Glasstacular!

ALRIGHT, now I don't know what my problem is, but I've been having an awfully hard time updating this blog lately! Especially when I was all like "I'm going to upload pictures on Saturday!" Sad. That Saturday was 3 WEEKS AGO. Jill Fail.

So, to go back in time a little... Here is a post that I started and I totally planned on posting. But I didn't. ONWARD!


I can't lie. I'm so proud. I finished that glass, and I friggin' dominated it. I was all like, I'm totally going to finish you on time, and it's going to look so ga'damn professional that even you'll think you were made by a professional. And it was all like I'm glass so I can't talk, but OK!. It's probably one of the best one's I've completed to date. Alright, I'm done with my horn tooting. OK one more. TOOT.

Now onto logistics. After my last post, I evened out the seams at the 45 degree angle with wood filler, and let it sit until it was totally dry. After a quick sanding with my trusty mouse-sander, I gave it a light coat of primer. I knew there would be imperfections, and the primer totally told me where I needed more wood filler and sanding. After filling and sanding again, I gave the frame 2 more coats of primer, let it dry, and then rolled on 3 coats of a satin interior/exterior paint. The slight roughness of the roller pad gave the frame a great finish. I removed the protective papers, cleaned it up a little and set onto my next task.



Joints filled, awaiting it's first sanding!

Joints filled, sanded, primed, filled, sanded, primed, then painted! Waiting for the paper removal!

I began to think... how would I hang this? Should I do it, or should I let them do it? Just to cover my bases, I decided to write up detailed instructions. Not only about how to hang them, but how to clean them also. I decided to use two evenly placed rubber coated eyes-hooks on the top of each frame, which would hang neatly from a linked-chain, which I attached to screws.

When I got to their house, it was decided that I would hang the glass. Hell, I had the directions to follow, so why not!? After measuring and marking, I carefully drilled four pilot holes and screwed in screw-eyes that had the chains attached. After some slight adjustments, we carefully hung the glass. With my job complete, I snapped some photographs and bid my friends farewell for the evening.
 

You can see the eye-hook and chain detail a little in this picture.

Thanks, car. For photo-bombing me.

 

i'm learneding

To round off my amazingly productive Sunday, I went on a rampage mission to find a piece of plywood that would be awesome enough for my triptych painting. I started my search in the garage, since most awesome things end up being stashed in there. Behind the motorcycle, garden hose and endless amounts of crazy giant mountain bike tires, I found wooden gold: a 1” thick piece of plywood that measured around 12”x50”. F****** SCORE!

Now... I know that I'm not the best when it comes to woodwork (that's what she said!) but I really wanted to figure out this frame by myself. Having everything evenly spaced is über important to this self-proclaimed balance/proportion freak, so I started my measurements with the 12” length. HERE COMES THE MATH PEOPLE. The biggest painting I have is 9” in length, so that would leave me a 1.5” border around the painting. (12-9=3and3/2=1.5YAY)   However, I wanted the frame to overlap the paintings slightly, so I increased the border size to 1.75”.

Using the 1.75” border size as my guide, I continued to place the smaller two paintings next to the bigger one, adjusting the placements until I came up with a good configuration. That last sentence made me sound MUCH smarter than I expected it to. After drawing my guidelines, I was ready to step outside and cut the s*** out of my plywood.

Next, I used a LARGE drill bit to drill 12 holes into the plywood, one for each corner of the three paintings. I decided to use the jigsaw, since A: I know how to use it, and B: I knew where it was in the garage. After about 30 minutes, I had myself a rough-cut frame! My electric sander did all the dirty work smoothing it out, and now I’m ready to stain and assemble the final piece!

Three cheers for trying and succeeding!!

symmetry

I think I just came up with a better design for the peppers.  It's not random like I was doing before... but completely symmetrical (except for the pepper in the middle).  Symmetry brings me organized happiness.