Christmas is coming and soon there may be snow

I was lucky enough to be in Northern Italy last January during a snowfall and for the first time in my life saw single, huge and beautiful snowflakes. I have seen pictures of them under microscopes but this was the first time I had actually seen the little six sided spiky crystal shapes with my own eyes.



Inspired by those flakes and my love of the colour cobalt blue, since it reminds me of delft tiles and Nordic 1960s designs, I worked at recreating some snowflakes using cobalt blue enamel and fused clear and opal white glass. Each one has been individually hand painted and by the end of the week, they will be ready for hanging on the Christmas tree and will be for sale in my Folksy shop. http://www.folksy.com/shops/Redhenglass

A gift of bread

P1060873b, a photo by Ajay Jayne on Flickr.

There is something very special about finishing a piece of glass work and delivering it to the customer. When delivering the repaired sailing boat to my customer on Friday, I was delighted to receive an example of his skill as he presented me with this beautiful hand baked loaf. If you are interested in food and home baking, do follow him on his food blog http://www.paneartigiano.wordpress.com

All ship shape and ready to go home

After some tricky moments, the sailing boat is ready to go back to its home now. The lead is now glossy and the whole window much more rigid than it was originally. The broken glass has been replaced and all the old paint and dust removed. The original glass really sparkles and it has made me wonder while working on it, just when it would have been made. I have never seen the whirled glass used in the sky before and all efforts to find a good match for the clear bubble glass were met with blanks but fortunately not too much of that was damaged.



This is not the best way to show it but at least shows how bright the refreshed and repaired window looks.

Sailing boat window repair

I have on the bench at the moment a sailing boat from a home in Amersham. This window has lived in a shed for some time and the current owners are keen to have the broken pieces repaired so that they can install it in their front door and enjoy a piece that was originally made by a neighbour.

The leads have become quite weak in places and the panel has flexed, damaging some of the glass used to show the sea. Now that it is ready for mending, I have removed all the border leads and have separated the sea from the rest of the panel.



While I have some really good glass colour matches, the sea has some texture on the glass that I am trying to copy. To do this, I have made some simple plaster moulds that have textured surfaces inside and will kiln fire the blue glass to pick up the textures before cutting and matching it to the pieces that are not broken.