Four Rivenstar Badges

A bit of a secret project! Malie bean MhicAoidh commissioned four suncatchers of the Rivenstar badge. Two for Moonwulf and Takaya, retiring as Baron and Baroness Rivenstar after 40 years (!!) of service, and two for their successors, then-unnamed.

Irony being what it is, Malie and Adhamh were selected. They still wanted their two, however!

The first two were made out of a dark cobalt blue glass. Very pretty. Unfortunately I didn't have enough for all four from that glass, and realized it after the first was done. I checked with Malie and she was ok with them being in sets of two. The other set (pictured above, being held by her then-almost Excellency) are made from Spectrum Dark Blue cathedral. The clear on all four is a seedy Kokomo. I have a thing for seedy glass! All four are wrapped with 1/8" zinc u-channel came and have ~1' chains.

They seemed pleased with the suncatchers, and I'm quite glad for it.

Lessons Learned:

Black Patina for Zinc does actually work... As in the past, I was getting fairly irritating results, weak and blotchy. I read the directions (...) and realized it implies you should apply it fairly heavily. It also says to leave it at least 15 seconds. Being patient with it, the patina does eventually work fairly well.

The two diagonal points, 8 and 11 in the picture above, are tricky because of the flanged base I put on them. Initially I tried cutting them out as "S-curves" and at that tiny size, It worked much better to do it as two C-curves.

Man, Zinc... there's gotta be a better way. The problem is the initial soldering to join the ends. The best solution I could find was to squeeze the ends tight from a few inches to the side, and press the piece against the wood edge of my soldering board, freeing one hand to pick up my soldering iron, grab a daub of solder, and seal it. Then I held it until the solder was colder than a Pennsic shower to be sure it wouldn't spring apart on me. That happened...

And cutting it! I usually use my lead dykes on it, but it deforms the end terribly. Makes it hard to get a clean joint on the other end of the circle. This time I cut the "leaves" individually, and then flexed it to snap the heart via metal fatigue. That gave me a much cleaner end to work with.

Chain. Always buy more than you think you'll need. And mounting them on a 180-degree arc (straight horizontal line) was not a fantastic idea, as the suncatcher wants to tip a bit. 

The Arms of Baroness Laurencia of Carlisle, OL

Hello! It is a few minutes before midnight on the eve of Laurencia's elevation to the Order of the Laurel. I am scheduling this to go live early in the morning; I'll post it to Facebook mid-morning when it should be safe! Let me apologize in advance for the inevitable spelling and title screw-ups! Also please note you can click on pictures to enlarge most of them. -Brynn


I used to work with Laurencia and her husband, Eirikr inn havi four or so years ago. A few months ago he messaged me on Facebook to ask if I could do her device for her upcoming elevation.

The original image he provided

Knowing her elevation was to be at Ice Dragon in April, I sat it on it for bit. Too long, but ok in the end! I seem to recall being told Laurencia is part of the "14th century mafia" so I wanted to pick a design that was appropriate to her period. Looking at extant panels from France and England, I found several of an armiger's device set in "plain glazing" or a window of clear glass. Frequently we do quarries with more acutely angled points, diamonds like the suit on playing cards.

Like these! Image courtesy of the CVMA

In several windows of this time, however, I saw they were the 90-degree style diamonds. The more acute style seems much more prevalent in late-period windows, I'd like to dig into those changes sometime.

At one point I thought about setting her device in a ring of laurel leaves, but I found it very difficult to do so within a reasonably-sized window. I tried scaling my pattern up from 12 to 14 to 16 inches square, but I couldn't find proportions that were acceptable. Either the ring was too thin, or the device too small, or the combination awkwardly placed in the pattern. I eventually dropped that plan and just focused on her device.

I opted to used all mouthblown ("Handmade") glass for this. On hand I had sheets of Krosno (from Poland) and St. Just (from France). I had never mixed them, so this was the first opportunity I had to note the difference in their compositions:

The edge-on view gives it away. The green is caused by iron impurities, though a few sources claim some copper content can do that as well. Ensuring the iron is kept out, or adding selenium or lead, causes a clearer glass as with the other brand here. If I'm not mistaken, it's the St Just that is green.

The flashed glass I used, red flashed on clear, is of unknown provenance via THL Molly Sotherden, but despite hearing of it's existence I've yet to find machine-rolled flashed glass. Looking at the irregularities, I feel very confident it is mouthblown as well. I learned during this project that flashed glass can be a striking color (See Lessons Learned section below). Flashed glass has a thicker base layer of one color (usually clear) and a thinner layer of another. It is one solid sheet of glass with two distinct sides. Originally this was done because otherwise some colors were too dark to transmit light (red is the best example). A sheet made in the typical way would appear black. Giving a thin layer of color to a clear sheet allowed the red to shine through and remain strong enough to use. In the 14th century it became well-known that you could remove the colored layer and add extra detail without adding leadlines.

