Stained Glass Collage

"Stained Glass Collage" with sea glass

For those who follow my blog, you know that I'm obsessed with sea glass.  What you might not know is that I've always been fascinated with stained glass as well.  

Last week, I arranged a "Girls Night Out" with a group of my buddies and we spent a really fun evening at Periwinkle Glassworks making stained glass collages.  I was able to incorporate a few pieces of my own sea glass into my creation so it has personal meaning to me.  The three pieces are the brown "Vita" piece in the upper right corner, the deep green bottle top in the lower left and the ridged white piece in the lower right.

The process was really interesting.  We spent about an hour arranging scraps of colored glass until we were satisfied with our overall design.  

The second step is to wrap each piece with copper foil.  This is quite time consuming and you need to burnish the foil to make sure it is smooth and adheres well to the glass.  You can see my piece in progress in the lower right corner. 

The next step is a quick brush of a liquid called "flux" that helps the solder stick to the copper foil.  And finally, we used a hot solder iron to melt solder and fuse all the pieces together.  I left my solder quite bumpy and chunky as I liked the irregular effect and thought it added to the charm of my piece.

I now have a huge appreciation for stained glass artists!  Although fun, it was quite tedious and there is a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge required.  I definitely want to go again and am already thinking about what to do for my next creation!