HONORING AND GROUNDING Life Book 2013...Let Your Light Shine Through

In this week's Life Book class I learned how to do a stained glass technique  

The first thing was to paint pieces of deli paper on both sides using a gloss gesso.

After they were good and dry and using Golden brand  translucent paint in a tube, I painted them on one side. Golden paints have a symbol on the front of the tube or jar showing how good the paint will cover black. That is the way you know if it is translucent or opaque.When I painted the colors on I dripped water on some, sprayed some with a mist and picked the paper up  and let it run a bit...some I put it on thicker and  left some thin...Main idea is to get varied colors and intensities. You can mix it with other colors to get a graduation from one color to the other..Mainly I just had fun with the colors I had.

After the paper dried I started cutting it up into parts (note to self..turn the fan down low) following the traced pattern of the quilt I used for inspiration and then gluing it down.  Before I started gluing I drew a pattern lightly on my watercolor paper so I knew where the colors went. I didn't use the pattern the teacher offered but found this small quilt in one in one of my books by Kumiko Sudo titled Kake-Jiku.

 Finally I have all the parts glued on. That was the hardest part of the whole thing.Now to get on with the details.

 I looked online at many stained glass pieces and learned how the leading looks when there is a large expanse of glass all one type. I used a dark charcoal grey paint to represent the leading and added the extra lines through the blue area  which  breaks the large area up and helps cover places where I had to put the blue in using smaller pieces 

After getting all the leading in I decided it needed a wider border then just the leading so added a brown paint then applied a gold luminaire paint over that.  So far I think it is looking pretty good.

This is where I am trying out the petals of the cloth chrysanthemum to make sure it all fits the way I want it . They did so I glued them in place.  I sat a gold button in the center for the photograph but it will be replaced.

For the center I took a large brass button off an old coat from the 60's and covered it with fabric and glued it down to the center of the chrysanthemum. Hurray for glue  There are 40 petals on this flower and each one is folded from a 2 inch square folded in half so instead of sewing as instructed I used glue to hold everything in it's place. It only takes a tiny touch of glue to hold fabric. If I had sewed them all I would not be finished for a week. One more final touch and it is finished.

Ta da!

...I am very pleased with the end result...