At this point in time, most glass cutting is done with a dividing iron (a red hot poker used to incite thermal shock in the glass to give it a crude shape), which can be seen in my post here and the video to which it links. The shape would be refined through a grozing iron (I now use a proper grozing iron made for me by THL Kendrick Cameron, but my original one can be seen here). About this period in time, diamond-tipped cutting tools are becoming known in Italy. I own an antique diamond-tipped cutter and used it a little for this project; unfortunately it is rather temperamental and I wasted half a sheet of clear glass trying to make it work. As a result the majority of the cuts use a modern carbide-wheel cutter to save glass/money.

My modern cutter, and my antique diamond-tipped cutter

Period sources talk of either abrading away the flashed side, or using acid to etch it away. The acid called for in period is generally not strong enough to etch glass unless it is of very poor quality (and hat tip to my Laurel, Mistress Kirsten Thorsteinsdottir, for that fact). Modernly we can use a stronger acid, power tools, hand abrading, or sandblasting. Sandblasting and acid end up with very similar results. Having tried all of these options in the past, and wanting a certain "hand abraded" look on "power tool" time tables, I abraded it using an engraving tool. It is less drastic than a dremel, and after firing I think it looks excellent.

The water bath is probably not period, but we prefer to avoid death by silicosis today! The picture on right is the piece before fire polishing.

I applied vitreous paint to the bird using a miniver brush, as called for in our primary source texts. Period formulas for vitreous paint call for crushed glass and mineral/metal oxides for color. Modern texts reference using glass fluxes and components, rather than actual glass, for making paint, however the oxides are still in use. I fired the three pieces, bird and two halves of the ermine section, in my modern electric kiln. My tests on proper period kilns are still forthcoming and, again, the glass is expensive to waste!

The central/bottom portion, after firing

The entire device, fired. I aligned the ermine spots to coincide with the lead line to try and mask it a little. Fully period cutting tools might have been able to get that steep inner angle cut out of one piece of glass. Might.

I cut the background of quarries and got stuck worrying about the next steps. Obviously lead came would be the period technique, and cast cames at that. I would have to use purchased milled cames, but my skillset with came is very rusty, and it's not as strong. In order to have a strong, lower-maintenance, and better looking end product I opted to use modern copper foil methods to assemble the window. That would be the biggest concession to modernity but I feel it was/is the right call.

The glass, all cut.

The glass, all foiled!

A pretty close-up 

The completed and framed panel

I put the completed panel in a wooden frame, which is called for in our primary sources. I added modern hanging hardware (eyelets and rustic copper chain) for Laurencia and Eirik's convenience. I hope that it arrived unbroken and that it is only one of many beautiful things she gets on the day of her elevation!


Lessons Learned


1) Diamond-tipped cutters are finicky!

2) From a discussion with Conor O'Ceallaigh, after fire polishing some non-yellowing lacquer could smooth out the texture further. I had several kinds on hand, but I wanted the abraded texture to remain.

3) I need more practice with framing stock. These pieces fit fine when I cut and test fit them, and held while I handled them after gluing. When I added the support brackets on the back, the joints popped a bit and gaps appear. OI!

4) This is only the second time I had an issue with a glass color striking on me, and the first was understandable as it was a green enamel. My sheet of red flashed was in two pieces; I knew one end was a prettier red and the other end was an odd brownish-purple color. I couldn't find the larger sheet with the better end, only a significant piece from the brownish-purple side. Remembering a funny story involving this piece two years ago (which I only told on Facebook, I'll add it here later today), I checked it against two different light sources. Sure enough, backlit by an incandescent bulb, it was beautiful ruby. Against fluorescent or sunlight, purple-brown.

Color being what it is between devices and cameras, this is the best I could do.

Since yellow light turns it ruby, I thought I could hit it with some silver stain to bring yellow into the mix, and have a piece that was actually red. I fired a test chip and when I pulled it out of the kiln, I was shocked to discover I couldn't see where the stain was. I was a bit disheartened and considered plans B (enamel) and C (piecing it together). Then I realized I couldn't tell where the stain was on my test chip because the entire piece had turned ruby.

This is actually the unfired piece from the picture above lit by a different lightbulb, but this is how the finished piece looks in all light as you can see in all the other pictures.

That was fascinating and a surprise!

