Bob the fish has arrived and is now happily settled to the side of my desk (perfect dark corner for him and I get to see him without loosing any precious desk space). When he first arrived he didn’t have anything to play with in his tank so as well as getting a filter to keep the water clean I thought it only fair that he should have his own castle too:
I think he likes it!
(excuse the blurryness – fish photography not really my forte but I was pleased I captured Bob blowing a kiss)
Despite coming down with something in the middle of last week (pesky cold weather) I managed to make it to stained glass class & finish the soldering on the mermaid panel. This is the first time I’ve used someone else’s design (its from Maidens, Myths and Mermaids by Delia Sheppard) & all the small pieces drove me a bit crazy, but at least now it is really nearly done. I’ve just got to cement (or the more likely option – putty) the gaps between the lead and the glass next week and give it a final polish with grate polish.
The final fish mentioned in the title is in a new design I’ve been trying to work out (buying and keeping an up to date sketchbook was definitely one of my better resolutions!). I’ve got the design just about right so I started looking for possible glass. My design depicts 3 koi carp and I wanted them to be all different colours. The first bit of glass I found was this spectacular orange which will definitely be one fish
Just gorgeous, but its the second fish that’s causing problems, I wanted it to be this:
as it reminds me of those ghost carp you see. Alas it looks like its a remnant and so far I don’t seem to be able to find anything similar (the thing that I thought made it perfect for fish was that the actual glass seems to have ‘scales’ within it). I’m not giving up quite yet & will keep hunting. Which gives me a tough choice as to what colour the third fish will be (???). I wondered if I could get some more of the frosted white I’ve got in store for my moth and perhaps do black painted markings onto the white or maybe (more tempting option at the moment) if I should make this my first etching piece? (I’ve wanted to add etching to my glass skills for a while) which would let me do red on white or orange on white? (you need flashed glass for this & I seem to remember the excellent Reading glass had some that would be just the ticket…). I think it’s going to need to be something quite bright as I’ve got another deep & lovely blue for the background:
Anyway lots of time to think as this is definitely not on my list of pieces for the artweeks show (& if its got etching in I’ll definitely have to take my time) but it’s certainly keeping my mind occupied at the moment!
