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Had a great day on Saturday with my best buddy ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
charityflint, learning how to make stained glass. After doing so many hot glass blowing classes it's been great to learn cold glass as well (fusion, mosaics) and this was no exception.
We made a sun catcher, which doesn't sound too difficult, but it took just over 2 hours! Well, when you don't know what you're doing...
Anyway, we started off with a pattern and had to pick out 5 different pieces of glass. That's always the hardest part!
Here's what I chose and how I laid it out. You can see part of the pattern off to the right.
We had to cut out each part of the pattern and trace it onto the glass then cut each piece, then grind them down so it had smooth edges. Cutting glass is tricky. You have to apply enough pressure to score it but not too much or you'll shatter it. I only messed up one piece!
After all the cutting it was time to assemble and wrap each piece in copper tape to get it ready for soldering.
Then came the hardest part - soldering. Especially when you've never done it before! Like our instructor said, "It's not IF you're going to burn yourself, it's WHEN." Yep, she was right! I'm now sporting a blister on the middle finger on my left hand. [sigh] It was tricky, working with the iron and solder, and in the end it wasn't very pretty, but I got the job done:
All in all we both had a great time and learned another skill. We liked it so much that we took advantage of the studio's 50% off discount if we booked another class, so we're taking a four week stained glass class next, making a much more complicated piece. We'll be going every Saturday in September from 1-4 pm. Can't wait!
So what fun and exciting things did YOU do over the weekend?
charityflint, learning how to make stained glass. After doing so many hot glass blowing classes it's been great to learn cold glass as well (fusion, mosaics) and this was no exception.We made a sun catcher, which doesn't sound too difficult, but it took just over 2 hours! Well, when you don't know what you're doing...
Anyway, we started off with a pattern and had to pick out 5 different pieces of glass. That's always the hardest part!
Here's what I chose and how I laid it out. You can see part of the pattern off to the right.
We had to cut out each part of the pattern and trace it onto the glass then cut each piece, then grind them down so it had smooth edges. Cutting glass is tricky. You have to apply enough pressure to score it but not too much or you'll shatter it. I only messed up one piece!
After all the cutting it was time to assemble and wrap each piece in copper tape to get it ready for soldering.
Then came the hardest part - soldering. Especially when you've never done it before! Like our instructor said, "It's not IF you're going to burn yourself, it's WHEN." Yep, she was right! I'm now sporting a blister on the middle finger on my left hand. [sigh] It was tricky, working with the iron and solder, and in the end it wasn't very pretty, but I got the job done:
All in all we both had a great time and learned another skill. We liked it so much that we took advantage of the studio's 50% off discount if we booked another class, so we're taking a four week stained glass class next, making a much more complicated piece. We'll be going every Saturday in September from 1-4 pm. Can't wait!
So what fun and exciting things did YOU do over the weekend?
