Stained Glass Fish Window for a Bathroom

This large panel has just been installed to further obscure a large bathroom window; I make lots of windows for bathrooms and toilets and it is a great place to put a stained glass window as it adds privacy and interest to small rooms.  At just over a metre square its a striking feature which is visible through the bathroom into the upstairs landing. The window has been fixed in front of the existing textured double glazed panel and really livens up the space. All the fish are made with iridescent water glass and have been hand painted and kiln fired. The panel is leaded using traditional techniques

A Loo with a view

Really pleased to have got my latest commission installed into its home in the downstairs toilet in a lovely late Georgian house in Teignmouth. This double fronted house has been converted from offices back into a family home and there is still lots of renovation to go (there isn’t a toilet yet!). The window add a great wow factor as you enter the house by the front door and creates visual feature at the end of the long central entrance hall.

This is my take on our local coastline of the Teignmouth Back Beach, estuary and The Ness Cliffs. The seagulls, beach huts, tiny boat and tree line have been painted and then fired in the kiln and are indicative of our town, as our the rich red cliff sides and deep green rolling hillside. 

From dawn till dusk

The school Easter holidays are in full swing; but I being a self employed artist and a mum means my days are full of sandy children for the next couple of weeks and working life needs to be pushed to the margins. Early mornings and after kids bedtimes have become my hours of work, this is how I worked through their preschool years and I am glad I learned to juggle all of these competing demands right from the children being babies, as I can slip into it quite easily now. But it does slow me down! and I am glad to have this triptych of panels packaged up to go to their new home in Cambridgeshire, as their new owner has been most patient!

The brief for the commission was to create three 30 cm square panels, each reflecting a different part of the day from sunrise to sunset. The client provided some of her photos for me to include and wanted a version of my ever popular teasels photo in the mix too.  The three panels are to run vertically down an internal wall  in a newly remodelled kitchen and the colours go from subtle yellows and light blues at sunrise to purples and pinks for a dramatic sunset.

The panels are made by firing photographic images onto the glass in my kiln and then leading them up in the same way as any other traditional leaded stained glass panel. The photographic images are permanently attached to the glass so the panels are as durable as normal stained glass.

Anyway, off to the post office and beach, in that order to get these panels off to their new home! Enjoy the sunshine on this sunny Monday morning.

 

 

 

Stormy Teignmouth

Its been so long since I have written on my blog and sooooo much has happened since September. We have moved to Teignmouth, about 14 miles from Exeter and we are loving it! I have a great new studio and we live right by the sea.
Here was my new home town about 30 minutes before high tide, the pier is in a bad way and the waves are full of boulders and debris, but it is brilliant to be able to be so close to the elements!

Teignmouth back beach

East Cliff Teignmouth

Skate Park Teignmouth Sea Front

Damaged PierBeach

Beach Comber Cafe

My husband is a weatherman

Ivy Lane

Ivy Lane

Sculpture Trail marks the start of the Summer Holidays

Recycled Crochet carrier bag sculpture

Every year I take part in TRAIL this is a sculpture trail along the sea front in Teignmouth, Devon with sculptures made entirely from recycled materials. Professional artists, community groups and local schools all take part and it is a fun and colourful display with a strong underlying environmental message.

I love taking part in this exhibition, I have exhibited yearly since 2009 and it really heralds the start of the summer holidays for me!

This year I have crocheted a giant squid out of recycled carrier bags (from supermarket recycling bins and friends cupboards), it stands 3m or so in the air suspended on the end of 2 old, broken fishing rods and has a couple of charity shop Barbie victims dangling from its tentacles, about to be eaten.

The trail is totally free and runs from 22nd July 2013 to 1st September 2013 along the beautiful Teignmouth seafront, please come and have a look if you are in the area, I am in the flower bed outside the Beachcomber cafe.

recycled sculpture

Fused Nautilus Bathroom window

Delivered this panel today and the customers seemed really pleased with it, which is always good!

The design brief was simple: bright, jewel like colours, based on a Nautilus/spiral design and to obscure the existing patterned sealed glass unit which the panel is to be fixed in front of.

At 63 cm across, its the biggest fused piece I have made and many thanks to Ray Boundy at Glowworm Glass for the hire of his kiln and watching it for me! I kept the colour scheme simple and bright and by leaving small gaps between the coloured pieces the design has an orderly segmented feel. I have brought in more flowing, organic feel to the piece by putting a powder between the sheets of glass; this reacts with the glass when heated in the kiln making small bubbles within the 2 layers of glass. I have printed patterns in glass paint on the reverse by drip painting and then sponge printing with transparent paint, this gave the glass lots of texture, helping to disguise the existing patterned glass.  The darker red, blue and green areas have been acid etched. To do this I printed small circles onto the glass with PVA glue (using various pen lids as stampers) and the glue acted as a resist to the acid wash, which has frosted the glass.

