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!