SkillShare: Stained Glass & Mosaics

Posted by Crystal Pepperdine, Founder and Executive Director of Flint Handmade

Our fourth of five SkillShare Workshops, funded by a generous grant from the Ruth Mott Foundation, was an AMAZING success!

Jami Anderson of Woolly Thinking taught us about glass mosaics and I led a group project demonstration on stained glass.

Jami (standing) started by telling us about the basics of creating glass mosaics.  For this workshop, we used 6 x 6 ceramic flooring tiles from Habitat for Humanity ReStore as our mosaic base.  We traced the tile onto the brown craft paper and penciled in design ideas.

Then, we moved over to the glass cutting table. 

From right to left: Crystal, Jami, Robert, Erin, Danielle.

To cut straight lines, you first score the glass with a glass cutter as Jan is doing.

Then, you use running pliers to snap the glass in two pieces along the score.

Michelle places her cut pieces on her tile to make sure she likes how they look.

Carolyn (l) and Jen are a mother-and-daugher mosaic-making duo!

Danielle heads back to the kraft paper table and begins gluing her glass pieces to her tile.

Russ volunteered for the workshop and also got to glue a few glass pieces onto a tile.

Once all of our pieces were glued, we had to take a group photo!

From left to right: Jami, Jen, Erin, Carolyn, Ali, Jan, Robert, Nicole, Michelle, Russ, Crystal, Danielle.

Time for a lunch break!  Thanks for posing for a silly food pic, Robert!

After lunch, I led a stained glass demo in which we all got to help make a suncatcher that will be auctioned off in the 2012 Cool City Art Auction!

First, I showed everyone how to use a light box to trace your pattern onto glass.

Then, we each got to foil a piece of the glass with copper tape.  Russ foiled all of the remaining pieces.

I showed (from l-r) Ali, Nicole, Robert and Michelle how to apply the flux to the copper tape with a paintbrush.

  

I spot soldered the glass pieces on one side just to hold them in place.

  

Then, everyone got to take a turn soldering a couple lines on the suncatcher!  Jan solders while Michelle and I look on.  Russ and I will finish up soldering at a later time, attach a chain and put the piece in the 2012 Cool City Art Auction with all of our names listed as the arists!

Since the glue was dry on our mosaics after the stained glass demo, Jami showed us how to apply the grout between the glass pieces.  Erin makes sure to really get her grout into all of the spaces.

Robert had too much fun getting his hands covered in grout!

We let the grout sit for a couple minutes and then used sponges to wipe the grout off the glass.  Jen (l) and Carolyn smile with their sponges!

Michelle wets her sponge one last time to clean up her gorgeous mosaic!  Everyone took home their tile to dry overnight.

With grout powder still on his hands and face, Robert gives the thumbs up to his Community Education Toolkit so that he can share the skills he learned with friends and colleagues in the community!

Stallings Stained Glass in Swartz Creek generously donated a Glass Patterns magazine and a 10% coupon for three visits for each of the Community Education Toolkits!  From left to right: Nicole, Michelle, Ali.

We only have one more SkillShare Workshop, but it is already at maximum capacity!

Our SkillShares have proven to be so popular that we hope to offer some of them again in 2012, especially Stained Glass & Mosaics!

We wish to express our gratitude to the Ruth Mott Foundation for funding our SkillShare Workshops.

Our participants get to take home many of the supplies used to share their new skills with friends and family and continue the tradition of the domestic arts and crafts of our American cultural heritage.

THANK YOU, RUTH MOTT FOUNDATION!

PiP = Project in Process: Glass Mosaic Tray

Posted by Crystal

A few weeks ago, I told you all about my newest creative endeavor: a glass mosaics class at the Flint Institute of Arts.

Well, feast your eyes upon my Project in Process...which I am now calling PiPs!  As you can see, I decided to incorporate the red glass.  :)

using craft goop to adhere the glass tiles to the tray

close up of the glass tiles

my two-fifths done tray

I'm using reclaimed materials, so I don't have enough matching glass to cut tiles for the rest of the tray.  I'm trying to think of other ways to finish the project.  Here are the three options we came up with in class:

#1 - Tile the left side of the tray in an entirely different pattern and/or color scheme and create some kind of dividing design down the middle.

#2 - Use up the rest of my already cut tiles to finish exactly half the tray and then tile the left side in a different style.

#3 - Use up the rest of my already cut tiles to create a border around the sides of the tray and then tile inside the border in a different style.

I think #3 is my favorite idea, so I made a mock up to see what it would look like:

option #3 mock up with triangle tiles

So, what do you think, blog readers?  Which option should I pick for my PiP? 

And, if you have any PiPs of your own, email some photos to us at flinthandmade@hotmail.com!  We would love to blog about your PiPs, too!

TRY A NEW CRAFT: Glass Mosaics at FIA Art School!

Posted by Crystal

For the next 8 weeks, I am taking a class at the FIA Art School on Glass Mosaics.  Our first class on June 8 was amazing!

I took various scraps of turquoise, green and white glass (shown around the edges in the picture above) and used the tools to cut small rectangular tiles (shown in the center of the picture above).

These are the tools we used: (l-r) glass cutter, running pliers, nippers, and pliers.  The glass cutter resembles and exacto knife and it used like a pencil to score the glass.  The running pliers are used to snap a piece of glass in half along a straight score line made by the glass cutter.  The nippers are used to nip irregular shaped pieces of glass from the edges of larger pieces of glass.  The pliers are used to break apart pieces of glass that have a non-linear score line or that aren't quite large enough to work with the running pliers.

I'm using the running pliers to snap a piece of glass in half that I already scored with the glass cutter that's sitting on the table. 

This is the grinder. If your glass doesn't break cleanly and there are some jagged edges, you can use the diamond bit grinder with water to sand down the sharp or uneven sides.

 

At the end of the 3 hour class, I had a ton of new knowledge from our instructor, Amy Black, as well as a small container of rectangular tiles and a bunch of pieces selected to cut next week.  At the last minute, I saw the red glass and thought about adding it to the turquoise, green and white for an extra pop of color.

So, what do you think, blog readers?  Should I use the red glass?  :)