Stained glass tulips in red and yellow

Spring is in the air so it just seemed natural to come up with a new design featuring one of my favorite spring time flowers. The idea for this piece actually started with the diamond shaped bevel that is in the center. Its been sitting in my supply cabinet for a few years, it was finally time to build something with it. The result is a combination of two of my favorite things--geometry with nature. I began playing with some ideas and scribbling in my little notebook. Lately some designs have started as tiny little sketches. Sometimes when I draw them at a large working size they don't look quite as good to me as the did in a tiny size. For the tulip plan the design elements came together really well at a large size. When I was thinking about colors for the tulip suncatcher my original idea was to use violet purple for the flowers. But I really didn't want all four of them to be the same color and I couldn't figure out a good complimentary color if I chose to split them up. After searching my stock I decided red and yellow would work better, and since the flowers are two different colors I decided to make the leaves both hunter and emerald green. Lacking soom sophisticated tools I've learned to improvise with everyday objects. For outlining circles I use covers from the kitchen~~here the cover from the slow cooker is a perfect 10 inch round while the retired frying pan makes a 12 inch circle. Since the center of the design is a glass bevel I thought adding additional bevels to the border would be a nice touch. The problem was that the 1 inch bevels I planned to use are square but the border is curved. By grinding the inner and outer edge a bit I was able to make them fit. So glad I went this route. All cutting and grinding of the pieces moved smoothly and I was able to work on the piece rather quickly. Of course I was very excited to see how everything blended together. Here is the first look off the paper pattern with one side soldered. Yesterday was the day to photograph it and list it in my Etsy shop. The skies were sunny which was ideal to get the best views of the suncatcher. It looks best in a window with good sun behind it, the colors of the piece really pop and the bevels sparkle and shine their prismatic beauty. Currently available, this tulip suncatcher measures 14 1/4 inches diameter, just over 36 cm. As always, chain will be included for hanging.

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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