This week, in addition to a window commission that I am wrapping up, I am working on a fun piece that a customer will be giving as a gift.  She reached out to me a few months ago with an idea for a friend of her's who she really admires and wanted to let her know how much she values her friendship.  She had a creative idea about using her friend's signature as a focal point of a piece of glass art and emailed me to see if that was possible.  We went back and forth discussing options and both of us had  a great time coming up with interesting, beautiful ways to put this art piece together.  The concept we developed was a river with her signature painted on it, flowing through some black stones and splashing water up in the air.  She gave me the information on all her friend's family members' birthstones (including the dog!) and I created glass "rocks" for each one of them in the solid color of their birthstone.  Additionally, to symbolize the family bond, I layered the different colors of the glass birthstones in my kiln to create other glass stones that have their colors fused together as one.  All the stones required me smashing apart the fused glass with a hammer-- hooray for safety glasses!  You can see all the different types of pieces in the photo above; hopefully I obscured the signature enough so she doesn't stumble upon it before she receives the gift!  Once she has given it to her, I will share the finished photo.  I'm really enjoying working on this thoughtful piece.