Rainbow Stained Glass

Inspiration comes from the darndest places, sometimes. I was looking at a page of rainbow, equality, and tolerance bumper stickers recently, when one of them really caught my eye. Decided to use it as a starting point to design a rainbow stained glass piece, using the rainbow to be the equality bars in the piece. That, in turn, led to an alternate rainbow stained glass piece also for equality, but in reverse, with the rainbow colors surrounding two clear glass bars to represent equality.

Rainbow equality stained glassI did a little tweaking on the first pattern. My initial effort was a little too small to be practical, and didn’t look as balanced as I had hoped it could be. Things look a lot different on paper than when they are rendered in glass! I have a tendency to start small and then wind up having to make it bigger. Same thing happened when I made my pattern for the rainbow peace sign, also inspired by something similar I saw on line. I am happy with the second run on this pattern, with borders of equal width, also matching the clear bar in the center. I went with clear glass rather than any color, including white, because I really wanted the rainbow colors to stand on their own. I did use a textured clear glass to give it a touch more depth. The final piece measures 5″ by 7″. Because the red pieces on the ends get sort of short shrift in real estate compared to the others, future constructions of this could easily have a ‘color shift’, where red is one of the main stripes and some other color winds up a little smaller in the shifting of the rainbow.

Rainbow equality stained glassAfter getting some feedback on the first test piece (not the one pictured above), there was a suggestion to reverse the equality effect, so that led to this second pattern, which I call reverse equality (I know, not terribly clever, but it’s descriptive). I did this one two very slightly different ways. In one, the right and left full length pieces are all one piece. In the other, I broke those up in to three. Was a little unsure about stability the first way, and I also sort of liked how the break lines looked on paper in the second one. I am satisfied with both and would make both again. I think I like the one with the end pieces cut in three slightly better than the other, but that’s definitely just a personal preference more than anything else. Measuring 5 1/4″ by 6 1/4″, both versions are solid and stable.

 

Equality rainbow stained glassSo, what do you think?

6 Responses

  1. Can I buy the pattern from you? I love it and would like to make my own. Awesome work!!! My wife and I are newbies to stained glass…

    1. hi, and thanks so much for your interest! I am willing to share the pattern with you with the sole request that you not make it for sale. Drop me a note at amy (at) singingwhale (dot) net and we can talk further. Have a good day!

Leave a Reply