Happy Springtime

Yea, spring is officially here! The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming and I even saw my first butterfly a week or so ago--a Mourning Cloak. It moved away much too quickly for me to get a picture of it, either that or I'm pretty rusty in the bug chasing department. Something I'll need to work on.

So, of course I had to put a butterfly together.

I was undecided on the colors that I wanted to use for this project. At first it was going to be a white/yellow daisy. I decided at the last minute to change the flower to more of a Black-eyed Susan type sunflower.
Spread out--the process of wrapping all the glass pieces with copper foil. At this point I was unsure of the colors--separately they were all pretty bright with the exception of the pale purple background. I was afraid that the end result would end up looking like a bag of fruity candy.
Pinned down and ready for solder. Once all the pieces have been handcut, grinded to fit, wrapped with foil the first side can be soldered together.

Flip it over and solder the backside

Black patina to change the bright shiny solder to a delicate calm dark grey

Soldered to the back is a single loop and a bit of chain for hanging. I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. If I were to do this again I would use a few different colors for the butterfly
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I also been wanting to do a project using purple glass. After some thought I decided that I had better do it now, before the leaves come in on the trees. I have a terribly hard time photographing purples and reds in the summer due to the green leaves distorting the color of the glass-they usually turn to mucky murky browns.

Even without leaves on the trees I've had a hard time getting pictures that I'm happy with of this new suncatcher. The center is a clear round faceted jewel surrounded by three shades of purple glass--all Waterglass from the Spectrum Glass Co. I've pulled the color samples right from their webside and posted them below.

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