Archery Prize: Pheons

Details to come shortly! An educational lesson with Molly that churned out the first of a few archery prizes:

Two Ayreton Stars

The lightbox, at the moment

The muse sang so I danced. I've cut two Ayreton Populace Badges to whip out in a hurry and give to the new TE Ayreton. They aren't actually done, but I think the lessons portion is done, and there are a few lessons learned! I'm writing this up early and will follow-up with a completed picture in a day or two.

I was originally going to do one "swirl" and one "straight" but cut them both swirled, and I have no regrets. As soon as I finished cutting the first I thought those straight lines would be SO BORING and amateurish (not that anything with 12 pieces is particularly fancy!) unless I found the perfect bevels.

I cut the pieces for the first one out (the one laid out, top right corner), and set them on the pattern. And then I freaked out. They weren't fitting. AT ALL. Not even close. For a change of pace, and a bit of experiment, I decided to do these by cutting out the pattern with shears and tracing them onto the glass. How could it be that wrong?! I had a mini-meltdown via PM to Roana. THIS IS NOT WHAT I NEEDED when I am trying to rebuild a basic amount of confidence in my ability to make glass art.

After a few minutes of panicked thinking, I had an idea. It's a round pattern, right? When I began cutting it with shears, the first thing I did was cut out the circle. Maaaybe I had just rotated it in relation to the reference (unsheared) pattern. After frantic comparison, I discover it's off 30°. "4" is actually "5', and so on. WHEEEW.

So, I had to recut a blue and a green piece, since rotating them offset them by one of each color. I knocked those pieces out. Then I realized I could have just rotated my reference pattern to match the cut up one. At least I was able to laugh...

With this second one, I plan to use etching acid either in the center of the star, and drybrush it out toward the tips, or at the tips and drybrush it toward the center. If I can make it match what's in my head, it will be beautiful.

[Edit later this week with completed pictures]

The first one, completed:

Estelle's Vigil: Scarab Platter

EDIT: I've had to do something stupid to get the text to appear on this post. Sorry!

Estelle has, as one of her personal badges, a scarab (dung beetle) pushing a ball of it's preferred element. It's a reference to her peerage theory, quoted here:

The Dung Beetle Theory of becoming a Peer:

First, you gotta find your shit.

Roll around in that shit a while, make sure it's the shit you want to bring home.

Then, you get your shit together.

You gather it up, make it nice and rounded, polish that shit up so that it shines.

Then, you gotta bring your shit home.

So you spend your time, rolling that shit along.  But because you're a dung beetle, you gotta roll it backwards, which means that you really have no clue where you're really headed... but eventually, after a long while, and with a little luck, you get that shit right where it needs to be.

And that's how you become a Peer.

The End.

She requested a scarab platter on which she can serve truffles during her vigil. She provided a design:

We went through available molds and glass colors to find something acceptable:

(There is an invisible piece of clear for the white in this picture. The glass looks slightly hazy -- to me it's as if someone spilled milk on it and wiped most of it off. It was sold as "cloud" and as a translucent white. It wasn't translucent as I would find out...)

I was a bit concerned about how to fire this one. Before I started this piece I had fired one half of the family badge plate (adjacent post). I think it's issues were closely tied to the irregular layering of the glass (2 layers in some places, 1 layer in others). I added more clear pieces to this blank (what I call the piece as it's being fused, before slumping) to try and keep more consistency.

The piece is not perfectly regular, which didn't surprise me. A little grinding fixed that up. There are some unfortunate lines between the body segments, and leg segments. I knew that would happen but I didn't want to overlap the pieces and potentially provoke bubbles. This picture shows how the white striked. I compared it to a piece of "opaque" fusible white, and the piece sold as opaque was actually more translucent than this cloud glass.

With these platters I progressively slid my firing schedule down from 1300 degrees. I think its near 1230 now, with no change in the hold times. I did that to try and avert "dog boning" especially in the square plates. This helpful advice came from the folks at Fused Glass Fanatics on Facebook.

These pictures show the completed (slumped) platter. The actual shape and depth is not conveyed well, I will try to take a better shot next week. The white is clearly NOT translucent. I used my grinder along the edges to make the shape a little more regular and remove some stabby-bits.

Estelle's vigil: Family Badge Platter

Estelle did not ask for this, but some time ago we discussed the idea of making a matched set of platters that, when joined, would form her family badged (used by her whole mundane household). I decided this was as good a time as any!

