Kanji, Part Deux...

Another piece I foiled today at work, and soldered when I got home...

The yellow most definitely stands out better when the piece is laying down (way more so than the previous kanji piece I made). Still have some pretty special magic when the sun hits it:



This piece is supposedly kanji for "family". I think there might be two symbols with it, this being the first one of them. I might have to get some verification on it, since I'm woefully ignorant on most things Japanese.

If anyone has further contribution or clarification, by all means, please feel free to share with me.

Kanji! SO VERY EXCITED about this one!

Ok, so I've been dying to try some common Japanese characters just to see how they'd turn out. Well, it definitely came out better than I expected. Take a look...

Looks pretty droll, doesn't it?

Now, here's where the magic comes into play:

The symbol is Japanese kanji, and represents the word "eat".  The colors are absolutely PERFECT for this medium. I'm not even sure I want to sell it now, I'm thinking it might go perfectly in my own kitchen window!

Can't quite finish this piece yet because we're short on zinc came, will have to wait until payday so we can procure more supplies.  Next piece is the kanji symbol for "family", and it look like this:

so we'll see how that one looks tomorrow once I get it foiled and put together.

Stay tuned!

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Koi fish update...

I'd been looking forward to soldering this bad boy for days now, so without further adieu, here is the koi fish, freshly soldered:

Piece soldered together very nicely. Not alot of variance on the glass width, so the solder lines laid down very nicely.  Piece was then framed in zinc came, hangers attached, scrubbed down in ammonia bath and gone over once again just to ensure lines were solid and beaded up as they should be. Finished piece:

Next up, I have some Japanese kanji letters that I've snagged off the internet, modified them in Photoshop, and made into new patterns. Will continue with that tonight, and hopefully get some of those cut out for tomorrow.

The anatomy of a cool stained glass project...

For this series, I wanted to take the time to illustrate the process behind actually putting together a stained glass piece.  This piece was inspired by a dear friend of mine who suggested that Japanese themed handmade is really popular right now. So I set about to find a pattern that illustrated a nice, simplistic version of a koi fish or a koi pond. So I found this pattern and modified it in Glass Eye to make it my own:

The pieces print out from Glass Eye with numbers, so with my two copies in hand, I set about to cut out the pattern pieces by hand, using the foil scissors that cut a slight margin to account for the foil and the solder lines and make the piece fit so much better. This is what it looked like after I was done...

I drew the arrows on the water pieces to illustrate a sort of "flow" in the blue glass that I'd planned on using. So I picked my glass, washed it and set about to gluing my pattern pieces directly to the glass for cutting.

I chose four colors for this piece...a semi-opaque brown for the ground, a semi-transparent blue for the water, the koi with a white body and orangey detailed fins. Once the glue was dry, it was off the the cutting table:

And then to the grinder:

One more final fitting, then I take the piece with me to work to foil:

Foiling completed and another fitting check, and now the piece is ready to solder:

So now you can see how the water "flows" in the same direction, and the ground is also somewhat "molded" around the bend of the pattern. Should have this ready to solder and finish by Sunday. Will update once piece is finished.

The infamous "Butt Panel". :)

Believe it or not, this is the very first cut glass panel I've ever made:

It was from a pile of very old patterns that Kim had buried in a file somewhere. I saw this pattern, and I knew I had to make it MINE. weg  So I modified it a bit, scanned it into Glass Eye so I could perfect it and make the design changes to the garter as I wanted to, and make the piece my own. I had very few fitting issues, and was quite pleased once it was finished. The solder was then patinaed black, quick wash and wax, then ready for the market.

Not bad for my first piece, eh?   LOL

The only complaint I had with the piece is that the sides are a bit floppy, because there are no side joints that I could solder to stabilize the frame to the panel.

This is such a neat little kinky piece, I just had to make it. :P  I'd really like to improvise on this theme here sometime, and do an Andy Warhol sorta thing with it...shrink it down a bit, then create multiple copies of the same thing, with pieces cut in funky alternate colors.

The original piece is for sale here--->> Sexy, Sensual Art Garter Stained Glass Panel

The Green Eyed Monster is now complete...

UPDATE:
Piece is live and in the store! Go here--->> http://www.etsy.com/listing/72808094/green-bullseye-glass-sampler-patchwork?ref=pr_shop  to check it out! 


This piece came out very nicely, as I knew it would.

I'm quite pleased with the colors, and I'm really happy about the bevels that I inset in the panel (new twist on the panels that have previously sold), and used as a border around the edge.  I'll have this one listed here fairly soon, hopefully will have it up in the Etsy store by Sunday.

This piece is 10th in the series of Bullseye sample glass that I've been working into panels. As I'd mentioned earlier, the glass was in a sampler kit that Kim had kept for years, but never quite knew what to do with it. For me, since I'm a relatively new artist in the stained glass arena, it was a good, simple piece in which to hone my skills...easy, straight cuts, straight solder lines, lots of corners to learn how to NOT puddle the solder into, etc. This style is fairly forgiving, and a little "fudging" of some of the irregular pieces would not be noticed overall in the panel. 

