Oooooh! Glassy!

I haven't blogged about it much before but one of my new(ish!) favourite things to do is make stained glass pieces. I've been doing classes for about a year and a half now and I love playing with all the colours and designs and coming up with a new piece.

I now have loads of glass in my flat - some leftover from other pieces and some bought because I was in the shop and saw something so beautiful I couldn't resist! (Seriously, going to a glass shop is like going to a sweet shop - there are beautiful things on every wall and you want them all!)

I seem to gravitate towards blue pieces and had lots in my stash so I decided to make use of all the pieces I have accumulated and design something modern and abstract using bluey greeny colours.

I also had never leaded up a circle before and its something I wanted to try so I decided to incorporate that into my design. Normally, when doing a straight edged piece, you lead into a right angle made with two blocks of wood - because you can't do this for a circle it is slightly more tricky! Unfortunately I didn't think to take any pictures whilst I was leading up - the one above is after I had leaded and soldered but before cementing and polishing.

This is the finished piece:

It has been cemented to keep the glass secure in the lead, the lead has been blackened and the whole piece has been polished to give it a shine.

I'm pretty pleased with the results, I just need to secure the ends of the chain and then it will be hung in the window as a lightcatcher. I think I am going to give this to my parents this weekend - I hope they like it! Just one more close up of those lovely blues:

I have also made another leaded circular piece of a similar size which incorporates pieces of fused glass but I will have to show you that another time. As well as finally finishing my glass pieces I've been taking a precious metal clay course this week which has been lots of fun and I'll have the results of that soon.

Happy crafting!

Dotty xx