The plates feature blue bars on a clear (white) field, with green in the corners (skipping heraldry terminology for non-heralds). Because I use a base layer of clear, I didn't see the need to fill in the second layer with clear. This is the first time I've tried any fused project with clear. I expected that the blue might spread or contract a bit, but I thought it would be acceptable:

HUGE bubble. Right beneath the base layer, not between two. The edge was also very irregular. ALSO, the grey sharpie used to tag the glass didn't burn off as I had expected. So, scrapped it and started over.

This time, I added clear layers in the top. The results fused much more smoothly:

And the slumping went well. Initially the shape bothered me, I thought I was seeing the "dogboning" problem I've had in the past with this mold, and I had been correcting my slumping temperature down to try and adjust. After a couple of days I realized they are fine; the molds have a slight curve in a plane I didn't realize, and the shape is closer to the mold's shape than I thought.

The piece in the top of these pictures had some old kiln wash fuse to the glass. For the immediate purposes, this is fine, but I plan to remake it so it has the clarity of the second (bottom) tray.

Lessons Learned:

• Applied kiln wash apparently has a shelf-life!
• Better results with even layer coverage.

Laurel Scroll of Dame Estelle de la Mer

Long, long ago a dear friend said "If I ever get elevated, I want you to do my scroll." It was a tremendous honor, considering she is one of the best scroll makers alive. Suddenly a few months ago Baronessa Estelle de la Mer was put on vigil and it took two days for the panic-screams to abate.

For the design, Estelle said she wanted something fairly simple, her device and a laurel wreath. No calligraphy (she wanted to make it painless on the scribe). She found a wreath she particularly liked (the border in the below picture) and I started working on understanding the shading of the pieces:

For the border I chose a green glass that looks like healthy vegetation. I think of it as a "living green"

I ran into one snag at this point. The pattern I had cobbled together had a somewhat indistinct cutline, and I tried to make it work. I do this too often, and I know it's a terrible idea. I then spent hours trying to grind all five pieces into complacency, and the results were terrible. The gaps were large, irregular. As minor as it seems, I was pleased that I eventually realized the right course was to transfer a clear cutline to new paper and scrap the first five. I was unhappy at having to scrap a square foot of clear, but I would have been infinitely unhappier to give my friend crap work for her elevation to the Laurel. The above picture is the recut pieces.

For the center roundel featuring her device, I could only come up with a few ways to do it. The first and obvious way is just piecing it together. Because her device has a complex line of division (a chief engrailed) and a charge over a line of division (a mullet of nine points) I thought the lead lines would be too much. Discussing it with Molly here at Pennsic, she suggests that it would have been fine, and that the mind would ignore the lead lines altogether (particularly if they were not straight "industrial" lines, a tip she received from my Laurel). I'm going to sketch out a few ideas for paint-less designs and see how I feel about them.

Another alternative (suggested by Kirsten, my laurel) would have been to use flashed glass for one of the two colors, and enamel in the other one. With the terrible lesson I got about this green enamel (See below), I would definitely use green flashed glass and put in the blue with enamel if I had to recreate this piece today.

My past experience with Reusche enamels has been hit or miss. The first time I used the sapphire blue enamel the results were amazing. I've previously done Estelle's albatross badge with it, and they worked flawlessly. The greens I've tried (two different ones) did not give me the results I desired at all. I did some research and found Fuse Master enamels that claimed to have almost the transparency of stained glass sheet and their sample pictures showed the vibrant colors I wanted. I ordered two and did some test pieces:

When I do a test chip for a new paint, I try it spread thin, and applied thickly to try and get a feel for the range of possibilities. They do turn out quite transparent; I couldn't get a pleasing picture of the heavy green test with my phone camera, but held up to the light it was comparable to a dark green piece of glass. The blue picture here shows it well (I used a bit of waste cloth/aida to get a pattern for demonstration, placed below the chips. Just know that the green at full-color is more transparent than this picture lets out).

I mixed these colors with Fuse Master's recommended "Water based medium" for painting, because I wanted to eliminate as many variables as possible. Oddly the ingredients list alcohol, and when I used the "few drops" suggested, it had almost no grip whatsoever. In the future I may try this with gum arabic, and I have an unfired test chip of the colors on opaque glass.

I started with the green half, for no particular reason, and applied the paint and blended with my badger blender. Then I began scratching out the clear and blue areas. I fired two layers of green, trying to build up to the emerald tone I was looking for. I switched to blue at one point, and simultaneously realized I could likely get sharper lines by using a mask to block out the design. So I did... mid piece.

Two layers of green enamel, just before I laid out the blue.

