Cloud Nine Creations

Yesterday was my last full day in Mexico Beach, and I spent it at a little shop called Cloud Nine Creations in a beginner's stained glass art class. If you ever get the chance, yes, take one of her classes. Lisa is a fantastic teacher, very patient with the slow clumsy students in class. I won't call any of those students out by name, but I was the ONLY student in class.

When you walk in to Lisa's shop, the chances are very good that you will be greeted by Emmy, the sweetest little kitty with the quietest little meow you'll ever hear. She lives at the shop, and she'll accept petting from anybody. In fact, she'll kinda demand it.

When you take a class with Lisa, you start by learning to score & cut glass. Lisa makes it look so easy, and she says I did well on that part. That tool in front does the scoring, and it takes a single smooth forward pass only on the glass, no sawing and no going over it twice. Score and then, depending on the type of line you've scored, break with one of two different pliers.

I did reasonably well with the practice straight lines, so it was time to pick my pattern, the item I wanted to make. What would it be, what would it be? Go for something simple, I told myself, and then I flipped a page & saw this guy......welp, simple just went out the window. Let's do a whale, with curves and little pieces to be cut out!

I traced & cut out the biggest section with the hardes cut on the cheap practice glass first. Okay, it wasn't horrible & I wasn't embarrassed by the result. Let's do it!

The next step was to pick out the glass I wanted to use. As I learned, there are several things to consider when picking out glass--color, of course, but also direction of the pattern in the glass and size so you'll have enough for all pieces. The color part alone is enough to sideline me; as I told Lisa, it took me MONTHS to settle on what shade of white to paint my kitchen--no joke! I did well with this though and fairly quickly picked out three colors.

The next step is to trace your pattern onto the glass. Everything is on a light table at this point, so it should be a fairly simple task. Again though, there are things to consider--correct positioning because you want curves near an edge but you also want the pattern of the glass going the right way. Add to that the fact that not only can I not draw, I kinda stink at tracing too. I think I had to call Lisa over three times to ask questions & get clarifications on tracing my pattern.

Cutting the real glass was the next step, so I thought it would be a good point to take an Emmy break. She was very happy for the attention. Here's a few photos from that break.

Isn't she fabulous?

Okay, on to cutting. Long story short, I did it! There's a correct way to hold the scoring tool and a correct way to score. It takes some practice, and the big pieces are easier than the little pieces. I only broke and had to re-trace one piece, and that was the skinny white piece in the photo below.

After cutting comes the grinding of the edges, and I found this part to be relaxing. Basically, you're smoothing the edges and shaping the pieces to better fit together.

After the grinding came my least favorite step of all....foiling. Tedious. Ugh. You apply this foil tape evenly around all the pieces--"evenly" being the operative word. If you don't apply it evenly, you redo. After it's applied, you crimp, iron, and some other word I can't remember that basically means make sure the tape adheres tightly all around every piece. Not my favorite step but a necessary one.

Then you pin in place and use a soldering iron to "glue" together the pieces. All that pinning to add solder in two spots. But it HAS to stay in place & not move for this step. Once the solder was added in those two spots, all the pins came out.

And I was ready to solder the whole piece. I looked forward to this step throughout the whole process for some reason. And let me tell you, I really sucked at it. I couldn't see the solder coming off the iron, I couldn't get the hang of how to hold the iron or how to make a smooth not-flat line or how much solder to add. But I still liked this part, and I'm very interested to try this part again. I think I could & would get the hang of it with practice.

So yeah, Lisa neatened up the solder on my piece for me. Thank you, Lisa.

She added the eye and a hook for hanging, and then it was time for me to wash & polish my piece.

I love him! It was fun learning, and I plan on taking the beginner class again next time I'm down. Two thumbs up--way up--for Lisa.

After class, I hurried to the beach and caught the aftermath of the sunset. (Yes, it was that late--did I mention Lisa had some real slow, clumsy students in class?) The sunset was such a beauty!