Stained Glass and German Cookies
Background
I created two projects based around my childhood and my family’s history. My family would visit the Oregon Coast every summer when I was growing up, and it is famous for its giant rocks right on the beach. Haystack Rock, the most famous, is found depicted everywhere in gift shops all along the coast. This is what inspired me to make a stained glass depiction of the rock for my Shift project.
I also created a German Holiday Cookie Recipie Book for my mom. My Mom’s side of the family has generations old cookie recipes that we make every christmas. This past December, I decided to make a real recipe book to replace the handwritten German on loose pieces of notebook paper.
Stained Glass
I chose to do this project to relearn how to make a stained glass panel. I had made stained glass in Middle School, but I had not done it since then. So, I had to watch a lot of tutorial videos to relearn each step of creating stained glass. First, I had to create the design that would be on the final panel. I used Adobe Illustrator to cut up a 8.5x11 into pieces that depicted the ocean, the sky, and Haystack Rock.
After I cut up the design and coordinated the colors, I needed to order the glass itself. On Amazon, most of the glass is either in monochromatic sets or just primary colors. I though blue would work well with an ocean scene, so I chose to make the entire panel differnt shades of blue. Once the glass arrived, I began to cut out the glass into the different colored panels.
Cutting the glass is a long process that involves scoring the glass with a glass cutter and breaking the pieces apart like a chocolate bar. It is an iterative process that involves many cuts to make each piece the right shape. After the glass is cut, I put copper tape around the outside of each piece. This is important since it allows solder to stick to the peices of glass. The final step was soldering all the pieces together into one frame. I used almost two rolls of solder on this piece due to its size and the way that I cut the pieces. Once soldering the front and the back, the panel was complete and ready to be displayed. I am very happy with the way that my stained glass turned out especially since it was my first time doing it in six years.
German Recipe Book
During December, I created this German Recipe book for my Mom to give to her for Christmas. All the recipes were originally written in German cursive, and I had to work with my Grandma to translate them into English. Once I had all the recipes translated, I designed the book in Adobe Illustrator and used online photos as images of each dessert. Overall, I am pleased with the final product, and I am glad that I was able to preserve these recipes that are so important to my family.
