Stained Glass Stuff
911 Richmond Road K2A 0G8 Ottawa, ON, Canada

Two new pieces catching some rays from a rare appearance by the Sun in our eastern front window. Kelsie made up this Lotus Flower round panel, as a new Beginner pattern option. We are still getting to efforting to reschedule all of our educational sessions from January and February that had to be paused for reasons, please bear with us. The diamond panel is the coloured Butterfly bevel cluster set on a single sheet of Nouveau. Extra lines were added to the back of the butterfly to symbolize the random motion of its flight. Our bandsaw was activated to notch out that little pointy space for the head of the butterfly in the front piece of Nouveau.

And for his next magic trick, Kevin was asked to make a five inch circle from a half foot sheet of Spectrum 339.6 dark blue wispy art glass. He began with positioning his trusty Silberschnitt circle cutter in the middle of the glass, and locked it down with the suction cup base. Then he scored the glass in a counter-clockwise direction, all the way around, but no further. The cutter was popped off, the glass flipped over and he pressed down on the score line until it ran all the way around. You can hear a faint "snic" when the run score line meets itself and completes the break. The glass was flipped over, the excess half of the sheet removed, then four short break lines added. One more flip to press on those scored lines, and Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, one five inch circle!

Neither rain nor sleet nor hail nor snow shall keep Heather from her rounds at the end of each day, getting two shopping carts of boxes to our local postal outlet, so that stained glass artists all across North America may continue being creative in our favourite pastime! And all that with only one arm! Well, maybe someone else with two arms was helping out?

We are supposed to be reopening today, but it seems Mother Nature has other plans, as a thick blanket of snow has dropped across Ottawa. We will be open of course, but may be best to come see us tomorrow? In the meantime, here is the last collection of interesting art glass from our last shipment, all from Wissmach in West Virginia. O702M Blue & Green Wispy Mystic, O25 Red & Orange Opal O2/Iridescent Yellow Wispy Iridescent, 118D Blue and White Opal, O437 Blue Purple and White Opal, and O710M Burgundy and Blue Wispy Mystic are all numerically sorted in their colour bin. See you this week!

As today is Family Day here in Ontario, we are not in the studio. We shall return tomorrow, when we will once again be allowed to open our doors and welcome you inside. No more freezing on the curb! We have made a few changes inside during this latest Lockdown Part 3.14. All of our Oceanside Artisan Gem stained glass sheets have been sorted for ease in finding just what you want. We have moved some things around in The Fusing Room, for a more efficient layout and to make room... for even more exciting new products coming soon. All of our regular sheet glass selection have been organized in each colour bin numerically to make it easy to find a glass by code number. Our entire sample wall has been inspected to remove any discontinued shades and add in new stained glass colours. Look closely at the Kokomo Mustang crates, they have special signs on them. And finally, we have two large Oceanside wooden crates looking for a new home next week. Please let us know if you can come and take one or both of them! See you tomorrow! See more

When you cannot go to the glass, the glass will come to you. As in Kevin carried these amazing full sheets of Youghiogheny Stipple art glass outside and held them up in front of the sun for our customer to get a good look at. Most of the ones he held up went right into the trunk of their vehicle. But there are still a few left, shown in the other pictures. All listed and up on our website. Beginning this Tuesday we will be allowed to open our doors and let everyone in to look at all of the beautiful art glass in person!

Heather is busy loading up two half kiln shelves with dozens of snowflakes to fulfill a request. She is using a mix of Oceanside 100ICE Clear and 634.52SF Blackberrry & Cream Opal Art. They will be contour fused together. And then when one of our big bathtub kilns is freed up, she will fire another dozen of her super duper popular Birch Tree Kits!

One of our long time regulars in Heather's Beyond Beginner session made up this lovely landscape stained glass panel. She wanted to send it to her son, living outside of Canada. She asked if we could make a strong sturdy case for it so it would survive the trip. Kevin loves a good challenge that lets him get out saws and drills! He did some math and calculations to come up with measurements and dimensions for foam sheet, styrofoam, plywood and lumber. He did all this late last week while the temperature outside was still above zero, as he does not like cold. He added a small compartment for chain, and screwed it all together tightly.

