Secret Santa Present arrives intact.

Jess — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 07:34:25 +0000

I participated in a Secret Santa exchange with an Elite Force of “geeks” this year. When I was assigned my recipient, I found that he really liked games and loved dice and miniatures. I thought perhaps a piece of my stained glass work would be nice.

My creative juices started to flow and I thought a D20 stained glass piece would be perfect. I would have LOVED to do a 3D D20 but I don’t think I’m there technically yet. Plus there was an issue of shipping it from WA to VA and I was concerned it was going to be damaged like my little Reddit Alien was when I shipped him out this summer.

I choose a piece of Spectrum wispy purple and clear wavy glass for the background. The wispy glass was being very accommodating this year and the pattern on the glass turned out really nice.

My present arrived in one piece and was a huge success. A direct quote from the forum post was “HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE MOST AWESOMEST OF AWESOME THINGS EVER”

Seeing that made me so relieved, happy, proud and then relieved again. It arrived, he liked it, it’s not damaged and it’s in the exact place it was meant to be. Who could ask for anything more.

So without further ado, here is the piece I made for my Secret Santa exchange.

What an amazing day.

Jess — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 06:18:06 +0000

Today was the first day of Geek Girl Con and I had a booth in the Exhibitors room to display and sell my work. I had no idea what to expect, this being my very first convention and it also being the first year of Geek Girl Con itself. I must say I am overwhelmed and overjoyed with the reception my work recieved. It’s only the first day and I have already sold 4 of my pieces and garnered a lot of interest from the attendees for commissions and future orders. I plan to set up my Etsy shop in the next couple weeks to give anyone who wasn’t able to purchase one of my pieces the opportunity to still be able to. Geek Girl Con continues tomorrow and I look forward to meeting everyton

Holy cow I have an art show in less than a month!

Jess — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:07:15 +0000

I am so excited to be able to show the public my stained glass pieces at a local convention here in Seattle. I will be one of the Artists exhibiting in Artist alley at Geek Girl Con. As it stands right now I will be in booth 212. Come on down and check out my stuff. I would love to meet anyone who has been reading my blog. Can’t wait to see everyone there!

I’m an internet celebrity!

Jess — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:02:36 +0000

I was absolutely overjoyed to see that someone had discovered my Dalek stained glass and posted it on a list of 15 Geek Stained Glass Masterpieces. I was honored that they put me in a list of some really great pieces. The Dalek was one of the first piece to leave my house and be displayed in someone else’s window. It’s great to know that my work is getting appreciated and that even strangers like my stuff

I have been a busy busy bee

Jess — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:54:36 +0000

I haven’t been updating recently but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working. I have completed another Tardis to add to my collection and I am really happy with how it turned out. I also have a Bender from Futurama that I made as well. Here are some pics of the completed projects

The tardis is a bit darker than the first one I did but I still think holds true to the original. When I was making the pattern I wanted it to be “to scale” so I actually made it to the same dimensions as if one of the 5″ Tenth Doctor figurines were standing next to it the figurine would hit the window frame in about the same spot.

I decided to make the soldering on the Bender peice a bit more distressed. I soldered the whole piece and then used black patina but after applying the patina I took a patch of steel wool and tried to rub off as much of the black as possible. I didn’t want to do just the silver cuz I didn’t want it to be too shiny. I don’t picture bender as a shiny robot. I think the distressing fits his character perfectly.

Transformers Rebooted

Jess — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:41:07 +0000

I finally completed the Autobot and Decepticon pieces. As I said in my last post, the Autobot pattern was not ideal. After the foiling and soldering, the Autobot looks very similair to the original piece from a distance but the smoothness of the soldering has much improved. I’m glad I did this exercise but I think the next time I make an Autobot I will tweak the pattern a little bit to make it suck less.

The Decepticon on the other hand was a great pattern. I was concerned I was going to have the same reaction to this pattern as I did the Autobot but I was pleasantly surprised at how well it came together. Also, the soldering looks amazing and I am super proud of this piece. I am going to be sad to see it go but I know whoever buys this will display it in a place of honor.

Here are the completed pieces ready for Geek Girl Con in October.

Transformers: More than meets the Eye (Cont.)

Jess — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:59:12 +0000

I freaking HATE this pattern! When I first made this piece I was completely new to all aspects of stained glass (patterns,cutting glass, grinding etc). I made a pattern that I thought would be easy due to all the straight lines. In theory, this is still a reasonable
assumption but there are some pieces of this pattern that I wish would DIAF. The pattern itself is completely flawed in multiple ways. There are some pieces that cannot be cut traditionally and require excessive amounts of grinding. When I originally cut the pieces out; I did not take the proper care and therefore are the wrong length and width pretty regularly.

When I first decided to do this project over again I considered redoing the pattern
all together. I was afraid that would open up a whole new can of worms and just cause me to have two Autobot logos without any way of determining how I have evolved as an artist. So I decided to keep the original pattern and try and improve my technique. Now that I know what a crap pattern I was working with originally, I wish I would have done a complete redo.

I have now completed cutting all the glass and the grinding and I wish, wish, wish I could throw it all out and develop a case of selective amnesia about this whole project. I can only hope that my copper foil and soldering skills have improved and this will project will redeem itself.

Trasformers: More than meets the eye

Jess — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 06:15:18 +0000

I just got back from watching the most recent Transformers film, Transformers 3 Dark of the Moon. I enjoyed it a lot even though there were a lot of eyebrow raising moments where you had to sort of remember it’s just a movie and suspend disbelief.
Weirdly enough it got me thinking about one of my very first stained glass projects and how very flawed they were but I still have them hanging in my windows at home and I still get quite a bit of enjoyment out of them.
Here are pics of my Transformers projects from almost two years ago.

From afar they looks pretty good, but as an ever evolving artist, I see all it’s flaws. The new movie has inspired me to redo my logos once again and see what, if any, improvement can be done.
Stay Tuned.

Today’s lesson: Measure twice, cut once.

Jess — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:13:45 +0000

I was able to remove the broken glass from my Nintendo Controller piece and I thought I was going to be able to get it repaired to look just like new. This is where I made a huge error. Rather than cutting out a new pattern piece based on the new hole I just put the glass up to the hole and traced the outline.
GIGANTIC mistake! As you can see from the “before and after” shots; my new piece of glass is too short for the hole and that was the last of the glass I have in that length. My only option now would be to make two pieces with a seam in the middle or just scrap the whole thing. Also, I don’t know if the small stock I have left of this type of glass is oriented the correct way. Meaning that the glass texture is compatible with the rest of the glass in the piece (left to right vs up and down)
Oh well, lesson learned. Onto the next piece.

My Cat hates Stained Glass

Jess — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:34:07 +0000

I heard the crash from downstairs and asked my husband if I heard what I thought I just heard and he came out of the office with a frown and holding my Nintendo Controller pc. Our super hyper cat must not have liked having the controller blocking his view and swiped it off the window ledge. Somehow he only managed to break one piece of glass but it’s the largest piece above the A and B buttons. I need to figure out if I can somehow repair it or if it’s a lost cause. The Katamari Prince was beyond repair so I recut all the pieces and just need to solder it back together.