Stained Glass Hearts

After a wonderfully busy holiday season, my mind started to turn towards thinking about what next to add to my catalog to start off 2015. With Valentine’s Day, on the near horizon, I started contemplating stained glass hearts and roses.

Roses may still yet come once I get some photos from which I can play with making patterns. Hearts, on the other hand, were easy to get started right on my computer. First, I spent a full day looking at other stained glass hearts on the internet to see how other people were rendering them. My goal is always to be mindful of other people’s work so that I can create something that is more my own, unique and different from other work out there.

Stained glass heart in a patchwork pattern, made with cool colorsAnd because I am not one to do a simple ‘one pattern, one sample’ approach, by the time I was finished playing around with patterns and ideas, I had 5 patterns to try out (and a couple more which are still simmering…). Then I went to pull out some glass to make samples, and those 5 patterns turned into 9 samples. This also, with some of the patterns, resulted in an earworm with a line from a song by one of my favorite musicians:

…’patchwork like pieces of a heart…’
Patty Larkin, “The Thread of Life”

In an effort to try to be a little bit different and diverse in the offering, I made 3 different patchwork patterns. Two are variations on each other, differing in number of pieces. The smaller number of pieces lends itself to a sort of argyle feel, especially in looking at one of the samples I did, using purple artique and olive green streaky glass. The other two samples in that pattern are with rainbow colors, one randomly placed and one a bit more orderly. Then the more involved patchwork piece came about, offering a lot of potential for random color placement. I did a cool colors sampler, and one in various textures of clear glass. The clear glass piece has garnered a lot of interest, so I expect to be stocking up on more textured glass so I can make a variety of stained glass hearts with the clear textures, randomly arranged so that each finished piece is different. The third patchwork piece is a bit more avant garde. I had a ball planning the colors and layouts of the first sample, but it remains to be seen how popular that one will be with buyers. I may make a couple more samples with different colors and arrangements to see how else it can look.

love-artdecoheart1For the other patterns, I came up with two variations of what I call an inlay heart. After a Facebook post in which I wondered aloud if people would be interested in hearts in glass, several people commented that I should incorporate the wire words that I started to use on the guitars and banjos. So I designed the heart within a heart for one, and another heart shape with a larger open space in its middle, using straight lines to create a pattern within the piece. For the inlay heart, I am going to tweak the pattern to make the outer heart a bit bigger and more full, but I am otherwise pleased with how it turned out. For the heart using straight lines to give it its look, I first went for a cherry red waterglass outer edge, clear glue chip glass for accent, and white for the center. It can certainly be done in just about any color variation depending on what someone wants in their own window.

I am happy with how all of the samples turned out, but also know that a couple of the patterns are likely to be more popular than the rest. Judging by the response on my Facebook glass page, the early ‘leaders’ are the inlay heart-within-a-heart which can host a wire word in the center, and the 15 piece patchwork heart.

Check out the gallery of the first finished stained glass hearts. as I do more variations, I will add photos to it. To order or inquire about any pieces, just contact me.  Thank you!

beloved-inlayheart1 rainbow-patchworkheart1 Blue stained glass heart with clear glass inlaid patchwork heart