The panel will rest in the existing window frame and be secured in place with a few small screws and some sealant; so easily adding great interest to a bland bathroom and getting another layer of glazing as a bonus!

My tree has turned into a monster, but you can still add your wishes to it!

I had to go and take my Wishing Tree down today from its sea front home in Teignmouth as the TRAIL exhibition has ended . I had no idea that it would be so popular and we estimate it has around 2,500 wishes (based on the number of rags we put in the bins) I could not keep up with demand and many thanks to Liz Lockyear, the organiser of the event for endlessly filling the bin for me and to Roger Smith (founders of TAAG ) for mending my sculpture when it got so heavy with wet wishes in the rain that it fell over! TRAIL had to run without funding from anywhere this summer and it is in danger of having to stop running, which seems very sad when the public enjoy the exhibition so much.

Anyway, it really doesn’t look like a tree any more; more like a Fraggle Rock monster! But it is now safely erected in my garden, wishes intact and you are cordially invited to add your own wish to my tree/monster during Devon Open Studios which runs from the 8th – 23rd September.

My Kaleidoboat sculpture (which won TRAIL in 2010) will also be on display and I have moved it to my front garden so people can easily find my house!

The slide show takes you through the wishing tree from the start till now, who knows what will happen to it next!

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First finished photographic printed stained glass panel!

After much experimenting with a special printable transfer paper on which I print out photographic images I have finished this piece, Sunset, Teasels and sea. The transfers are carefully floated onto the cut glass pieces and heated to a high temperature in the kiln to bond with the glass and then I lead the panel together as usual. The glass is given a grainy, slightly mat side from contact with the kiln shelf at high temperatures and the sepia of the printed image combine to give a really nice retro, old photograph atmosphere. There will be more of this kind of thing soon, but for now its for sale in my Folksy shop

The photograph used here I took on Branscombe Beach, Devon at sunset looking out to sea and the panel is framed in a specially made recycled wooden frame.

 

3 different endings, all starting with the sea

Oh dear, I totally gave up on my blog a day! whoops. But that is because I have been double busy the last few weeks. Open Studios ended well with over 100 visitors, but now its over its straight into the pre Christmas frantic stock making! I have however, finished some bigger pieces and this is what today’s post is about!

I finished the children’s mermaid panel, which has proved difficult to photograph well cos its so long, but I am really pleased with the finished piece and the reflections all the painted and etched fishy details throw on the floor.

I am also really pleased with my new exhibition panel, based on teasels on the sea front at Branscombe beach in Devon. The painted details have come out really well as has the unconventional pebble shaped border.

Finally, I installed an abstract panel this evening in a bathroom/hallway internal window space. The design brief was to create a piece inspired by images of the patterns of rocks on a beach in North Devon. I devised an abstract panel following the lines of the rocks patterns and incorporating lots of sea glass (broken glass tumbled by the sea and picked up on local beaches. I mixed this glass with baroque glass and water glass to give some texture to the piece and some wonderfully delicate antique green salvaged glass with wonderful bubbles and slight variations. The finished piece is quite subtle and the colours match the interior decoration well. I think it has been very successful, I left the new owners gazing at it in the hallway, so I think they are happy too!

How much longer does it take to make a stained glass window?

Whoops, I totally forgot I had started blogging about this! So here is part 2, but I must confess, I finished this panel Sunday (I dropped it off on Monday waiting for installed photos!) so the details are a bit blurry now! It took about 3 hours to lead up (build up the glass and lead came neatly and snuggly together using nothing more than a lead knife and horse shoe nails; the nails are to hold the glass in place, like an extra set of hands. I spent another couple of hours soldering all the joins in the lead together with solder. It then took 3 hours to cement and another hour or so to clean up….then I had to wait a couple of days for the cement to harden up; my workshop gets sauna hot so that helps speed things up! 10 minutes or so to apply patina to darken the solder joins …….more waiting for that to bite into the solder and lead, wash the patina acid off……..wait for it to dry again and then spent around an hour polishing it. It then got picked at and polished every time I went past it for a couple of days. It’s new owners are very pleased with it and will send photos when it gets installed (they are doing up the house) and hopefully I will be working with them again in the future on an internal panel! I didn’t take any photos of the cementing stage as its very messy and I have lost cameras that way before!

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