A Box Full of "Stuff"

As a freshman at BYU, I took a Stained Glass class. My poor roommate, Melissa. I'd stay up hours into the night, cutting glass in our little 2x3 foot cell, I mean dorm room. Scraping and tapping, scraping and tapping. She was so patient!

Since then, I have been hauling around a box full of broken glass (for 13 years now). It has moved to 16 different houses, annoyed two different husbands, and for a while, made many beautiful things. Although I have been reluctant to part with the box I have not really used it's contents for about 6 years. Sad really, but true.

Then my friend Camille posted a homemade gift giveaway on her blog. I thought she was completely brilliant so I followed suit. There are only a few things that I can make homemade...let's see. I can make children, I can make gloppy rice with hard centers, I can make counted cross-stitch stuff (but it takes me about 78 years to finish anything cross-stitch), and I can make stained glass stuff. In fact, that is exactly what was written on the box I refused to part with. "Stained Glass Stuff."

As I considered my options concerning what I could give my 5 people I chose gloppy rice with hard centers! Yea!!! Then I ran into some problems shipping it so I came up with another option. I chose to mosaic some stuff. I made blue and red heart picture frames. I made a mirror and a planter (not pictured because I sent it off before I thought about taking a picture). And I made a serving tray...which I almost smashed into a billion pieces out of pure frustration.

Like a moron I decided to make this one first. I made it for my sister Britta because her husband makes her breakfast every Saturday **Awwww**. Since she is required to love me anyway, I decided to try something new. Instead of making it from stained glass, I used clear glass and then painted it my desired colors. Then I flipped over the painted side, glued it, and added the grout.

Then the paint began to separate from the glass and the glass came unstuck and was all over the place and my pattern was ruined and I had globbs of grout and paint and glass and tears and blood (yes, I cut my finger on a missing piece of glass) and it was noooo fun. So I almost went back to sending everyone gloppy rice, but obviously cooler heads prevailed.

In the end, I loved everything I made. Mostly I loved them because it had been so long since I took the time to attempt something creative. It was so fun to make these little things, all the while getting homemade gifts from other people. I can't wait to do it again!