Practice - blue dayflying moth

You can see my pencil drawing on the left. This was done directly on the kiln shelf. Normally I use Bullseye Thinfire paper but it can create texture you don’t want so everything was done on a freshly kiln washed kiln shelf. 

Next, I placed glass frit where I wanted it, making sure there were no gaps. This is important for black frit in particular as black glass is soft and can pull apart more than other colours. 

Here you can see the final result. The black has pulled apart more than the blue (see above) and it’s thin and delicate but surprisingly strong.

The eagle eyed amongst you will know a blue day flying moth doesn’t have a red body but it’s the colour I had…

Test pieces… as much to find out how my kiln works, and what different textures of glass do under heat, as anything else. 

The post From Ophelia to Prince first appeared on KayBee Glass.

• 100 women (the Voices) living with incurable or life-changing conditions
• 100 scars of gold photographs based on the Japanese art of Kintsugi
• 100 artworks by 34 artists

All taking pride of place during a week-long event at the Sidings at London’s Waterloo until 17th May 2025. I applied to be one of the artists and was delighted to be chosen. 

Two stained glass portraits

The brief was to create an artwork to represent one of the women. Sammy had created an incredible series of photographs, ‘Scars of Gold’, using gold leaf to create a kintsugi (“joining with gold”) effect on the area of the body affected by the health condition. For Melissa, the gold wasn’t concentrated in one area. A glucose monitor and insulin pump are a permanent feature, and diabetes can affect many areas of the body – internal and external. For Mev, her hands covering her abdomen were the focus for the kintsugi. Her photograph showed her in a bold silhouette, her trademark hair so distinctive despite the effects of treatment.

I knew I wanted to make these pieces large. Mortal and Strong is all about voices and awareness and I didn’t think small, delicate pieces would suit the message. I started out with a plan to create Mel 1m x 75cm but this was going to be impractical. I couldn’t find a surface big enough to support such a large piece, so I reduced the proportions to 75cm x 51cm. I used Sammy’s Scars of Gold photographs as my inspiration as they are just so striking. This dictated my colour choices… black, grey and gold.

The puppy and the bubble wrap

I had to order lots and lots of glass…. four huge boxes arrived. Each box was filled with large sheets of glass wrapped in cardboard and oversized bubble wrap. Cue my new puppy who became adept at bursting the bubble wrap so it would fit in the recycling box. I took over the top of the dog cage and used offcuts of MDF to create a base. I measured out a frame to keep my sizing in check and began the long process of cutting, grinding, foiling and soldering.

I did think about using gold leaf on the glass and I had just completed a gilding course so I had all the kit. But when I tried it on Mel’s portrait, it didn’t look right on the glass; it was too subtle. After much trial and error (black glass on the back… clear glass…textured glass…I decided to use Amber Muranese glass to represent the gold instead. It has a beautiful flower pattern and is a delicate colour that looks incredible in the light. Mel’s piece had a lot of black and I used oceanside black opaque with grey behind it so that the silhouette would really stand out. As you can’t see through black glass, you can’t just trace your pattern on the glass directly. Instead, I printed out the pieces on vinyl. My Cricut machine only allows a max size of 27cm so I had to slice up the pattern into multiple pieces to print then stick together. This took way longer than it should have!

The post Mortal and Strong first appeared on KayBee Glass.

…said @archangelglass on Instagram when she saw my stained glass suffragette that was sent to the USA for @korinaoswald’s… 2025 community project for the American Glass Guild’s annual conference. 

Korina is building the pieces into a big snake called Earl, and it will be on view in the @mesaartscenter in Arizona from 9th May to 3rd August this year. Over 100 glass artists from around the world sent in copper foiled glass pieces using the template that Korina sent out. 

The brief was simple; use your own design, leave the edges raw as they will be leaded during assembly, and make sure it fits the template.

I drew a suffragette with a big hat and the suffragette colours as a background; purple for dignity, white for purity and green for hope. These colours were used in particular by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and can be seen on lots of suffragette imagery.

