Stained Glass Circles – Part 9

For the past month I’ve been super busy at work.  It hasn’t left me with much mental energy for DIY or art after work, or even on weekends.  Especially since 3 days a week I’m still heading to the Y to put in miles on the recumbent bike.  Usually weekends are spent like a sloth on the couch catching up on TV and sleep.  But I have been slowly plodding away with stained glass!  I created 2 new frames of glass circles 2 weeks ago [that’s today’s blizzard in the background]:

        

Today is the first snow day we’ve had in 2 years.  I’m not a fan of snow but a snow day today was a HUGE gift and gave me time to get caught up with my photos & blog.

I didn’t like how the frames looked when layered:

So I decided to make 2 new frames of circles to layer on top of those frames.  Last weekend I cut some new circles but sort of got on a roll…  By the time my hands were cramping up I realized I’d cut FORTY FIVE!!!  Way more than I need!  I guess I’ll be doing some additional glass circles projects in the future.  After cutting them I used “grozing” pliers to grind down as much extra glass as I could, which leaves pretty jagged edges:

Then I used my glass grinder to grind all the jagged edges.  After cleaning them off in the sink I used my circle templates to retrace a circle onto each glass circle with sharpie, to highlight any areas needing further grinding:

        

After grinding the wayward edges I was pretty spot on with my circles:

       

Here’s all 45, ready for copper foiling & soldering:

The ones that look really dark are actually a really pretty green which looks amazing in a window:

        

I can’t wait to start the next steps!  But it’s tiring work, so I have to pace myself 🙂

Grinding all those circles left a huge amount of sand in my grinder:

        

I let the sand dry out overnight [the grinder is filled with water while I use it, like a wet saw], then raked it into piles to dump in the trash:

I didn’t want to dump it down the garbage disposal after all the problems I’ve had with fish rocks…

I also have acquired 3 new toys for my girl cave – glass racks!  They make my glass collections so much easier to manage!  I love them.  They reside in the purple built-in bookcase:

Here’s a closeup of 2 of them:

        

I also have plastic paint cans of glass shards organized by color:

       

Someday I’ll do some mosaic projects with all the shards.

I think with all the circles I made in 2016 + the new ones, I’ve made over 100!  In addition to my original glass circles project I also made circles for 2016 Christmas gifts.  I made 3 with “Saturn” glass, 1 with green glass, 1 with blue/brown glass, 1 with blue/green glass, 1 with pink glass, & 2 small pink ones for myself:

        

After soldering the edges I added hooks & hanging cord:

        

I also made 5 with “Christmas glass”:

        

I ended up making another large pink one for myself.  Here’s the 4 I kept for decorations in our windows:

Unfortunately one fell and broke:

I’ll end this post with 3 random pictures.  I took care of our neighbor’s cats over New Years [they usually take care of our pets when we’re gone] and they brought Jim & I back some amazing handmade chocolates from Chicago in the shapes of cats and rats.  They brought us 3 dark chocolate cats [to match our 3 black cats] & 2 white chocolate rats [to match Nibbler & Franc].  I took the pic with the fisheye lense hubby got me for Christmas for my phone:

And our cleaning man Ted [and my friend for the past 17 years] mentioned a few months ago that it’s funny how Darwin always sleeps on the counter.  I was like “we’ve NEVER seen him sleeping on the counter!” and Ted was like “but he’s always sleeping up there while I’m working”.  So he’s been sending me pictures of Darwin chillaxing on the counter while he’s working – crazy!:

       

And here’s the screaming goat, which I never heard/saw until yesterday on the way to work when a local radio station was having people call in to try and emulate the goat – one man totally nailed it!  This video is only 6 seconds long but it kills me [and it’s a sheep apparently, not a goat]: