"Windows of Heaven" Stained Glass Picture

This year The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is hosting a world wide art competition.  The theme for the competition is "Tell me the stories of Jesus".  I decided to enter the competition.  I immediately knew what scene I wanted to do.  My wife and I have been extremely blessed by keeping the commandment of tithing.  We have found ourselves without money on several occasions and we always have had what we need to take care of our family.  So when I heard the theme of the competition, I instantly thought of the story of the Widow's Mite.  At the same time I thought of the scripture in Malachi that promises that the windows of heaven will be opened up and blessings will be poured out upon those who are faithful in paying their tithing.  I thought that the two scriptures would make a very visual effect.  In preparing for this piece I researched the temple in Jerusalem and tried to recreate the scene just as it might have occurred.  I think I have it fairly close, much better than most of the old paintings of the Widows Mite story. Here are a bunch of pictures:

 

Small Manti Temple Stained Glass for a Boy Scout Fund Raiser Auction Piece

This is a small stained glass picture of the Manti Utah temple that I made for an auction for the Boy Scouts in my ward.  It is a little smaller than my regular temples at just under 17" x 11"  Sorry about the orientation of the pictures, I'm going to try and fix them when I get more time.  This was the first picture I deliberately made very squiggly lines.  I think it adds a lot to the picture especially when there are limited pieces like in this piece.

Stained Glass Timpanogos Temple

Here is a stained glass picture of the LDS Timpanogos Temple.  The glass is 44" tall by 33 1/2" wide.  The frame ads about 5 inches to each side.  It has over 830 pieces.  It is the biggest single piece I have done (the door doesn't count because it was made up of 10 pannels)  It has a light box included and can be plugged in to light it up.  This item is for sale!.  I have finally had some time to make some stained glass that I can sell instead of giving away for a wedding  or Christmas present.  I'll be putting this in the Sanpete County fair and then in the Utah State Fair so that I can hopefully drum up some business.

Update:  This piece won "Best In Show" at the Utah State Fair  this fall.  That was exciting.  It is now for sale on my Etsy store.

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.



Mesa Temple

Michael holding up his new Christmas present



  Among the several stained glass Christmas presents I made this year was a picture of the Mesa Arizona LDS Temple. With seven siblings it can be a big hassle to get everyone a present, so we rotate who we get presents for each year. This year we had my brother Michael and his wife. They were married in October 2009 in the Mesa Temple, so I decided to make them a stained glass picture of the temple.

 Almost all of the glass is recycled. The bumpy blue in the water, the bumpy green bushes and the opaque green grass are the only colors that were not recycled. The temple and the wavy royal blue in the sky is made of light sconces, the windows were made of a vase, and the rest of the colors are made of bottles.

 Here you can see the neat swirly patterns that come from the light sconces.  These pictures were taken just after the soldering was finished.  The zinc frame and black patina hadn't been put on yet.

 One thing about using recycled glass is that bottles don't produce large sheets of glass.  So, large expanses need to be broken up into smaller pieces.  This is why the sky and water were designed with a wavy style.

One thing that struck me when we attended the wedding was the extra warm climate.  It was above 80 degrees in October.  I felt like I had to incorporate the palm trees into the picture.