Glass lessons

Well, my first piece is fully assembled--now it just has to be patina'ed. I'll put up a picture of it; it is a parrot, and I am going to give it to my friend Lisa for her aviary.

The parrot is a leaded piece, and I just began my first copper piece (a goldfish) tonight. I found some nice cloudy blue for currents in the water, and green with texture for the water plants. I'll photograph it after it is assembled; I'm not yet ready to document the whole process, because I'm still fairly clumsy at it--not a role model so much as an object lesson at this point. But the process is going more smoothly this time, and not only because it is a much smaller piece, but also because of some of the things I learned the first time around.

I am getting more precise with my scoring, and the pieces are much more accurate--I am not going to have to make up so much on the grinding this time. That's the biggest thing I took away from this first piece--to do the grinding right. I ended up regrinding every single piece, because I rushed through the grinding. I was behind from missing a class, so I tried to make up the time on grinding, but it turns out that "close enough" is basically useless--the pieces need to fit cleanly together.

Still, after the regrinding, it was thrilling to see how well the pieces fit, and to see the design emerge piece by piece. I'm getting that sooner with the goldfish this time, because my scoring is getting better.