Contemporary Stained Glass Wedding Bouquet

A dream project that I finished just before Christmas; a contemporary stained glass panel depicting the bride's wedding bouquet, which was commissioned as a gift by her lovely mum.

The wedding bouquet was made by Pyrus Flowers, which is run by creative duo Natalya Ayers and Fiona Inglis, who seek out unusual, seasonal Scottish blooms, often foraged from the wild. I could while away a good few hours scrolling through their Instagram feed.

In this bouquet, tucked amongst the peachy, creamy delicate dahlias, were sprigs of wild blackberry, hawthorn, hazel and scabious, all tied together with bright, trailing ribbons in bohemian shades of ruby, turquoise, gold and plum. In order to allow the richness of the colours of the flowers and ribbons to really stand out, I used a dark inky-blue glass for the background. For the bouquet itself I included some handmade, recycled glass. The date of the wedding is painted on the central gold ribbon tied around the stems of the bouquet.

The last image is of the beautiful bride Polly, holding her bouquet, alongside her father.

Such a wonderful way to commemorate the day and preserve the bouquet forever.

(If you would be interested in commissioning something similar for yourself or as a gift, drop me a line via the contact page on my website.)

Little Colourful Shapes

I did something I have been meaning to do for ages.  I collected all the little pieces of left-over glass I have piled up in ice-cream tubs around my workshop, photographed them, weighed them out into 500g batches, put them in plastic tubs and listed them on Etsy.  What a satisfying job to do!

Although these are too small for me to use, they are ideal for mosaic making, small copperfoil pieces or even melting into ceramic pieces - did you see what Lisa Stevens made with some that I sent her?

Most of the glass in these tubs is Polish Handmade glass.  You can read all about how it's made here.

Catkins

Just been driving through the countryside.

Am pleased to report the sighting of Catkins.

I love everything about catkins:

The way they dangle in the breeze, their colour,

their sense of timing, but mostly, their name.

A couple of years ago I thrifted some pretty

vintage Pyrex plates which I used to celebrate my

love of the aforementioned. I have been scouring the

local junk shops for more since then, but to no avail.

If you see any on your travels, will you let me know?

Spring Girl

This seems to have taken forever to finish. I don't know why. Perhaps I should have chosen a less labour-intensive medium in which to work. Regardless, I am so pleased with the glass colours and textures together - most Springsome indeed. And I'd like a cute blouse like that too.

Made from a combination of recycled kiln-flattened bottles, vintage and scrap glass (well, glass left over from bigger projects that is just too lovely to throw away, but too small to be of much use!), this panel will be exhibited in Camden as part of the Folksy/Sue Ryder competition winners show. I don't have a firm date yet, but it's looking likely to be April. I'll have some smaller items available for sale as well.

Do NOT adjust your eyeballs.

The following images will look horribly blurry. Blogger does not like red, or orange, or pink. Happily, Folksy does, so you can view these pictures of the first batch of Valentine's offerings (without feeling like you've had one sweet sherry too many) over there.




It was nice to use up the last remaining bits of kiln-flattened orange glass left over from the Folksy Upcycled competition (I used it for the mittens and bobble hat) - alas the pictures don't do it justice...it's like Lucozade in glass form! It makes you feel full of health and vitality just looking at it!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Christmas.

Yes, you too can now have that song on repeat in your head. God knows it's been swimming round mine for the last week since they put the lights up in town. But I love all the pre-Chrimbo razzamatazz. We spent about 2 hours assembling Playmobil advent calendars last night. Mmmmm...small woodland creatures, fir trees and a cute little Santa with real gripping action...funtastic.

And I'm jumping on the bandwagon too (I really should just get an Oyster Card I get on it so often...) and have put a few Christmas items in the shop.

There's a bit of a Russian Folk theme, with fir trees inspired by St. Basil's Cathedral and a Matryoshka nativity set:
*UPDATE* Sorry, the Russian dolls have now sold. I can make more to order though - contact me for details.



