My birthday was last month, and I had a great time doing sister crafts with Nebalee. The following weekend, Jay and I went to a fancy dinner date in Denver, at a restaurant I'd been eyeballing for a year. Overall, I had a great 54th birthday, and didn't give it a second thought.
This past Saturday, though, I realized that I was getting a second birthday weekend. My present from Jay was to finish my circus tattoo, and my present from the Bionic Cowgirl was a one-day stained glass class. Yipee! I get birthday, round two!
All of my tattoos, of which there are many, are of things that I love. While I was hesitant to get my first pop culture tattoo, once I jumped in, I went all in. Over the past couple of years, I've added many things that I love and want to remember. Pop culture-wise: Supernatural, John Wick, The Walking Dead. Mom-kid tattoos: Belle reading from Beauty and the Beast, and Toad from Frog and Toad. Birthiversary tattoos: Conch shell (Key West), sea turtle (Costa Rica), Aztec firebird (Cancun), dolphin (Marco Island). Everything else I love in life: Estes and Skeeter on out on the trails; peace, love, and pew; book dragon, with books depicting each of the kids' (and the Gremlin's) birth years; my Aztec warrior.
I was lacking a circus tattoo, but struggled with finding one that really spoke to me. Jay and our tattoo artist, the Infamous Katie, collaborated to come up with the perfect one. I had the outline done a few months ago, so for my birthday, Jay offered to pay for me to finish it. I jumped at the opportunity.
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They incorporated me into it,
not some random pic from the 'net. |
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My love of lyra and sling is incorporated,
and she brought in colors from my other tattoos
so I'm kind of matchy-matchy. |
Jay also had some tattoo work done on Saturday. "Katie Dates" have become one of our favorite dates. We go hang out for a few hours with the Infamous Katie, who has become like a little sister to us, then we go grab something to eat. This time, since Jay had plans with his sibs after our Katie Date, we just hit Dairy Queen for an ice cream. I don't know about anyone else, but I am ravenous after a tattoo session, even if I eat before.
On Sunday, Mom and I headed to the class she'd signed us up for. I love learning new things, and have taken a few one-day "taster" classes. They are great, because they give you a good introduction to a skill or a craft that I might be interested in, but without all of the expense involved in buying all of the equipment upfront. A couple of years ago, Jay and I took a welding class, which was a blast! This year, Nebalee and I took a glass fusion class; Mom and I took a soap making class (I still have several bars of "monkey fart" scented soap left); and Jay and I took a writing class. These one day classes can quickly become addictive. :)
The class I'd chosen for my birthday was a honeycomb stained glass class. I'd been eyeballing it since the beginning of the year, so when Mom asked what I wanted to take, this was it. The class was small, which I love, only six students, and we didn't have to do any glass cutting. The instructor had done that bit of prep work for us, for which I'm thankful.
We talked a little bit about the process, then jumped right into choosing our glass and laying out our projects.
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| Mom's |
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| Mine |
It was amazing to me to look around the classroom and see all of the different ways each of us chose to lay out our six pieces of glass. I'm not super creative, so I went with the layout that most closely mirrored the example on the wall. I did choose to add the round pieces as a bit of embellishment, but the reason for that is silly. When adding foil to the glass, it's fairly straightforward on pieces with straight edges, but when adding foil to the round pieces you get to shake each of them up in a little round container. It looked like a lot of fun, so I decided I wanted to do that, too. <grin>
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| Adding the foil. |
After we wrapped everything in foil, and I got a giggle out of shaking up the container with the round bits, we started in on the soldering. Now, believe me when I tell you that just because I used to solder really well in high school, when I learned to do it on electronic components, doesn't mean I can solder well forty years later. Holy cow, I suck at soldering stained glass. Instead of a nice, tiny dot just to make a connection between a component and the motherboard, it takes a lot of solder with a big, unwieldy soldering iron to put the stained glass together. Both the Bionic Cowgirl and I struggled with this.
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We are used to fine-tip irons,
these heavy flat-tipped ones were
hard for both of us to use. |
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Such ugly joints. I welded better than
this, and that's saying something! |
Eventually, I quit dicking around with trying to make my solder nice and smooth and decided "it's good enough for who it's for". The finished products look pretty good, as long as you look at them from a distance.
My honeycomb found a place in one of Whimsy's big windows, and I'm not sure where Mom's is going to end up, but this was such a fun class. I'm not super creative, but I think I could really enjoy following some stained glass patterns in future.
Update 8/20/25: Mom and I both found a place for our respective honeycombs and got pictures. They look so good in their new homes!
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| In Whimsy's east window. |
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| Mom's is in the Lodge's kitchen window. |
