The Mandala is Finished!

My very happy blue and brown mandala is finally finished! It took a little over a month, but keep in mind my glass time is pretty limited. 

The first part was planning... As you can see, I broke out my old Prismacolors to color in small versions of my final cartoon, then enlisted the help of my resident pint-size designer-in-training as to which was best. The design on the bottom of the picture won.

Next I printed out the design and nailed it to my workboard. 

Things generally started out slow, as many good things do. 

...Surprisingly, the point until I got to the cobalt outer ring only took 5 days. I guess you could say I was excited! :) February had some unexpected twists and turns at home, so the project went on hiatus for about two weeks.

Eventually though, I was able to cut, grind, foil and place the last ring. I came to a decision point - did I want to make it round? Partially yes, and partially no. I let it sit for a few days like this, and would just check on it to see what I thought. It spoke to me that it wanted to be this shape, of an 8-pointed star instead of a round mandala, and I listened.

I used 50/50 solder to tack-solder the pieces together - never again! I read that 50/50 can be good for tinning, so it's less likely to run through when running the 60/40 solder bead above the first layer. What garbage! I hated every minute of trying to run this solder. It solidifies MUCH faster than the 60/40 I was used to using, and generally was a pain in the butt. 

Eventually though, I was able to run my rounded solder lines, and it turned out like this. 

But the edge! I was on the fence about how to finish the edge for a while. I hate trying to run solder around the edges of a piece. It's messy, and I'm too particular to be happy with the results. On a whim, I bought some lead came to finish the edges. Lead came is basically lead strips with a channel to hold the glass. 

There's measuring...

Cutting, nailing...

More measuring, cutting, nailing... 

Until there's some insanity-producing thing that looks like this.

Each of the joints is supposed to meet cleanly, like this. For the most part, my joints came together pretty well.

At each joint, I soldered the lead came to the lead of the design and eventually it looked like this.

I don't want to write about soldering the hangers on. It was the only part of the process I didn't like so I'm going to breeze right on by.

Saul took this picture when I was half-way through the patina process so you can see the difference in a "black" finish (it looks like shiny bronze, really) versus the standard silver of the solder. I suppose there are times that silver could be a really cool design element, but I usually favor the traditional, black-lined look.

And while this isn't a great picture (more to come), this is how it finally turned out. 

I'll have to take a picture of this in a sunny window so you can really see how nicely it turned out. I'm proud of it! Next on the list is a panel for a friend that recently got married. Even though I just finished this piece last night, I already have the area squared up and ready for the pattern! 

Beetle Bits

Today a wonderful thing came in the mail - my Beetle Bits system! 

"Your what?"

Ha! I have no idea how it got its name, but it's basically a system for cutting strips and angles, with a great degree of precision. Once it's set up it looks like this:

The clear "shuttle" on the bar actually holds a cutter, called the Flying Beetle. After lining up the glass...

You can make a nice straight score just by sliding the cutter up the bar. 

Easy. I scored a little deeper than I'd score with a hand cutter, the adjustment for the cutting head is still very finicky to me. 

The great part about this is you can keep sliding down the glass at whatever interval you want and just go to town scoring.

Easy.

One thing I love about this system is that it comes with these clear grids. As you can see in the picture, lots of little glass shards come off with each break in the glass. The squares in the grids catch all the little buggers so I don't have to sweep off my table with each break.

If you were smart, you'd flip over the glass while the score lines were still in tact, turn the glass over, and score on the other side, perpendicular to the original lines. Then you can break each row, then each square.  In this case, I got so excited about taking the pictures that I did it "the long way" but I don't really care. I love to score and break.

Scoring across a strip...

Breaking out the squares... 

So just playing around, I cut all these squares in about 45 minutes, and that is just learning how to use the system. 

It was easy to line up for triangles, too, although there are tools that come with it that I'd have used if I had a bunch to cut.

How cool is this? This is with no grinding or anything. They fit together beautifully - right on the money.

So what will I do with all those squares? I think it would make a really cool panel to hang over the top of a window, like a valance curtain would. We have a narrow window at the top of our stairs that gets beautiful light in the morning. For the meantime, I just put the squares in a box for a "someday" project. 

And with that, I leave you with a picture of what I hope to never need in my workshop, but I have on hand just in case! 

