Today was fun. The bloke and I walked across the centre of Basingstoke to partake in creating artwork using stained glass, which I'd always been a little interested in. The event was held at a local craft and creative area known as Proteus Creation Space. I'd actually come across the stained glass workshop through social media via Aristology Cafe, who share the building with this creative space that holds various events, parties for children, and creative workshops. As I am working from home for at least the next two months (hopefully longer as I really do not want to commute to London again anytime soon), I may have to pop in for lunch one day.
We arrived for the 10:00 stained glass workshop, and we were taken through to the workshop area. We had a cup of tea while we were told basics about glass-cutting and how to create designs that were not too ambitious as none of us had any previous experience with this. We were then given a slide show with different professional stained glass pieces for inspiration. I already knew that I wanted to try a geometric pattern, and there were a couple nice ones in the slide show. After seeing a gorgeous stained glass design featuring beach huts in the slides, the bloke was inspired to create something similar with beach huts. There were five of us in the workshop, not including one girl who returned from a previous workshop in order to finish her piece, and we all started to sketch our designs.
After our designs were sketched, we choose the stained glass colours and patterns that we wanted to use from the panes of stained glass and buckets of bits that were leftover cuttings from previous workshops.
Green is my favourite colour, and I decided to use this with some white and transparent panes that had different patterns when I held them up to the light. One light green piece had a flower pattern engraved, and there was a similar transparent piece. Other pieces had swirls of colour or bubbles, and others were a solid colour.
After we had selected our colours, we were shown how to cut glass, and the tool is perfect for creating small curves. We were given some practice glass so that we were familiar with how hard we needed to press and how to achieve creating the curves. We were also shown some tips about how to make the glass break free once it's cut, such as turning it over and using the end of the tool as a hammer to lightly tap along the cut.
My geometric panel featured right angles, so I used a different tool to cut my pieces out. The tool that I used (pictured below) is similar to a paper cutter, but it has a small wheel like the hand-held devices do, that cut a fine groove into the glass.
The bloke quickly cut his two main pieces after his practice, and the result was perfect.
We had finished cutting our pieces when we were called to lunch. Our sandwich orders had been taken previously, and we went into the cafe to eat them. I had a tomato and mozarella panini, and the bloke had a bacon and cheese one. They were good. The cafe also catered to a couple of the others who needed Gluten-free options.
After lunch, we went back to finish off our stained glass masterpieces. I had to trim off a little off the edges on some of my pieces to align them correctly. Some of the my panels had small pieces that needed to be sanded down as they were too fine to cut. There were two machines that we could use to gently grind the glass down, which turned it into a fine powder. This is perfect for small adjustments and rounding off sharp edges. I didn't photograph the machines, but you can see below that a few pieces needed some TLC (tender loving care)!
Tea and cake soon arrived for us. Time was flying! The bloke had lemon drizzle cake, and I had carrot cake.
I numbered my panes of glass so that I could remember the order that they were in and also the side and orientation that I wanted to use. That carrot cake was so good too.
We were shown the next step in the process, which was creating the frames to hold our work in place while we put lead in between the panels of glass. We slotted together a right-angled wooden frame and nailed it into place with our sketch, measuring two millimeters from the frame in our design. Our first two lead frame sections would sit flush against the wooden frame to hold it in place.
After the frame and two large sections of lead were in place flush against the frame, the process was to cut the pieces of lead down to the size required and slotting the glass panes in between. Sometimes the panes of glass wanted to slide out and did not want to align flush with the lead, so I had to use pins to keep them in place.
The final frame was put together, and wax was used to mark the joins to the other pieces of lead so that the soldering iron could weld metal to hold the pieces together in place.
We were shown how to use the soldering iron and welded our joins together. Both sides needed to be done.
After one side was soldered, we could hold it up to the window and see the results that we had been dying to see with our nearly-finished creation.
After soldering both sides of the artwork, we used a tool to push down on the lead so that the panes of glass would be held into place without moving around too much. I wished that some of my lead pieces were a little straighter, but other than that, I was happy with my piece. Everyone was happy with what they had created.
Below is my finished piece up close. By the time that we arrived home, it was dark outside, so I could not hold it up to the window to take a photograph and I didn't get a photograph of it held up to the window at the workshop. I like the photograph below because you can see the patterns in the glass and the colours.
We had fun, and I would recommend the stained glass workshop to anyone who is looking to take a day to be creative and work on something new. Have you ever made anything with stained glass or been in interested in learning how to do it? For more information about the workshop that I took, visit the cafe's Facebook website at https://www.facebook.com/aristology.cafe
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