I had my second stained glass window class today, and while I am still enjoying the process, the weather was so hot today that both I and the teacher felt faint and dizzy. At one point, all of a sudden I just had to get outside and sit down. It was a close call, but I quickly recovered.
This week I finished my design and I have now begun to cut out my many pieces of glass. This action has an interesting knack to it, you place your glass cutter down on the glass, which is positioned over your design, and as you apply pressure and start to score the surface, there’s a cool sucky-scratchy noise and then a ‘pop!’ as you reach the edge of the glass. If you make that sound, you know you’re doing the right thing. Oh, but it’s difficult. However you get the sense, that once you get the technique down, it could become second-nature to you; I just wonder how long that’d take.
My teacher told me not to have too high expectations for myself, but if I’m enjoying something I really give it my best effort. My teacher also told me that if she had a spare glass cutter she’d have sent it, and some glass, home with me for extra practice. And that means I really am going quite well. I only have next week to cut out my many pieces of glass, so I can start ‘leading them up’ the following week. My goodness, but it’s a cracking pace!
Because the feeling hasn’t properly returned to the tip of my finger yet, I looked up stained glass pictures on Etsy this evening and found the picture above. It was the nice bit of extra inspiration that I needed. I’ve also added two pretty pictures. Peonies are the Kings and Queens of roses, in my mind. And that French castle looks too perfect to be real – surely it could only exist in fairytales? Apparently it is real and you can go along to a photography workshop there.