Playground is stocked

It's starting to look like I'm actually working down here! I bought a Beetle Bits system - it took me over an hour to set it up and get it going but it's so awesome. If you've never heard of it, basically it aligns rulers to a grid platform to cut glass on. You can cut the same geometric shape over and over pretty quickly. It only works with straight scores but there's shortcuts for triangles, diamonds of different dimensions... It's really cool!

Ready for solder!

Life's been a bit hectic at chez Levin for a few weeks, but I finally got a chance to finish the outside ring of my mandala. I've decided to not "fill in the circle", instead I'm going to solder lead came around the edges.

What's nailed to the table...

Progress on Mandala

More to come...

Planning is part of the fun...

More to come, but here's a preview of what I've got nailed to the bench right now. I hope to start cutting the glass in a day or two!

...and my favorite little buddy hangs out with me down here and watches movies. Life is pretty good!

New Suncatcher Posted!

More details on the project page, click on the picture if you're interested in the story of how she came to be.

The Birth of a Butterfly

Today I made a butterfly suncatcher for Katriel, posted here. It was fun! It taught me that I need a lot of practice soldering. I guess I'm just going to have to keep cranking out projects until I get better.

Beyond My Ability - (Make it Work, v.2)

After trying to cut the same piece 4 times tonight and having it break every time, I've taken a long look at this cartoon and decided it's beyond my ability. I've labeled the pieces that I just don't think I can break successfully. If there was only one or two I'd press on, but there's a bunch.

It's kind of a shame I got so far with the brown glass before realizing this, but all is not lost. The bird and the leaves can be re-used in another design (I'm thinking a cute little mobile) and I've learned to look more critically at my patterns.

Katriel has asked me to make something for her - I found a nice 3-D butterfly online that doesn't look too difficult. Make it work.

Calling Tim Gunn - "Make it Work!"

When I was pregnant, I spent a month on strict bed rest. I found a lot of reality TV shows I wouldn't have otherwise taken the time to watch! One of my favorites was Project Runway. I loved seeing the designers frantically pulling off a design - and especially when something would go wrong. I liked seeing how different contestants handled the stress of thinking their work was ruined, and how they continued on.

All that Project Runway during pregnancy and late nights with my newborn taught me something. Some of these people were completely losing their marbles over a mistake, design tragedy, etc. and Tim Gunn - the fabulous extraordinaire he is - would give a terse (but supportive) "Make it work!" and move on. Since then, almost every time a work project is coming down to the wire, when my food is cooking faster than I'm reading the recipe, or when I just don't think I have the right resources to do something, I hear him in my head. Make it Work. I really channelled him last night.

I noticed as I was walking by my table that the corner piece seemed to be lifting up ever-so-slightly higher than the rest of the piece. I very, very, gently pressed on it and SNAP! It broke right on the weak spot. I couldn't believe it - this was the piece that took me two tries to cut the night before, and it broke right on the spot it broke the last time! So do you think I was going to cut that piece out a third time??? Heck no!!

I just foiled that crack and kept right on going. Make it Work.

The next piece of background went much better. It's getting a little easier to look at the glass and figure out where the break is going to run (where I don't want it to.) Once I figured out firsthand why I can't cut outside curves before inside ones, it seemed to go smoother.

This morning, I was happy to see the sun coming through the window onto my bench. The location we chose in the basement really seems to be the best. 

Here's the glass that's going to become the tree branches. The color is called "Root Beer"  - appropriate, no? Here's also the blue that I'm going to use for the bird.

I like the streaks in both the glasses - it's fun to decide which way the stencil should go on the glass because it reminds me a lot of the similar decisions to make when sewing a patterned fabric. 

If I get my housework finished and off my mind today, I'm going to head back down there to get in trouble some more. Hopefully if I get in another bind I'll Make it Work again.

Small Victories

It's amazing to me how much I can be immersed in this work and time slips out from under my feet. This evening, it took me 45 minutes to cut and grind the first background piece: one, because I broke the first one on a curved cut, and second, the concave cut around the leaf. Seems I had forgotten about how difficult those are inside curves are when I chose this pattern! I took a long, hard look at the remainder of the cartoon and I've decided to press on anyway. I love this design, it's the reason I chose it, so I'm going to suck it up and just take my time. I'm going to be breaking a lot of pieces in the process, but I'm a smart girl and have more clear background on the way! Surprisingly it's not as difficult to cut as I feared since the non-textured side is relatively smooth. It scores and breaks surprisingly easy.

Wait until I show you the brown glass for the tree branches - whooo boy! Stay tuned, it's an amazing sheet of glass!