Sage House Glass

Tag: family

  • Upcoming Glass Art Commissions and Personal Projects

    Upcoming Glass Art Commissions and Personal Projects

    It’s been a very long summer! A summer I’m incredibly grateful for, but also still recovering from. I’m the kind of exhausted that’s bone deep. And I don’t anticipate the exhaustion to go away anytime soon–which is another thing I’m grateful for, but hopefully more to come on that in the future.

    In regards to glass, I’ve been working on several projects at once, all with some pretty intense deadlines.

    • Fall Drop at Minkology by September 10th, including pumpkins, autumn leaves, ghosties and lightning bugs.
    • A full stock of celestial and fantasy items for the Moonfire Realms Renn Faire happening September 26th at Rubicon Farm, NC. Check it out!
    • Several personal close-to-the-heart commissions for family members, including birth flowers, suns, poppies and more; some were completed in early July and others in the planning stage for late September.
    • And one really elaborate post-card reproduction of the Hotel del Coronado for my brother and his wife by August 30th. This one’s a secret! And I’m cutting it close.

    The Hotel del Coronado project deserves its own post, so I’ll save the bulk of that adventure for next week. I’m past the cutting and grinding at this point, so we’re onto wrapping these truly infinitesimally small pieces, that I designed because I’m a sadist. I might also be one of those people that’s like, “Eh, I’ll make it work.” Confidence or laziness? Both are the father of invention.

    I’m looking forward to producing gifts for friends and family in the season to come. I want to pull back a bit on crafting for production and instead focus on the really personal touches commissions can make. It means so much to me that people trust me to replicate or translate something special to them into glass, whether it’s a memory, tribute or totem. I’m honored, and I take every commission with that level of gravity.

    But that’s commissions–sometimes I get to go really crazy and try new things when I’m making fun gifts for family members, so my brother’s Coronado piece is going to be the height of creativity and a total deluge of trial and error. Fun, light-hearted, and totally unserious. I hope he’ll love it!

    Check in next week if you’re interested to see the entire artistic process behind bringing a classic Californian landmark into colorful glass.

  • The Art of Writing About Art

    The Art of Writing About Art

    I started this blog in conjunction with my stained glass website for a couple of reasons. For one, I just love writing about art and stained glass. I am deeply enthusiastic about promoting artists, describing the stained glass process and ruminating on my inspirations. Writing about the intentions driving my art really helps to remind me of the “why.”

    The “why” is fundamental to art being more than just a “side hustle.” I’m often plagued with the Capricorn tendency to make sure every moment of my day is *productive.* If I’m not doing three things at once, maximizing my time, crossing things off a list–well, then I’m just not reaching my full potential, right? But now that I’m older and possibly wiser, I’m realizing how fast time is flying while I’m multi-tasking my life away. Art can be mindful. Art can help me slow down. Art doesn’t always have to be productive, a business, something to mass produce. It’s valuable on its own. The act of making is valuable.

    The act of writing about making–that’s valuable too, for me. Often I can find myself creating with abandon and focusing so much on the end result that I’m not taking the time to enjoy the process. Being mindful of my “why” can slow down the pace of what I’m doing and help me to learn more about myself in the process. Why do I favor these colors, this texture, that shape? What mood am I trying to evoke for someone else viewing the piece? What does my art remind me of, why is it comforting to me, what memory does it touch in the back of my mind?

    I’ve also learned that if something doesn’t exist on the internet that you wish existed on the internet, then maybe you’re the one that has to make it. I would love reading a weekly blog for stained glass artists rather than just endlessly scroll TikTok videos in the community. I’m much more interested in the old style of connection: message boards, chat rooms, blogrolls. I’m only 37, okay, but I do miss the golden age of the internet. Instagram and TikTok can only do so much to connect people, and it’s really just a place for most people to lurk. Don’t get me wrong, I love making reels as much as the next stained glass artist, but I miss longform content! I’m probably the only one.

    I love writing about stained glass art and how my life is growing alongside my skills. I’m holding onto my intention and making sure everything I design and create is filtered through that purpose.

  • May Commissions

    May Commissions

    I had the honor of making some birthday and mother’s day gifts for May Commissions. Of course, my mom got a Monstera leaf for mother’s day because she’s my #1 fan.

    One of my mom’s besties growing up commissioned a sunflower for her niece’s birthday. I love hearing a little bit about the person I’m designing and crafting a piece for–it really informs the creativity and helps me design with more intention when I know a little backstory. This commission is going to a busy mother with a house full of love, who doesn’t have a lot of counter space in the kitchen, but loves to cook. She has a beautiful window above her sink and a sun catcher would add some light into her life. She’s especially fond of sunflowers, so I got to design my first sunflower sun-catcher.

    There are plenty of sunflower patterns online but I wanted to draw something that was a little imperfect, slightly askew. Just like all the flowers I design, I prefer to keep the petals off-balance. Flowers in nature are always slightly imperfect and so gorgeously varied. Patterns that are too precise feel more like wallpaper to me. So I started by gathering inspiration online and dove into drawing on my iPad in Procreate. Once I had a design I liked, I picked a color scheme and approved the mock-up with my customer.

