General Creativity

I am making steady progress on the chameleon mural for our bedroom wall. I have added 2 colors to the body this week and done a rough draft of the eye and mouth.

Today I worked more on the chameleon mural. I started by taking the brown from yesterday and dividing it into 3 parts. I added white to part, black to another part, and left the remaining original sealed in the Tupperware. Then I added highlights & shadowing to the branch. I also added some red to the head, legs, and tail.

Hubby’s birthday was yesterday.  For his present I’ve been planning to paint something for above the bed, to replace the faded picture that’s been up there since I moved in. It was supposed to be a surprise but I ended up telling him since there’s no way I was going to finish it by yesterday.

A few weeks ago our friend Torrey asked if hubby and I would like to accompany her to Muse Paintbar in Lynnfield, MA for “Paint Your Pet” night. I instantly said yes, hubby instantly said no. So last Tuesday night Torrey and I painted our pets!

I’ve had a bunch of posts in my drafts folder, for projects I’ve completed over the past few months. So even though I completed my 3rd stained glass circles project back in February, I am just now posting about it.

As most of you know, I am obsessed with stained glass circles. I’ve created > 100 in the past year, 45 just in the past 3 weeks. In September 2016 I created my first layered glass circles project, consisting of 2 frames of circles bolted together. I love the way the light plays between the layers and creates even more colors.

I met Jim in September 2011. I wanted to make him something cool for Christmas so that year I painted Darwin & Wilber for him on 8×10″ wood block. After meeting my German family & meeting their cat Carlos this past Fall, I knew I had to paint Carlos for them.

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!

Last September I finished my first layered-frame glass circles project. Today I cut the metal frame inserts and soldered a whole bunch of circles into them. I’m not quite finished, but almost!

As you read in Part 1, I ran into some issues with my first attempt at making a stained glass sailboat, including the bottom looking like a canoe, trying to work with solid copper wire, the entire boat falling apart because the solid copper wire was too heavy, and finally the entire thing falling apart again because I soldered the hell out of the seams to the point of insanely overheating them. Oops.