We want You to follow along while this repair was done to this stained glass panel we had made years ago! One panel of the inner Clear textured background glass was cracked. The glass had been discontinued, and we could not find anyone else who had some. So we had our client pick a new texture. They went with Floreal, a lovely choice! Kevin knocked out all four background pieces, and melted away the excess foil and solder. Most of the foil pulled away in the process so he had to replace it first. Then a rectangle of Floreal was cut, ground and test fitted in the opening. Once it fit perfectly, the beveled centerpiece was aligned, and cut. A little more grinding, foiling and soldering and it was as good as new! Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!

A Canadian "Sorry"! for taking so long, but we now have a limited run of much asked for Fused Birch Tree kits. Heather made up five to start. They are made with @oceansideglasstile glass, so can be used in either stained or fused glass projects. Our Moose on the Loose panel to the right shows how they look. Each kit has ten strips, each is twelve inches long, and the widths vary.

To give some scale to the very long tall narrow sidelight we are commissioned to fabricate, Heather is standing in front of it, and reaching up as far as she can. She is about 5' 3". Still a long way to go! We should have this ready to install next week. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this stained glass adventure!

Kevin went to do a repair in a local home recently. It was supposed to be a simple task, replace two pieces in an old interior lead came panel. However, he discovered that there was a sheet of tempered glass on one side, and a rebar went across the other side. So he had to pry off the heavy wooden trim on three sides, without damaging any of it, to be able to remove the tempered glass sheet. Once it was out of the way, he knocked out the old glass in the larger diamond. Then ...carefully folded the top of the H lead case back so a new piece of Restova glass could be cut out and ground to fit in his impromptu work station. The lead was folded back, the second piece was knocked out and another new piece of glass fit in. Both then had putty applied to fill the gap between the glass and lead, on both sides. The excess putty was removed and glass cleaned. The tempered glass was put back and the wooden trim nailed back. The site supervisor approved the work! Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy. See more

We received a lovely shout out from a long distance glass friend on Instagram @glassbybutler, who creates large stained glass works of art, in Italy. She needed some good quality EDCO copper foil to allow her to continue work on her giant Dragonfly Wings! She asked us to mail her some, and some hard to find Morton accessories. No problem, our Shipping Department had become very skilled in 2020, sending out dozens of parcels weekly. Heather even included a short note in Italian to her, as Heather picked up the language while living in Florence. Grazie!

Free this Sunday? We just had two seats suddenly open up with Kelsie, for becoming educated on how to fabricate a three dimensional Christmas Tree! Stained glass experience is required. See you there, then!

This abstract colourful panel came to us needing to be wider by ten inches and longer by three inches, and the bottom right corner was damaged. To try to make the extension look seamless, Kevin cut into most of the pieces on the left side to break up the straight line. This piece was made in the 1980s, so will be a challenge to find and use glass that looks vintage.

Duncan made up this simple classic lead came panel for a local client's home to give a touch of privacy for a window on their stairs. They picked out Oceanside Glasstile 100W-F Clear Waterglass with a narrow inner band of Wissmach 01 Double Rolled, and OGT 543.2A-F Grape Artique for the diamonds in the middle. They asked for a picture so we sent them this. Their reply was that the purple was a tad dark. Could it be replaced with a lighter colour? Of course! Just a bit of minor surgery. Stay tuned for how this ends!

Just in the Nick of time for the upcoming holiday season, Kelsie did a rare Sunday educational session for Holiday Ornaments! Four new friends created fun Christmas themed shapes out of Oceanside Compatible glass that will be fired today in our Evenheat kilns. All of our education events are limited to four humans, a nice safe number that gives plenty of space for everyone to create in. With a cap of four, that is an easier number to get together and we can do a private session in just about any technique for you!