    Picking glass is alternately the best and worst part of any design. I’m still learning to listen to my gut reaction when it comes to picking out glass, instead of waffling for hours over what shade of yellow is the perfect sunflower yellow. I selected a pale yellow Florentine glass sourced from Carolina Stained Glass, shout out to Suzie! Great shop with extremely helpful people and reasonable costs.

    Once my customer approved, it was onto cutting, grinding, washing, wrapping, soldering, washing, buffing, washing, patina, washing, buffing, and polishing! I’m extremely pleased with how the copper patina lends to the yellow glass and the kokomo glass center.

    It’s headed to California and I’ll be making a few TikToks and Instagram Reels from the soldering and patina process. Stay tuned!

  • Life Updates: Art as Therapy

    Life Updates: Art as Therapy

    TW: child loss, infertility

    When I started my little stained glass business, I didn’t imagine I’d be leaving my day job anytime soon. Don’t panic– I’m still not. I love being a librarian by day (with some night shifts and weekends) and I wouldn’t want to abandon all this progress in my career. After ten years in the field, I’m in leadership and staff development. I work with a creative group of very unique people I truly consider family. I get to cultivate community and facilitate story times and programs for children, what could be better than that?

    At least, that’s what I thought before we lost our son. It’s harder these days to work with children–don’t get me wrong, I still love it, but every cooing baby and excited toddler reminds me of the struggles we’re facing in our fertility “journey.”

    After another difficult year of hoping for results naturally, we finally decided to try IVF, something I initially balked at in fear. Injections? Hormones? A thousand blood draws and doctor visits? How could we afford the time, let alone the expense, for IVF? But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I was determined to be a mom.

    We started IVF in late fall 2025. Months of poking, prodding, needles, appointments, and a non-stop rollercoaster of emotions. Along the way, I’d lost the energy to create anything at all. Stained glass took a back seat, along with almost everything else. The effort was all worth it, though–we have one healthy egg! One perfect little embryo ready for transfer. One chance, really…but at least it’s a chance.

    Making art started as a way to cope with grief and loss, but it has become a persistent metaphor for what I’m going through with IVF. All of these disparate pieces of my life are going to come together like a stained glass panel; all these harsh and broken edges will form some sort of picture, eventually. We will put ourselves back together and draw some light back into our home.

    I’m officially slowing down and smelling the roses until this transfer happens. I’m taking my sweet time when I’m designing and creating new stained glass pieces. I’m making less art, but better art. I’m enjoying what it feels like to really breathe alongside what I’m making, back to the origins of meditative creation. Because all of this? All of this is therapy. It’s all a part of the bigger picture that I’m hoping is being soldered together right now as I type this.

    • The roses in my backyard I’m sitting with this spring

  • June Commissions & Happy Pride!

    June Commissions & Happy Pride!

    I absolutely love the way that summer announces itself in a wash of rainbows.

    My first commission for June is a perfect Pride coincidence. My sister and I were working at a market back in March when the patron “C” and their partner approached my booth. They loved the sunshine arch panels I was selling, but gave me the best feedback in the world: “Where’s the purple in your rainbow arches? If there was purple in there, that would be Pride. I would’ve bought them in a snap.” It was a brilliant critique–I hadn’t even realized my sunshine panels didn’t include a crucial color of the rainbow–violet. As a supporter of the alphabet mafia, but not a card carrying member, feedback like that was so helpful.

    C reached out to me on Instagram to commission a pair of sunshine arch panels with all the colors of the pride flag. We went through several iterations where the sun was drawn with a half smile, but realized it was too busy. The simple lines of the original sunshine arch paid homage to the textured glass, so we kept it clean.

    After a few weeks of conversation, and a delayed start from me–life can really get in the way of art, right?–the rainbow panels are polished and ready to head home with C. Here comes the sun, just in time for Summer storms. Below are a few more images of the set before I wrap them up for the journey.

    As June winds down, I’ll be adding several pieces to a storefront in Asheboro, North Carolina, called Minkology. I’ve been working to create a Summer-inspired collection for the storefront, all butterflies and flowers in pastels. I’m very eager to do a write up about that process, so more to come about that. I’m so excited to one day walk down the street and see a piece of mine hanging in the windows of a store–that’s truly the dream!

    I’m also looking forward to July commissions–I’ll be designing some new pieces and working outside my comfort zone with new soldering techniques. I’m working on a pair of Romantasy-inspired bookends for a patron’s birthday. I’ll possibly be repairing a sentimental set of glass pieces for another lovely person I met at a market. More to come on those commissions! And if you’re interested in a commission from me, please reach out via the website or my Instagram and we’ll get it on the books.

    Happy Pride, everyone! And happy summer break, to those who have kids out of school. As a children’s librarian by day, this is our busy season, so please be kind to your local librarians–we’re in the trenches!