Which do you prefer - au naturel or red and blue? Not sure which way I'm swinging at the moment.

In other news, I was very pleased to receive the new batch of postcards I ordered in this design

...so any purchases from the shop will get a few of those included in the parcel.

Lucky

I've had some great finds from the charity shops this week...

These! Just look at them! They are making me so ridiculously happy sat on my window sill.



...this glass which is nice enough - actually it looks pretty amazing in the pictures doesn't it - but I'm planning to flatten it in the kiln (fingers crossed - these things don't always go to plan) for future use.



And this oh-so-sweet book (I think it's French originally) about a long-distance friendship between a girl and a boy, which teaches the seasons, months and days of the week along the way.



Not only that, I received my parcel from the She Draws Tea Swap...check it out - I was partnered up with an utterly wonderful girl from Baltimore who works in a tea-store! She sent me about 5 or 6 amazing kinds of tea all beautifully packaged. I felt a bit bad about the rather pedestrian offerings I sent her!

Also this week I've been busy making some Christmassy things for the shop...I'll show you when they're finished.

We go to the playground in the wintertime.

That's a line from an old Suzanne Vega song (Freezetag) which I have always loved (and recently rediscovered thanks to finding her first album on cassette in a charidee shop recently). It's also the inspiration for my Folksy Upcycled Christmas competition entry which is being run to raise money for the Sue Ryder Care Charity. All the entries will be put in an auction to run from 7th - 13th December and all proceeds will go to this worthy cause. I'll post a link to the auction nearer the date.



Made using entirely recycled and vintage glasses, the design has echoes of 1970s children's book illustrations, and a rather large nod towards these playing cards which I blogged about before.


Have a look at it over at Folksy to find out more about how I made it.

[Cue grovelly last line of post...] If you're a Folksy member, I'd love it if you favourited it!

On my bench on Tuesday...

(ok, so I'm only 4 days behind myself now) ...was a little package with a cow panel in it to be posted to Scotland (pictures of that anon); a package with some teabags and a little Hama bead coaster to be posted to The States as part of this and the flattened glass that came out of the kiln, looking mighty fine.

Folksy Upcycled Christmas

Is it me, or has time speeded up since we turned the corner of September? No sooner have I got used to it being one month, than the next one is already half-way through. How on earth can it possibly be the 10th of November???

That's beside the point though. In fact, the point is that I have been very busy making things, and now it's late and I have no time to show you them. But here's a couple of pictures of the start of my Folksy Upcycled Christmas submission. I'm making a small panel in completely recycled and vintage glass. Well, I say vintage...it actually came from the very naff faux-Victorian kitchen units we had in this house when we first moved in (which were ripped out on about day 2) but I saved the glass because, whilst hideous in a white melamine kitchen unit, looks surprisingly cute in a stained glass panel. You'll see a picture of it soon. The gorgeous red brandy glass came from my local YMCA charity store for the princely sum of £2, and while it seemed a bit of a crime to cut it up to flatten it, it looks so spanking lovely now I have no regrets. The blue bottles are Harvey's Bristol Cream (sherry) and Blue Nun (cheapo icky German white wine for those who are not familiar with the delights that the Sister has to offer) My name is Flora, and I hang around the bottle bank waiting to mug old ladies of their recycling....

Hey I exist!

Well, the post was written about a year ago, but I've only just found it...
have a look here



The panel was made using recycled glass from bottles, flattened out in the kiln, which makes beautiful glass with handmade qualities. The only downside is that the gorgeous turquoise glass comes from a bottle of Blue Nun...

So thanks for the link Eco-Modernist, have returned the favour.

While I'm here, I'll put up a couple of other pictures. The first is Nelly's finished Easter Bonnet (alright, alright, I did help a little bit) We did not win first prize though, much to my utter outrage ;)



And this is a rather minimalist arrangement of knotty spotty driftwood collected the other day, displayed in my most delicious of jugs.