What a fabulous few days!

This week has been a busy one, I’ve been waiting patiently to go on a four day stained glass course with the wonderful Nicola Hopwood. Her commissions are to be found in so many church windows and I first saw her work by chance at Goodrich Castle where I was awe struck at the window in the castle. That lead me to write her name down and to find out more.

I was rather excited to find out that she offered courses and you designed your own work. Other courses I had been on had design templates for you to work from and I just wanted to do more.

I first was shown how to set the paper up to do my Cartoon and then to lay the tracing paper over and draw over the top with a 2mm pen. This would the denote the heart of the lead came so my cut lines would be correct .

After cutting, I tried my first go at painting on the glass with my design. To do this I had drawn on a piece of paper to get the sizing and then I went for it. This was the part I especially wanted to have a go at. I don’t have a kiln (yet) and it’s something that I have wanted to add to my work for a long time. Next was leading up the panel and it all started to take shape,

Once I had soldered up the panel, the next job was to cement it up and clean it down. It needs a few days to harden so the next parts I did at home. After giving it a good clean and buff up I made a frame and painted it up in Farrow and Ball French Grey. The overall result excelled all my expectations. I won’t be selling this panel, but I will probably make some more in time.