Welcome
Handmade stained glass suncatchers - made to light up your home.
About the Process
I do not make the glass itself, as I am often asked. Glass is made in large glass-blowing hotshops requiring special machinery and high temps. They start with silica sand, soda ash, and limestone, and then add metallic salts to make the glass colorful. It is then purchased by artists like me to use in projects of all kinds!
Humans have been making art with colored glass for many millennia. The earliest known human-made glass artifacts are Egyptian beads made around 2700 BC, with stained glass windows not becoming popular until the Medieval/Gothic period in the Middle East and Europe. Glass is colored by firing it with metallic salts. Pink glass, for example, is colored using real gold - making it the most expensive color by far!
Stained glass comes in flat sheets. Creating a stained glass suncatcher requires the following steps:
1) Make your pattern, 2) Cut the glass into your pattern’s shape by scoring and breaking it into the shapes you want (this part is as hard as it sounds!), 3) Grind each shard of glass into perfect form to match the pattern, 4) Wrap each shard of glass in copper foil, 5) Solder the pieces together using a tin/lead solder mixture, and 6) Clean, patina, and polish the piece! It’s a very intensive, meticulous, hands-on process. Each step requires special tools and techniques. The hard work that goes into each piece makes it so special when it’s complete!
About my Journey
My first memory of stained glass feels like a fever dream. I was about 10 years old - visiting distant relatives in their 90s. I hadn’t been to their property before — a sprawling, beautiful ranch, with a house that had been lived in for decades. There was plenty for a kid to explore in that house, as stuff had stacked up over the years. As I walked through the house looking for something to get into, I felt it would never end, with more rooms popping up around the corner every time I thought I’d reached the end of the meandering hallway.
When I finally reached the end, I found myself in a room unlike any I’d seen before. It was a dusty workshop, covered in dusty tools that hadn’t been touched in ages. It wasn’t the kind of workshop I was used to though, with the smell of sawdust and threat of loose nails on the ground. This shop was different — there were large sheets of colored glass and window projects hanging in various stages of completion, propped here and there against whatever spaces were left in the shop. Something about the light shining through and shifting the energy in the room, the glass creating color where there wasn’t any before, the sense of unfinished business in that abandoned studio just waiting to be picked back up… it struck me, and the magic at the end of that never-ending hallway has stayed with me for years.
I mostly forgot about it, until several years ago when I came across a glass artist online who was making gorgeous, colorful suncatchers. I had seen stained glass windows before, but I didn’t realize you could make smaller pieces in your own home. I was enthralled by her process videos, and eventually, I knew I needed to pick back up on the curiosity I felt that day in the old shop. My husband got me a starter kit for Christmas in 2021, and after a few tool upgrades, I started teaching myself to make suncatchers via online resources. Since then, I’ve made tons of pieces as gifts, honing my skills along the way. As more people asked to buy one, I decided a shop was the easiest way to get my creations to the people who wanted them. I’m having so much fun with it! No matter how many pieces I make, the magic always rushes in once it’s finished and I get to hold it up to the light for the first time. I hope you’ll feel the same!
