This Week In Class
We’ve made some major progress this week on all our projects so let’s dive right in. Gerald showed up with his paper pattern cut up and ready to go. He cut the purple shadow sections of the glass and then moved on to the yellow background. Time wasn’t an issue yet so he started grinding everything and then the two of us wrapped all the pieces he had ground. At the last minute he took out the eyeball and replaced it with a Glass Glob that looked just like a cat’s eye. (You’ll see why he was playing with glass globs at the end of this Blog entry.)  The result was perfect so that was what he tacked into place. There isn’t much left to finish on this window and you can see that this is one striking design.
Jane was hard at work while she was home and got all of the water for her window cut and ground. There are some VERY tricky cuts in this pattern as well as some really thin pieces of glass. Normally I tell people to just attack a complex project in a slow and steady manor but Jane threw everything at it and has all the hard work finished. At the rate of speed she’s been working I’m half expecting to see this all tacked together and ready for solder next week.
Cheryl and Joey arrived back safely (although not without some drama!) from their Cruise and managed to almost completely finished each of their windows. They finished wrapping some remaining pieces on the bird window and then we added borders to both of them. After that they spent was was left of the class soldering while I worked on a pattern for Cheryl’s next project. The soldering is complete on the front of the flower window and I must say that Cheryl has the soldering process mastered now. I always go over the soldering before a project leaves the classroom but this one doesn’t look like it needs any touchups at all. We’ll certainly see these two windows finished next week. While Joey works on the 3rd window of the set (a bluebird design that sit’s on the left of these two windows) Cheryl will work on a Franklin Foundation Hospital window designed from the the Hospital’s Logo.
Meanwhile, Russ had decided that cutting glass for candle holders is a waste of time so he used precut bevel’s to make his latest in a series of candle holders. 
It has two alternating patterns rather than the same on all 4 sides which makes for an elegant design. Both are visible in the photo that Gerald set up (with glass globs as a props!) below.
We also had a request to redo the Rooster that was posted here way back when the Blog first started. There was to be a difference however, as the customer wanted a rooster with more attitude. I beleieve we achieved our goal on that point– this is a rooster that makes youtake notice of him!
And lastly, since I have pictures of them handy, I’m posting 2 of the Mardi Gras Boxes that we made this year. All we did was take our standard Mari Gras Mask designs and made them into lids for stained glass boxes that hinge on the rear.
Next week we’ll have Ellen back and hopefully Fran will be recovered from her illness so she can start on her Camero window…