Lifting the mask from under the blue enamel

Unfortunately I realized one problem too late: the lines on the green portion are less clean, and the rays of the mullet (star) are shorter on that end. I scratched them out by slowly easing out to the edges of the shape and looking for the tracing template beneath the glass. It caused some inexact shapes. The rays created with the mask (which was copied directly off the template) were sharper and longer (more exact to the pattern) but thus different. The differences are a bit more apparent in some pictures. This is the piece going in for a firing:

You can see that the blue-side rays are stronger than the green side's. Here is another shot, while I was cleaning up the blue enamel before firing:

I worked on the laurel wreath at this point. I took the original image Estelle liked and tweaked it so that the cut lines would be evenly on the 45 degree marks. The original had an irregular spacing I don't care for. Here are the leaves painted, before firing:

The one on the right hasn't been cleaned up yet.

I'm still working on good brush technique, but after awhile I got a groove while painting these leaves. I was pretty pleased with how the lines were taking the exact form I wanted, the paint was mixed right where I wanted it. And once I had applied mat paint and begun shading:

The central roundel had three coats of green, and two coats of blue. I don't know if the blue is stronger naturally, or if I had just applied it heavier, but I didn't feel the need to try for more layers of it.

I noticed that the template gave me some grief while blending. The paint could pool a little more right alongside the template, and various variations on blending didn't alleviate that. In a high quality picture or in person you can see a slightly darker outline right along the edge of the mullet/star's rays on the blue side. I came to two realizations; I need larger palettes to get my paint mixed appropriately, and I should try and use a stencil (a suggestion from Molly)

The 3-green and 2-blue piece. I noticed that the enamels appear significantly darker against the opaque stone than when back-lit, prompting me to prepare test chips on opaque glass. I suspect that will give a richer color with fewer layers/firings. Update to follow.


I used my typical silver stain, fired to 1000 as usual. I had washed my other silver stain-only badger blender to improve its performance. I blended the stain but I thought at the time it wasn't as even as I liked. I wasn't sure if I used too little oil (my preferred stain medium) or my blending was poor. Either way, the results were shocking on two fronts:

Firing the piece to 1000 yielded a green that was blotchier than before (the green looked fairly regular), olive, and almost opaque. I was very unpleasantly surprised. I was also unhappy with the uneven stain. I decided to add more stain to try and balance it out, but was unsure about the green enamel. The blue didn't react poorly. I suspected that the green did not like the lower firing, but I didn't expect it to change. Firing it back up to 1250 (This brand of enamels indicate they can be used anywhere above a given range, and may be used while slumping etc, so I used my normal vitreous paint program) would overfire the silver stain, but might fix the green. I decided I would rather have overfired silver stain than keep the green, which I considered a totally unrecoverable mistake.

I was right on both accounts. I couldn't fix the uneven staining with more stain, and over firing it did exactly what was expected and created a darker stain and the characteristic mother-of -pearl scum. It's only visible in reflected light, so once the panel is in her window hopefully it's not as noticeable. Someone has suggested they will hold the scroll up in Midrealm court during Pennsic--the thought is mildly horrifying :)

I had a good talk with my Laurel about how to install the glass into the frame, as I didn't have the framing buttons that came with the oak frame. I settled on caulk (which was handy as I later needed to repair a trailer mirror for a friend and used it again).

After I handed it to Estelle, she pointed out I had caulked it into the frame backwards. *SIGH*. Fortunately an easy fix.

The completed scroll. Click for super-big picture.

Lessons Learned

The haze. It's not purple.

• A mask creates beautiful results, but needs to be used from the beginning for consistency.
• Molly suggested that I try and use a stencil instead of a mask (covering the opposite portion). That hadn't occurred to me, but is worth a try! That would enable me to blend evenly and avoid the "dark halo" the mask caused.
• Don't skimp on paint or stain and blend gently trying to conserve it.  Slather it on and blend it like a daiquiri that owes you money.
• Center painted borders a bit better (that is, double-check the design you are copying :) )
• Multiple firings might be changing the shape of the glass. Discuss with others...
• Watch carefully when you are clearing away matted paint/enamel. I've never noticed this problem before, so I wonder if it might be tied to enamels/this brand of enamels/this brand of enamels' weird alcohol-containing "water-based medium" but after clearing it away there was a haze of it left behind. I caught it via reflected light at one point, and had to get Q-tips and start really cleaning the glass for fear it would fire in and be visible. If you look closely you can see it in this picture, near the top

• A thought I had after is that, since the enamels say they mature somewhere around "1075-1150+" (I find it odd to give a range, and then 'or higher but...') with more time I could have tested firing the stain and enamel to a lower temperature that might not have treated the stain so badly, but which would have still given translucent enamel.
• As if I needed another reminder, you can't use a poor cut-line think "I can just make it work" because then you recut the project :)