Stained Glass Salt Lake Temple

Stained glass Salt Lake Temple in the light box frame

Every year at Christmas we rotate through our siblings on who we buy presents for.  In the past I have been giving each sibling a stained glass picture of the temple where they were married.  This year we had my wife's sister Elizabeth.  At first we thought we had her brother Jonathan, for whom I made a Manti Temple picture as a wedding gift a few years ago, so I thought I was off the hook as far as making a large stained glass project for Christmas.  Come to find out just a little too late that we had Elisabeth instead. She and her husband were married years ago in the Salt Lake Temple.  So, for Christmas I made them a stained glass picture of the Salt Lake LDS Temple.  I had just finished my second version of the Salt Lake Temple which I think was my best work yet, but was a huge undertaking.  I needed to come up with a much easier design because of the time constraint.  I ended up with a still stunning straight on view from the east side with a basic  coined diamond breakup for the sky.  It ended up with about 100 more pieces than I wanted originally, but they were pretty much straight forward cuts so it wasn't that bad. Again, As I have done in th elast few pieces, I put it in a light box frame.

 

Stained Glass Bountiful Utah Temple

This year for Christmas we had Sarah’s brother Joseph and his family to give presents to.  So, following the traditions of previous years, I made them a stained glass picture of the Bountiful Utah Temple where they were married.  I wasn’t able to use much recycled glass on this one, only the windows, but I was able to put to good use some of the wood floor we have been salvaging to use as a frame.  The floor boards are tongue and groove.  The stained glass fit nicely into the groove.  So, I sanded off the old paint, trimmed off the tongue side, routed an edge on it and turned it into a picture frame.

 Another innovation this piece has on it are a couple of female ends to chain locks.  I have been struggling to find a secure way to hang heavy stained glass on a wall and I hope this will finally be the solution.

 I bought an LED light bar from IKEA to mount on the back.  The problem is that there is n o sign at IKEA that says that when you buy an LED light strip, you have to buy a plug to go with it.  So, I don’t have any pictures with the light working.   In fact, I haven’t seen it work yet.  We sent the plug to them after the picture was delivered and haven’t had a chance to see the whole ensemble together.

Look Ma, no plug

Salt Lake Temple



It all starts with bottle glass that I have already melted flat.



Ever since people heard that I was going to make a stained glass Manti Temple they have been asking me to do a stained glass Salt Lake Temple.  Well, I finally got around to doing one.  My brother Danny was recently married there, so I decided that as a wedding gift I would make them one.  They were married in June, but I got a new job working for Snow College which required that we all move down to little old Ephraim.  This is something that we have been dreaming about ever since we left Snow College as students.  Sadly we had to leave our amazing garden behind, but it will give us the opportunity to build a new home on some bigger property and put in an even more amazing garden.  It also meant that there was no way that I could finish the temple in time, so it is now a Wedding/Christmas present.  With this piece, I was able to document the process a little better with more pictures.  So here are a few more pictures than usual.

 

This is the dorm room the college set me up with before my family moved down.  I turned it into a temporary glass shop.



Here I am cutting the blue glass for the sky.  You can see that using recycled bottles leaves a lot of "unusable" scrap.  I manage to use most of it in other projects.



Here you can see that I have started laying out the sky pieces ontop of the template.  They haven't been ground yet so they still have the patern paper glued on..

 



Now that they have been ground to the
 right shape the paper patern has been removed.



Finished the sky and working on the trees.  The greens are also recycled bottles.



Finished up the trees and starting the temple.  The gray glass had to be bought because there are no gray bottles.



I started putting the copper foil on before everything was cut out because I can watch movies and foil at the same time.



Here is the temple all cut out and about half foiled.  I ran out of foil and had to go to Salt Lake to get more. The tan glass was also bought for the same reason as the gray.



Starting to solder.  I think it looks a lot better with solder on it.  The solder hides a lot of the small mistakes.



 


Finnished solderingthe front side.  I have to be extreemly carefull flipping it over to solder the back side.



Soldering the back side.  The back ususlly goes much faster than the front because I don't have to be constantly checking that the pieces are straight.  Before they are soldered together the peices like to wiggle around a little.

 

Close up of the focal point Angel Moroni



Close up of the western spires.



Christmas Presents

A little Late, but here are some of the projects I did for Christmas.  As always, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Stained glass Mickey Mouse

This Mickey was for my boss who is a huge fan.  100% recycled glass.



Stained Glass Humming Bird and Iris

 These two were requests.  I had made these two before and gave them to my Mother in Law who hung them up in her classroom at school.  This time they were made for someone who saw them in the window and wanted me to make them one as well.  Both are 100% recycled.

Stained Glass Joseph

 Here is Joseph for a stained glass nativity.  About  80% recycled glass and 20% reclaimed glass.

Mary & Jesus for a Nativity

 Here is Mary for the stained glass nativity. She is also about 80% recycled glass and 20% reclaimed glass.

 

The "complete"  Nativity

 Here is the whole family together just after opening on Christmas day.  I actually made two of these Nativity sets.

Bottle Bottom Boxes

The first Bottom Bottle Box

Made from a couple of Whole Foods spice jars

I received a case of empty Bombay Sapphire Gin sample bottles. Probably the kind you might find in hotels and airlines. They are tiny. They are too small to melt for stained glass, so I decided to slice them up into little square rings to be melted for jewelry. After slicing several bottles up, I had a stack of left-over bottle bottoms. I took them inside and told my wife that we should try and come up with something to do with them. I left the stack of bottle bottoms on the table and went back out to the shop for a minute. When I got back, guess what, the kids had found them and started to play with them (doesn’t that always happen?) What they were doing was making little boxes out of them by placing one on top of another upside down. With a little experimentation, the Bottle Bottom Box was born.



Frosted glass adds a nice touch



I am still having a hard time with the hinges. There are no hinges in the stores small enough to work on the boxes, so I am making my own with old copper wire that was pulled out of a remodel job. They work fine, but I’m still experimenting with them. Right now I am trying several different bottle sizes and styles to see what people like. I have already given away a couple as birthday presents. I’m sure I’ll be making many more of these in the future.

Multiple sizes are available

Working without a work shop

I haven’t been able to work much on my glass lately because my work shop is overrun with construction debris. Besides remodeling the bathroom, we split the family room to include a new bedroom. So, all of the family room furniture is in the garage (aka work shop). So I am limited to working on small, less messy projects in side. This usually means stained glass projects. The latest projects were for Mother’s Day gifts. 100% of the glass in these projects was recycled in one way or another. If you look at the pictures of some of the pieces you will see a variety of colors and a few different types of clear. The colored glass all comes from bottles I collected. The process goes as follows:

1. Collect the bottles. I have a few sources, but it is always difficult to find a variety of colors. Some colors are easy to find like green, brown, and clear. Blue and black are less common, but I can get them pretty regularly. Reds, bright yellows, orange and purples are much more difficult to find. I usually find them at thrift stores in the form of vases.

2. Clean the bottles. Remove the labels and any crusties that might be lingering.

3. Cut the tops and bottoms off. I use a tile saw with a special glass blade. The bottoms get crushed into powder for other uses and the necks get sliced into little rings for jewelry.

4. Cut the remaining body of the bottle in half vertically to make two half cylinders.

5. Clean all the leftover residue off.

6. Place the half cylinders in the kiln concave side up.

7. Fire the kiln and melt the half bottles flat.

Quite the process! However this produces wonderful flat glass that is perfect for making stained glass projects.