across the front side of your cork board. How many to use and how far apart to place them depends on how much/what kind of jewelry you have. I recommend laying your jewelry all out side by side on the cork board so you will know.
16. Secure the edges of the ribbon with quilting tacks.
17. Every 3 inches along the smaller ribbon, place a dot of hot glue. This will keep your ribbon from sagging when the earrings are hung on it.
18. Hot glue the ends of the ribbon to the back of the cork board/cardboard backing.
19. Place clear push pins just above the wide ribbon, every inch or so, for bracelets, watches, and necklaces.
20. Mount the frame on the wall and hang up your jewelry!

Voila!






*(The credit for this idea goes to my sister, Jennie, as do all good ideas I have. One of the best benefits of having an older sister is that someone else weeds out the bad ideas and passes on all the good ones!)