It’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago most women were not allowed to vote in the UK. But it wasn’t just women; prior to the Representation of the People Act 1918, only 58% of the male population could vote. This is because you had to be resident in the country for 12 months before the general election, so many soldiers were ineligible.

But it wasn’t until 1928 that women were finally given the same voting rights as men when the Equal Franchise Act 1928 was enacted. The UK was a little late to the party; Hawaii had universal suffrage in 1840 (although this was reversed in 1852), New Zealand granted women the right to vote in 1893, and the colony of South Australia in 1895. It wasn’t the last either, women gained the same voting rights as men in France in 1944, Greece in 1952 and Lichtenstein in 1984. The Vatican City is still an exclusively male conclave composed of male cardinals – other Vatican citizens are not allowed to vote. So there is still work to do.

Want to find out more about suffragettes around the world? Why not read about my portrait of the Dutch suffragette Martina Kramers?

The post Oh, she’s so darling and daring! first appeared on KayBee Glass.

The post Childhood, Interrupted. First exhibition of 2025. first appeared on KayBee Glass.

The post Mary Queen of Scots first appeared on KayBee Glass.

Martin Luther King Jr called her The Mother of the Movement although her work wasn’t recognised by some male activists. She believed in knowledge as a powerful force for the marginalised – more powerful than changes in the law.

Her father was enslaved at birth as a house servant on a plantation near Georgetown, owned and run by Joel Roberts Poinsett. As an adult he worked on a ship, travelled to Haiti and met Victoria. They married and moved back to Charleston. Victoria vowed to never be a servant and she worked hard and raised her children with strict discipline – particularly the girls.

Septima attended school at age 6 but received no education. She was taught to read and write by a neighbour and her mother looked after the neighbour’s children in return.

From 9th Grade, Septima attended the Avery institute where she was taught solely by white women. After graduating high school in 1916, she could not afford to attend College but she passed an exam that allowed her to teach. At that time, South Carolina did not permit African Americans to teach, so she got a job in the Sea Islands (over 100 tidal and barrier islands off the Atlantic coast).

She returned to study part time and completed her BA and MA. She taught illiterate adults at night on her own time on top of her daytime teaching job.

She began campaigning for pay equalisation for teachers after seeing inequality first-hand. She returned to teach at Avery and petitioned the local community to allow black principals. It’s said she got 10,000 signatures in a day and in 1920 they finally permitted black teachers.

By this time she was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and in 1956 she was appointed vice president of the Charleston branch. That year, South Carolina passed a law banning state employees from involvement with civil rights organisations. She refused to leave the NAACP and was sacked by the Charleston City School Board, losing her 40-year pension and becoming unemployable in the area.

She started teaching literacy at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, teaching people how to fill out application forms and voter registration forms – and citizenship schools were born.

My son bought me this wonderful book (I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women who Changed America by Brian Lanker. It’s beautiful and the front cover shows Septima Poinsette Clark, pensive and in profile. I used this image for my stained glass portrait of Septima. I used Black Oceanside glass for the background, Dark Amber Waterglass for the skin and White wispy for the hair. You might recognise the white wispy from some other portraits.

The braids were very difficult to cut. Curvy, skinny, long… not easy. Glass is flat, so getting shape and depth can be tricky. The fingers worked out ok I think.

The opaque black background glass really makes the face and hair stand out and I love the way this looks with the light behind it. I made a zinc frame, cutting the corners with a mini angle grinder before soldering hanging loops inside the channels.

Previous
Next

How to get in touch

Get in touch if you have a commission idea.

How to contact me

The post Septima. Civil rights activist. Educator. The “Mother of the Movement” (Martin Luther King Jr). first appeared on KayBee Glass.

The post Martina Kramers – Dutch suffragette first appeared on KayBee Glass.

Franz Ruzicka is a painter based in Munich and I was sent some images of his paintings as a starting point; beautiful, flowing, textured female forms in strong colours. The finished piece was going to be hand delivered to Franz himself as a thank you for sharing his art. You can check out some of his work here https://www.myartprints.co.uk/a/ruzicka-franz.html

But there were some problems to figure out before I could start.

