Snowflakes for Christmas

It's almost Christmas and I am not close to being done with everything I need to do.  Every year I start a bit earlier on my Christmas list of things to do and every year I still come down to crunch time where I live on coffee and go without sleep to get everything done in time.  When my son was small, it was a tradition to make a homemade ornament for the tree each year, and I continued that tradition until 2010.  I lived alone, the tree was full and the Great Recession had taken a toll on my Christmas cheer.  But this year I wanted to celebrate my new life and renewed focus on art.

I am a glass and metal artist.  It has taken me years to find my focus in art because I love EVERYTHING art.  And I still dabble in many medias.  But my passion has always returned to glass and metal.  I made a decision that when I had the time and opportunity (and rather than be a jack of all trades), I would learn everything I could about these two mediums.

This year, with a tree full to breaking from the amount of ornaments created from the fusion of two families, I decided it was time to decorate the window and created this simple snowflake from beveled glass, glass pebbles, wire and solder.  I loved this pattern because the roundness of the pebbles softened the geometric edges of the beveled glass.  Very easy to create, each piece was edged with copper foil tape and fluxed.  I arranged the snowflake on a marble tile I use for soldering and tack soldered the flake together before covering all the the copper foil with Silver Gleem solder that polishes up to look like sterling silver.  I finished by soldering a wire hanger to the top to hang the flake from (the wire needs to be firmly soldered to the snowflake due to its weight).

I am enjoying the flake hanging in my window with the snow falling gently behind it.  Since the window is 5' by 12', I should have room for a snowflake a year for a very long time!  Merry Christmas, everyone!