All the leaves are gone.

The Chickadee Light Box was my third stained glass project and my first attempt at a lamp. It turned out better than I could have imagined. I love to turn on the light and just sit in the room with it glowing in the corner. (Maybe that's a little weird, I admit. But the soft light is peaceful.) The chickadees happily guard the entry of my house.

I've basked in the glory of my first successful lamp long enough. I figure that it's time to get on with the next one. I had the idea for a fall leaves lamp at the same time as the chickadees design. (Again, thank you to Ichiro Tashiro for his inspiring work.) So last fall, I wandered around my yard and took some snapshots of my maple trees.



I first thought a "realistic" leaf was the way to go. But as I studied the outlines of "real" leaves, I thought better of it real quick. There are a lot of curves and overlapping parts. I know my limitations. My stained glass experience was not up to the task of creating 6-8 realistic leaves. Especially when I'm building a complicated three-dimensional lamp.

Instead, I traced the outline of a leaf photo that I liked and made a posterboard cut-out of it. I actually made three identical cut-outs.

Once I drew the borders of the lamp panel (6" x 9") I played around with the placement of the leaves. When I was happy, I traced around the leaf cutouts and moved on to the next panel of the lamp. All the while I'm thinking about how the glass will cut and grind. I could easily design myself into a corner, making pieces that would be very difficult to reproduce.

As you can see, the first panel is completed. I'm taking cues from panel #1 to design panel #2. These panels will make one corner of the lamp. On the fly, I decided to take curves out of the design. Instead, I've gone over the leaf tracings with a ruler to straighten every curve.

Now all four panels are designed and labeled. I will photocopy them for safekeeping. My next step is to transfer each panel design to poster board. I will then number and cut out all the pieces using my foiling shears.