If you aren’t familiar with using glass, some of the trickiest shapes to cut are long, narrow curves. These shapes are prone to snapping either while cutting or grinding or foiling if you’re not very careful. You’ll notice the reference images are full of long, narrow curves. Eek.

The paintings also use shading to show the curves of the body and give the figures depth. I was going to have to find a way to replicate this with glass. Flat, uniform glass. Eek again.

Final problem…I was going to have to take the glass to Munich myself and the originals are 138cm x 24cm! Making small stained glass can be harder and more time consuming than larger works. I was going to have to change the dimensions as to scale it down to 40cm height it would only be 7cm wide… so the figure would be matchstick size and impossible. I had to change the proportions to make the figure work.

 

I changed the proportions to make it manageable and the final piece is 29 x 10cm. As the Uro by Yough glass is opalescent, and I had to get the shapes absolutely right, I used a Cricuit Air to create and print a vinyl pattern that I attached to the glass before cutting and grinding. I added some strategically placed cuts to emphasise the curves.

I chose medium blue waterglass for the background. It’s delicious. I could have used a ring saw to cut the background glass in a single piece (apart from the tiny piece between the feet) but I wanted this to look like stained glass so I cut it into 11 pieces. All of the pieces were then wrapped in 7/32,Binari copper foil (my favourite) burnished carefully and my cats played with the foil backing tape. 

I used zinc came for the frame, cut it with a mini angle grinder and made loops for hanging that were securely soldered to the zinc. The whole thing was then cleaned thoroughly using KwikClean and the zinc was also scrubbed with steel wool before using black patina to change the solder and zinc to black. The final stage was adding hanging chain.

Last week I took it to Munich (ok, I was going anyway to see AC/DC) and we dropped it off for Franz to get when he returned from holiday in Italy.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out and it’s now hanging in Franz’s kitchen in Munich.

“I was so happy when I opened the parcel… you made my day”

I love how commissions challenge me. There are definitely some things I wouldn’t do, and I have said no to requests. But if it speaks to me, and if I think I just might be able to do it, chances are I’ll say yes.

Read about an earlier commission here Custom stained glass art; Zelda the wolf.

Get in touch if you have a commission idea and we can see what’s possible

 

The post “Good morning. Would you be able to produce something that was similar or recognisable as one of these pieces of art in glass?” first appeared on KayBee Glass.

Theresa Kachindamoto - changing the lives of girls in Malawi

"When you educate a girl, you educate a whole nation" (James Emman Aggrey)

The post Theresa Kachindamoto; protecting thousands of girls from child marriage in Malawi first appeared on KayBee Glass.

Who is Jaha Dukureh?

Jaha Dukureh, the inspiration for the portrait

Designing the shapes

Before adding the frame

Jaha Dukureh, stained glass portrait

The post Who is Jaha Dukureh, my latest stained glass portrait, and what do you need to know about the Gambia? first appeared on KayBee Glass.

Suffragette – Emmeline Pankhurst

You might have heard of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 – 1928). She founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) which was at the forefront of the suffragette movement fighting for equal rights for women, with the slogan “Deeds not Words”. Women didn’t have the right to vote until 1918 and even then, only women over 30 (and men over 21) could vote. 

To put it another way, her political activism challenged the institutions of the day and she was imprisoned a number of times, along with fellow suffragettes – including her daughters. In fact, hunger strikes and force feeding were common, and not surprisingly, some suffragettes did not agree with her hardcore methods. Nonetheless, a memorial statue of Emmeline was erected in London in 1930.. where it should sit has been the subject of some controversy:- https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/emmeline-pankhurst-monument

My stained glass portrait of Emmeline uses the suffragette flag colours – purple for loyalty and dignity, white for purity and green for hope. Can you see from the photos how the iridescent hammered background glass sparkles in daylight? I made a zinc frame to give it strength and added a chain for hanging. It’s approx A4 size. I love making suffragette glass. I don’t want us to forget the work that went before us. You can read more on Wikipedia

We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers

Emmeline Pankhurst 1908

Tweet

The post Who was Emmeline Pankhurst and why was she important? first appeared on KayBee Glass.

The post Why do people hate moths? first appeared on KayBee Glass.