Almost there

I'm back!  Thank you all for the good wishes on my cold.  I'm happy to say the worst is definitely over and I'm almost back to what constitutes normal for me.  

I hope everyone held on through the violent weather of the last few days.  We were so lucky to only have snow; my heart goes out to those who have lost so much in the recent tornadoes and severe weather.

We're still hard at work on the Laburnum shade in the stained glass studio down in the basement.  This pattern is 1,986 pieces of teeny, tiny glass.   I tried to mix up the colors of the laburnum clusters a little to suggest shadows and depth, but I'm not sure I've got it right.  When it comes to color on these shades, I'm the only one to blame since the color scheme is my sole domain and responsibility.  Carl and Joel both say they're color-blind.  I might be, too, for all I know.  Oh, well, fake it til you make it, right? 

Unlit Laburnum on plexiglass waiting to see if it looks OK.

We're all done cutting and grinding and foiling each piece.  Now it comes down to whether the shading is right or not.  This is the worst part for me; I second-guess myself constantly.  For awhile this afternoon I was ready to dump one entire repeat (660 pieces) because I wasn't sure it was working.  Now I've calmed down a bit after Carl and I moved some darker and lighter flower clusters here and there in the design.  There's still some recutting to do, but I think we're getting closer to putting it on the mold.

 So much depends on the placement of light bulbs and the color temperature of the light source.  Daylight bulbs will light up one spectrum of the glass, and cool white yet another. 

 Here's just a bunch of random pictures of the shade, here and there while holding a lightbulb under the piece of plexiglass the pattern is mounted on.

 I'm not sure if the darker clusters are TOO dark or not.

The background glass is royal blue fading out to purples.  I hope it shows up well when the shade is soldered.

I emailed these pictures to Joel in a panic, I wanted to know what he thought about the difference in the shading.  He thought it looked good enough to go, his exact words were, "Get it on the form and let's start soldering."

One thing I've learned since we started making stained glass lamps is this, They Always Look Different Off the Form.  The problem with that fact is once they're off the form, they are soldered together.  Oh, you can still change pieces out if you really have a problem with the way they look, but it's a whole lot more work, involving breaking the glass and a sweat all at the same time.  Best case scenario is to do it right the first time before the glass is put on the form.

I'm off to obsess over this pattern some more.  This is the only shade we've worked on this winter, and we're looking forward to seeing it finished.

Stay tuned.......one of these days (hopefully) I'll be posting pictures of the completed project.