Inspiration

While it’s true that the groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter and most of the country is blanketed in snow, you can cheer up knowing that spring is right around the corner. When you find yourself trapped indoors due to the freezing temperatures and piles of snow, you can warm up with toasty thoughts of the upcoming spring season.   Let those spring thoughts fuel your creativity and passion for art glass. There’s no limit to what you can create with fused glass, stained glass, mosaics, and glass jewelry. Let the world of spring be your inspiration.   Spring is when the land wakes up again, with blooming flowers and trees that grow back their leaves and show their first signs of fruit. Spring is when animals come out from the hollows and explore the world anew. It’s a tremendous time of rebirth from the ground up.   Don’t just sit and stare out the windows into the snow wishing for spring to come. While you wait, keep busy by honing in on your craft. Snowed in? Hunker down in your studio to create your best pieces yet. From birds to butterflies, embrace the essence of spring and capture it in your work.

There are only 52 days left until Christmas! Have you started your holiday shopping yet? If not, Delphi has you covered with some bright and shiny ideas for the stained glass artist in your life. Here are some we think will be very well received if you tuck them under your tree!   1. Stained Glass A stained glass artist can never have too much glass to work with. We carry a huge selection of stained glass . Why not order some new and exciting colors for your favorite stained glass artist? Try something different like the Van Gogh glass that is almost too pretty to cut. Plus with glass packs and sample sets, your recipient will get a gorgeous array of glass to work with in one fabulous package.   2. Studio Pro Caddy If you’re stained glass artist has tools all over the place in their studio, perhaps a Studio Pro Caddy will be useful. It keeps all essential tools within easy reach and has them ready to use. Plus, the bottle holder and the iron stand keep chemicals and the hot iron safe.   3. Finishing Compound For the stained glass artist, that has everything, finishing compound is always a nice gift because it’s something tha

Brace yourselves…fall is coming. And so are about a million different memes about pumpkin spice lattes and apple everything. So why not use that to fuel your fall inspirations with stained glass projects, glass fusing, mosaic designs, and glass jewelry?   Fall leaves are one of the most spectacular sights to behold. As the leaves change from green to red, orange, yellow and brown, why not use that as your next stained glass design? Or create a fused glass bowl that looks like a fall leaf? It could be the perfect centerpiece for your coffee table. Be sure to fill it up with some apple or pumpkin spice-flavored candy of course!   Cooler temperatures are coming as well. How about making some cool fused glass jewelry to go with your new sweater? Whatever fall glass art project you’re designing, we’ve got the supplies you need . Fall inspirations are all around you, even in our own Delphi artist gallery . Add yours to our gallery with the tag “fall.”   And let’s not forget that one of the best holidays will soon be upon us…Halloween! See if you can totally outdo the neighbors this year by making some spooktacular c

Header image courtesy of Chihuly Collection - St. Petersburg, Florida As glass artists, fueling our own imagination comes from being inspired by the creativity of others. Observing the beauty of glass art pieces that have been unleashed from another artist’s dreams, means we are that much closer to displaying our own for the world to see.   Visiting museums with glass art displays can give us more insight into what we can skillfully create and drive our dreams of becoming beloved artists. It can also be a beautiful way to spend a day. Here are some of the best museums in America to view stunning glass art collections and become inspired.   Macklowe Gallery – New York, New York You don’t need to travel the world to see the very best glass art because this gallery displays some of the finest pieces from all over the globe. You’ll find Tiffany lamps and Tiffany glass, French cameo glass by Argy-Rousseau, and much more.   Museum of Glass   (MOG) – Tacoma, Washington Founded in 2002, this museum commits itself to celebrating the movement of studio glass art. While it often features special collections, amon

If you love making stained glass projects, then you’ll love the cool effects that painting on stained glass can have. It gives you more of a chance to be creative, allowing for more of a flow of ideas without having to worry about cutting or other processes that need your complete accuracy to ensure a beautiful outcome.   The paints used for stained glass painting are made by taking ground glass and mixing it with a variety of colored pigments and a flux. They can be applied in any number of ways and then they get permanently affixed by being fired in a kiln. These paints may be transparent or opaque, and you can mix them together though it is advised that you stick to the same manufacturer when mixing paints for consistency reasons.   While stained glass painting is a wonderful way to experiment with a broad range of vibrant colors, you’ll need to make sure you keep exact records of your paint color tests to see what you mixed and what temperatures you used or it will all be for nothing.   When you buy paints for stained glass painting, you’ll need to find out which ones are low or high firing. Low firing paint is better suited to stain

Summer is a great time to unleash your creativity. It’s also a great time to grab a KraftyBlok or two from Delphi and bring your ideas to life. KraftyBlok is a multifaceted glass block that you can turn into pretty much anything you can dream up. Think of it as a blank canvas in glass block form .   Its smooth and clear surface is the perfect base for mosaics, etching, painting and plenty more. Plus, it has an opening where you can easily add embellishments or even lights to really make your KraftyBlok project shine. You can purchase KraftyBlok stands to display your KraftyBlok creation too.   There are endless possibilities to bring your KraftyBlok project to life on so many levels. Turn it into a piggy bank for your children or grandchildren. Make it into a stunning vase to hold your fresh-cut flowers. Night lights, picture boxes, bookends and more can all be easily made by using a KraftyBlok.   If you still need inspiration, get our free KraftyBlok eBook . There are step-by-step instructions and templates so you can recreate the projects featured in it. This free 48-page eBook brings you ideas for every season too, so you can find some in

