GLASS CLASS PART 2

Second day of the workshop was just as interesting & even more colourful. This time we learnt how to do stained glass mosaic, using pieces of coloured glass that we were to cut out ourselves, as opposed to the "smashed glass' type. The glass cutting techniques learnt in the first workshop were put to good use.

This time, I had a new classmate, Tanya, from Pascoe Vale, who is Maltese.
Pam was busy attending the Kilmore Cup races, though she did come in the morning for the "unveiling" of the glass pieces we had made the day before.

Stained glass mosiac can be used on both indoor & outdoor projects - it is thew finish & the type of base use which determines if the item can withstand the elements.

Our project was an indoor piece & we were allowed to choose the shape we wanted for our MDF craft bases. Both Tanya & I decided on the circular base, which was more versatile to use.

After practising the glass cutting techniques & learning about how to make our mosaic design stand out, we got down to choosing the actual designs & the colours we wanted to put on our pieces. Yours truly decided to do a sunflower design (to match the coasters I had made the day before) with a blue border.
This turned out to be rather difficult as the yellow coloured glass I chose to cut out the petals from made it almost impossible to see the score lines I made on it with the glass cutter. I had to experiment a bit & with Marina's advice, I finally managed to get my petals cut out. The last part of filling in the background was also not as simple as I thought, as I had to cut according to the restricted space I had left to fill. I chose a dark green background to make the yellow petals stand out.

This is my mosiac piece after I had painstakingly glued down all the pieces. Marina's advice rang true : " You must commit yourself, & stick down the glass piece, otherwise you can be spending the whole day & not have achieved anything". Good advice for other areas in life too, I thought. :-)

After all the glass pieces of the design were painstakingly "buttered" & stuck down with glue, the next step was the grouting. I chose a dark green grout so that it would merge my background, and have the effect of making my flower design stand out. As the workshop was only for 1 day & the aim was to finish the project to bring home, we also used a special hot air gun to help dry the grout. The best moment had to be when we used a towel to polish off the excess grout & the coloured mosiac started showing & shining through - absolutely magical & beautiful !
This is the final product - my very own stained glass mosaic trivet ! I was very pleased that the colours came together very well & my flower looked like it was bursting out of the picture....

Have been greatly inspired & now aim to do a larger project in the form of a lazy-susan....watch this space....