Painting done

Had a great day finishing painting the oak leaves and acorns. Their outlines, shading and highlights were already painted in a rich black on the face of each piece, I now had to add the colour. I decided to use low firing semi transparent enamels and to paint them on the reverse. These fuse with the glass at about 550 Celsius to a matt finish, which when looked at with light reflecting off it looks a bit flat and insipid; but viewed from the other side with the light passing through has deep lustre and beautiful colours. It also adds depth to the image and is almost three dimensional. 

Sand Rose finished

The lovely sun catcher is finished and ready for collection. The first picture shows it with the copper foil applied and the second photo is the completed article. I have photographed in front of an obvious  background which gives an idea of how the light moves through it. It is beautiful in the sunlight and a perfect copy of the logo. 

The charity is the Sand Rose project which provides free accommodation to recently bereaved families, with the emphasis on young children. Based at Marazion in Cornwall, it has three cottages overlooking the beach and is a national charity. 

Projects like this one are really rewarding. Most stained glass work runs over several weeks and even months in some cases and you can run out of enthusiasm for the project. The Sand Rose only took two days, made entirely out of offcuts it looks fantastic, and best of all is for a really worthwhile cause. It reminds me nicely why I do this for free. 

Sweet pea window installed

Spent a very enjoyable weekend in Walthamstow installing the sweet pea transom light. It was fitted inside the existing glass which gives it the advantage of being very well protected from the elements and from mechanical damage. 

All our windows are designed an built to complement their environment and look like an original feature, this was also intended to make the house number clearly visible at night. I hope you will agree from the two photos that we have pretty much nailed it. Apologies for the photo quality, wine and cameras don't seem to make good bedfellows. 

A quickie

Whilst even simple small pieces can take several days, and we do have several projects on the go at the moment, I received a request we could not refuse. A really worthwhile charity which had previously closed its doors is to reopen and someone who they had helped asked if we could do their logo in glass. It's a brilliant logo and really easy to copy; the brief was a 10 inch sun catcher  as close as possible to the original. A rummage through all our offcuts boxes and a couple of hours later all the glass is cut. Think we have nailed it?