As the weather starts to warm up, everything around us begins to blossom again. The flowers bloom, the trees start to turn green again and the birds come back to sing for us. It all means that spring is here. Now is the time to embrace this beautiful season where nature seems to be calling us back out into the wild.   When you think of spring, what comes to mind first? Is it flowers? Or birds? Perhaps it is a beautiful landscape that’s lit up by the lingering sun that now sets later in the evening. Whatever it is, all you need to do to find inspiration to create something spectacular is open your door and walk out into the world.   But if birds and flowers aren’t your idea of the perfect theme for your next stained glass, fused glass, mosaic or glass jewelry project, you’ll have to dig deeper. Sure, all of it has been done before but no one has seen what you have through your eyes, and isn’t that what it means to create art?   Butterflies are a great spring theme and you can make them your own by creating them in the way you see them. You can also imagine yourself somewhere else, where the world might look different during spring t

Ask anyone what the most wonderful time of the year is and you’re bound to get a lot of responses about the winter holidays. But here at Delphi Glass, our favorite time of the year has to be during National Art Glass month when we host our Annual Art Glass Festival.   We love it because we truly have some of the most talented customers around. Every year, it seems the entries get more and more incredible. Click here to visit the gallery of our previous Art Glass Festival winners. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro at creating glass art projects, we encourage you to enter for a chance to win great prizes ranging in value from $100 to $400. We have a wonderful variety of categories that you can enter your work under. Some of them include beads & jewelry, blown glass, flameworked glass, kiln formed glass, lamps, large panels (entries for this category must be larger than 2 square feet), mosaics and small panels (less than 2 square feet).   You don’t need to be in Lansing, Michigan either to participate. You can enter from anywhere online until March 31, 2016. If you’re going to bring your entries to the Lansing location, make su

Whether you’re making a fused glass project or a unique piece of glass jewelry, why not let it really shine by adding some glowing pigment? CBS Aqua Glow is a powder that works well with glass fusing as well as fused glass jewelry. While it appears yellowish in color, once exposed to a prolonged light source such as a lamp or the sun, it illuminates in an illustrious aqua color in the darkness.   What’s neat about this pigment is that it reflects a gentle color to the art you create when you see it in the light. But once the lights go out, it becomes even more spectacular. CBS Aqua Glow is compatible with all COEs too and that makes it an excellent pigment to use when creating anything from glass beads to lampworking and beyond.   If you’d like to use this pigment in your next glass project, you’ll want to get the ratio just right. Glow pigment mixed with glass powder uses a ratio of 1:4, with the smaller portion being for the glow powder. You’ll also want to cap, or encase, your glow powder inside layers of glass so that you’ll get a smooth texture when creating your pieces and keep the glow pigment from wearing away, which w

If you’re looking for some inspiration so you can ring in spring with a festive seasonal piece, get your copy of Delphi’s free Easter eBook . Did I mention it’s free? Easter is on March 27th this year and wouldn’t it be great to make something beautiful to display for Easter dinner? You’ll definitely want to take a look at the projects featured in the free Easter eBook, where every artist can find creative motivation from stained glass to glass fusing to mosaics to glass jewelry. If you’re looking for fused glass ideas, the fused glass bunny dish would be an adorable addition to your Easter table. You can let it just be art or you can give it some jellybeans to hold for the kids. For a grand Easter decoration that you can put up in the window, try the stained glass cross panel. When the light from the spring sun hits it, it will light up your room and your heart with love. If you like using recyclables to create your works of art, try making the mosaic bunny vase using a recycled bottle. You can use our included mosaic pattern or you can let your own imagination run wild. Either way, it will make such a beautiful centerpiece

Each month at Delphi Glass, we’d like to put the spotlight on one of the many talented artists we see daily in our Artist Gallery. For the month of February, we’re delighted to introduce Stephanie Murphy, who goes by the name aMosaicist in our gallery. Stephanie was born and raised in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, and now lives just south of there in a town called Schnecksville. After earning her nursing degree in college, she became a critical care nurse for 10 years. But in order to care for her autistic son, Patrick, she had to leave her career behind. Throughout college and beyond, Stephanie began using art as a coping mechanism for the stresses in her life, especially when it came to raising her autistic son. “In college, I filled my electives with art classes, drawing and ceramics, to give my brain a respite from the vigorous nursing courses. Creating art gives my left brain some rest and my right brain some much needed exercise. I can go on vacation without ever leaving home. Creating mosaic and fused glass art is something I do for me.” Stephanie has been creating mosaics for 13 years and fused glass for about 4 years. She got her start by