What's In The Box(es)?! Twelve Precision 2000 bandsaws arrived, and just need some modifications and then an inspection to become compliant with all of our Canadian electrical standards. This work and inspection hopefully will be completed this week, enabling them to be able to go out the front door into their forever homes, creating complex stained glass shapes!

Four more citizens from the Ottawa region picked up the knowledge and skills yesterday to fabricate stained glass panels. Kelsie and Heather were successful in transferring those abilities to them, so they may continue on in life as stained glass artists, bringing much needed colour to this little corner of the world.

Bulk Frit Update: Three colours of frit in these lovely forty pound buckets are gone, F3-402 Desert Sky, F2-7555 Fern Green & White and F3-774IR Ming Green Iridescent. There are only about two pounds left of F1-6120 Grenadine Red & Clear and F3-2382 Alpine Blue Opal. A few more are down to about five pounds or so left, F3-2705 Orange Opal & White, F1-7550 Fern Green & Clear, and F1-2382 Alpine Blue Opal. All are still only a Loonie an ounce!

Two creations Heather made up last week. Love is Love was made using a bas relief technique, fusing on top of 1/8" fiber paper. All Oceanside Compatible glass was chosen. With the left over pieces of colourful glass she then made a companion piece in the Tiffany method, copper foil wrapped and soldered together.

Heather wanted to make a few subtle changes to the front area of the studio. So everything behind the front desk was brought out to make the desk lighter so it could be easily move out. A lot of stuff was tossed, or put elsewhere, or repurposed. This all started with our realization that our lovely new POS system was a bit of a bottleneck, and that we should really have two of them set up. Just part of our constant evolution to improve your experience when here!

The panel we referred to as the Swoopy commission has been finished. This was the one we had to make a rubbing of recently as it was so damaged. We saved the sixteen little circles but then used fresh new float glass for the rest. Keeping it square while framing it was a challenge as it was quite wide. We used all of our large squares and some clamps.

Here is a short video of Kevin doing the final step in coldworking twenty one cut down Rose wine bottles which are now tumblers. He is using a 325g resin diamond coated cone, from @hisglassworks, mounted in the middle of his twenty four inch @covington.engineering lap wheel, to smooth out tiny chips on the inside edge of the tumblers. Then, after finishing the last one, he gets to enjoy a cold tasty beverage!

Heather and Tamara spent yesterday organizing the hundreds of pressed glass jewels that came in recently. Now they are all in different bins, sorted by design and iridescent, a much more efficient way of displaying them!

You may remember this bespoke stained glass panel we had fabricated for a client to use as a privacy screen. They finally got it installed and graciously sent us this picture of it place. Their front entrance is just below on the other side of the wall. We love to see how our creations look in our client's homes.

Starting work on this panel, the one we did the video of rubbing it to save the design, we needed some very specific tools to be able to cut it all out of just one piece of glass. The Morton M-80 allows long deep score lines to to be run. This is harder to do, but then saves more time and makes the fit perfect. Our bandsaw also got a workout, cutting out all the small indents around the only saved glass from the original severely damaged panel, the sixteen tiny white, and amber, circles.

Which of these do you like the most? We have been playing around with mixing and matching our Colour de Verre Glass Molds, putting smaller pieces on top of all of the cast glass box molds. So much fun to do! A potential future warm glass educational session?

Our Install Squad put in this classic 438 transom yesterday. Before is above, After is below image. The homeowners were very pleased with it. We asked for a picture of it backlit in the evening.

A classic design, Desert Sunrise, made up for a client. However they wanted to hang it on the wall, not in a window. So instead of using Handy Hangers, Kevin soldered a length of 14g pre tinned wire to the zinc came frame on the backside. Now it can be hung on the wall without any visible means of support.

Kevin does occasionally get out of the studio for a little fun. Putting for, well, he doesn't keep score when playing. But check out his fabulous putter. A custom made cast glass head made by world famous warm glass artist Michael Dupille of Seattle makes sure he at least putts with style!