Wednesday: A Fast 3 Hours
Today literally flew by. Everyone was busy but everyone was laughing and having a good time as well. We covered this weeks episode of Desperate Housewives since someone’s VCR was never adjusted for daylight savings time, we listened to a slew of Elton John songs after Kim pointed out that for some reason we had no music on this week, and we discussed what our next projects were going to be. Some people are already thinking about gifts for Christmas. I just wish I could be more like Billie instead of waiting until the last minute to start contemplating my holiday projects.
Julie finished cutting her borders for her window and that was when I realized we had a slight problem. The first border is a glass called ‘Reeded’ and it is almost a quarter inch thick where the heavy reeds lie on the pattern. Since Julie plans on coloring the lead lines black we have had to wrap her glass with black backed foil so you don’t see the copper colored back of the foil through all her clear glass. The slight snag was the fact that I suddenly realized we don’t have any quarter inch black backed foil. So rather than wait a week for it to come in we improvised. She cut all her borders, ground them and then took them home to wrap with the smaller 7/32 black back foil. Since it’s a little short she’s wrapping each pices twice. Once covering the top of the glass and on the second pass she’s covering the bottom. It’s a little extra work but sometimes you just have to make due with what you have on hand (especially if you are working with a deadline). This is the window with one row of the Reeded glass in place, the beveled border in place, but the last border missing (it’s at her home being wrapped as I type this).
Ann’s hanging mirror is ready for solder. She got her border cut on the strip cutter and got everything all wrapped and ready to go. I’m sure it will be on the wall in her bedroom next week. I really wish you could see the color of the border better but the light reflecting in the mirror is making it hard to get a good picture.
Ellen’s lighthouse is one of the most charming windows I’ve seen in a long, long time. This is her first project and her soldering was nothing short of amazing. Normally I will touch up problem spots on a window but Ellens window was practically flawless. She’s another natural at this and I know we’ll be seeing great things from her in the future. Just look at what she made in 4 short weeks:
Kim’s Hot Air Ballons are all cut! I’ll slap a border on it for her during the week so she can get to soldering it right away. After all the cutting, grinding and wrapping she’s done to get the window this far I’m not worried about her not doing the border and losing out on any experience– she’s had PLENTY of experience doing this work in the past 10 weeks! Next week she can sit down and relax while she solders.
Lastly we have Billie’s finished handmirror. This is a small (but NOT simple) project that looks wonderful on any dresser. Alas, once again we have very little color showing in the photograph due to the amount of light boucing off the mirror. It looks good here on the Blog but seen in person it’s got a lot more color to it. The black areas are actually dark green leaves.
Everyone did wonderfully today and we’re all looking forward to next week when we can do it all again. You’ve all done a great job, Ladies!
Paul