From the sky to the water with a detour to the polar ice cap

I finally completed my biplane project and soon it will be flying off to the buyer. I added some hand painted features near the propeller to give a feeling of 'movement' to the piece, not always easy to do when working with glass.

After working on a couple of small projects I felt it was time to recreate one of my favorite projects~a Koi in a water setting with lily pads and lily flowers. I've been dragging this one out it seems like. I started on it last Saturday, March 29. It took me two days to select the glass, a couple of days to cut all the pieces and now a week later I'm at the stage where I can start wrapping all of the pieces in copper foil to prepare for solder.

But....in the meantime, I got side tracked with another project. Its a stylized emperor penguin with its chick. This one came to me the way some projects do, doodling while waiting for pictures to upload. I'm not quite sure how it will turn out, my chick looks more like a chickadee! Live and learn, I say, the next time I'll be able to make some necessary changes to the design, but it will still be a cute.

A peek at what I've been working on

Last week, I started a special order for one of my best customers. Its a stained glass panel with a red biplane flying through the clouds.

The plane is made using a bright red glass along with black, gray and amber for the wheel and the engine and propeller. For the clouds I've used a textured streaky white glass and for the sky I've used two different textures of a pale blue glass. One of the textures of blue, called Artique is transparent with slight squigly lines throughout. The second blue is a type of glass called Baroque which is just a beautifully textured glass with randoms squirls. I've used the Baroque following the path of the plane to create a feeling of movement.

The picture shows all of the glass pieces cut and made to fit along with some of the pieces wrapped with copper foil. Once the entire piece is soldered I'll tack solder skinny copper rods from the top wing to the bottom wing to look like supports. I'll also hand paint features near the propeller to give an appearance that it is also in motion. Overall, this piece will measure 16" tall by wide.

Once the piece is complete I'll be sure to post a picture of it here.