I believe I have enough left over from all the color groups to make two multicolored panels. Then I'll be on to petting a few more sampler boxes from Kokomo glass that I'll be forming into full window pieces. Stay tuned!  

Coming soon!

This will be the 10th panel from that Bullseye glass set. New details in this piece...the inset cornered diamonds (which will make alignment go a little smoother--crossing my fingers!) and the 1in beveled edge. Most of the pieces in this panel are semi-opaque, so I needed to come up with something to let a little more light into the panel. I think this will do just fine.

So I'll be packing this one up to foil at work tomorrow. I work in a call center complete with a hands free headset, so have very little use of my hands for 8 hrs a day. Doing my art at work makes the time go by so much faster, and keeps me from picking the lint out of the keyboard (yes, I'm slightly neurotic if you haven't figured that one out by now!). Thankfully my bosses don't care, and it creates alot of interest in my artistic endeavors from my coworkers wanting to see the finished product. :P

I think I have enough pieces left to make a browns/yellows panel, and a multicolor from all the leftovers from the other panels. I also have about 5 other sampler boxes maunfactured by other companies, so I'm going to have my hands very full here quite awhile with these patchwork panels.

Will post more pics and put up on the Etsy page once the piece is complete. Stay tuned!

Our first listing! Yay!

Here it is, without further adieu...

One Bad Apple  <<-----click here for the Etsy link!

This piece is one of many is a series of pieces that I started out on as a beginner in the stained glass arena. Kim (my friend, teacher, and the owner/operator/other half of the operation!) had this massive old box of glass samplers that she'd had for years. She'd contemplated doing something with them someday, but they're all this really odd size, approx 2x3 inches, and very few of them were exactly the same size. They were all divided up by type and texture, and I sat and petted them for quite a bit (yes, it's what I do...you should see me at the fabric store, I could camp out in there for days!).

So the squeaky wheels started a crankin...

How about if we divide these up into color families and cut them up into uniform pieces, like an inch and a half? Seemed like a good plan to me. So I commenced to sorting color families, cutting and grinding, foiling and soldering, etc. Lather, rinse repeat...

And thus, the patchwork transom panels were born.

The piece pictured above represents probably about the 8th or 9th panel I've created. All the others have sold...three of them being another red/pink panel, a summery orange/yellow/green piece I just finished about a week ago, and a blue/purpley panel that was left over from last year's batch that didn't sell. I've created about 4 of the purpley panels, a seagreen/light blue one, a black and white one, and the ones that sold.

I have enough Bullseye glass to make probably about 3 or 4 more of them, and Kim broke out the rest of her sampler boxes from other companies (Kokomo, Spectrum, etc) she'd had stashed away that I didn't know about. So yeah. If these take off like I want them to, I'll be making these for several more months to come.

Stay tuned for more pieces coming up! Same bat time, same bat channel!

We're live and running! Woohoo!

Exciting news! Just created and fired up this blog, hope to get this thing active and running, so we can tell all these great stories about the pieces that we create!

I'm Melissa of the dynamic duo, AKA Captured Light Stained Glass Studios (CapturedLightSGS). Kim is the main owner/operator of the studio and the company, and she's graciously guided me through the ins and outs of the art of stained glass. Seriously though, I'm just along for the ride. I have an absolute BLAST creating and making stained glass pieces!

My history in the crafting arena is a long and sordid story. To summate it rather succinctly, crafting is in my blood. From the time I could remember, my grandmother was a crafter. She had these funky tube-like things with plastic tips on them that sorta worked like a ballpoint pen (the brand name I think was Artex?), and had this big tin with scads of these colorful tubes on this plastic lazy susan like thing. She drew and outlined these awful white matted fabric/felt/fiber looking thing and made these horrid tablecloth things with them. But she loved what she did. She also painted wooden christmas ornaments and sold them at craft bazaars. She knitted, crocheted, painted and did various other crafty things until arthritis and macular degeneration took away her ability to derive any kind of enjoyment out of crafting.

My mother is also an avid crafter. She makes beautiful quilted christmas stockings and embroiders them with beads, sequins and other highly ornate baubles. She's more of a needlework crafter, and pretty much sticks with fabrics as her favorite genre of handmade crafting.

I, on the other hand, have pretty much run the gamut in the crafting world. Although I'd never say that I've tried it ALL, I have tried out alot of various mediums in the crafting spectrum. My grandmother of course taught me how to crochet, which is pretty much my fave, but even after an amount of time it starts to really bother the joints on my hands and I have to put it down for awhile to avoid repetitive motion injury. I've done FIMO, needlepoint, macrame, handloom weaving, bead weaving, sewing, paper crafts, chainmaille, synthetic hair dreads, and my latest crafting adventure is now STAINED GLASS.

I'm really very much looking forward to posting and blogging about the pieces that we create. I think when you know and understand the story behind the pieces one creates, it really makes them more meaningful and special, and assigns much more value to them than money can buy. I'm very much looking forward to sharing to the world the pieces that Kim and I crank out, so onward and upward to the good stuff!  :)