24 Hour Stained Glass

I took a stained glass workshop a couple years ago and was just keeping that skill in my back pocket.  I've known for a long while that we would have a stained glass in the guest bathroom above the door to the toilet room.   I knew the size and a few months ago I knew the color scheme I'd be working with.  I guess I just chicken out sometimes when there is a project on the horizon that I can't put at least part of the work onto Matt.  This stained glass would be my design, my gift card money used, my time and potentially my hands sacrificed to a few cuts.  A few weekends ago I put on my big girl pants and got to work.

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Matt and I went to Hobby Lobby to pick out the glass on Saturday afternoon.  I thought we might have a color in the stained glass, but the options were pretty bad.  They had a couple choices I might would have used had they not been irridescent.  So we got a grey with white swirl, white with white swirl (yes there is such a thing), clear with white swirl, clear with clear swirl (again it's possible), and a faux seeded glass.  It was really just a guess to get 5 different pieces but it turned out great.  Here is the initial designs I had come up with. 

 

 

I decided on the herringbone pattern because eventually our front walkway will be herringbone patterened brick, and our dining room table we're going to make will be herringbone patterned wood.  I thought it would tie together nicely.  The bottom sketch is what we were going for.

 

 

The Saturday night that we bought the glass, we went to Matt's parents house to hang out and watch football and a movie, War Horse.  The movie was better than I thought it would be, but to be honest my expectations were pretty low.  While watching the movie I drew, scored, and cut all the glass into 2"x6" pieces.  The next morning I went to church in Fulton then came home and got to work on my stained glass.  I laid out the pattern like you see above and asked Matt what he thought about it.  First I'd tried where the colors were spiratic but decided I like them making more of a chevron effect by having all one color in a line.  Matt liked it ok, but was loving the grey pieces the most because they look like the marble detail we have around the top of the shower.  I actually hadn't thought of that so I shifted all the rows, grey in the middle, with white above and below it, then the clear at top and bottom.

 

This is the pattern, with pieces numbered.  I had to be able to put them back in the same place after wrapping them with the copper tape so the process is to number each piece, ( I used different colored sharpies for each row) then trace and number the place on the paper template.  The sharpie either wipes off, or you use a steel wool to scrub it off. 

 

I finished soldering about 9 or 10 that Sunday night.  It went much faster than I thought it would and I only poked myself with a red hot piece of solder stick one time.  I still have a mark from it.

 

This is it leaned against the headboard in the guest bedroom.  You can see the swirls better with something dark behind it.

 

And this unfinished spot in the bathroom is where the stained glass is going to wind up.  Matt still has to trim it out before we can put it up but I'm pretty excited to see the finished product in place.  I'll post a picture when we get the bathroom farther along.