Last week I have completed a small project. I was making pairs of decorative window corners incorporating a box of mismatched salvaged bevels. The bevels were brand new and in great condition but they ended up as leftovers from a very large project in another glass studio. There was a box of them, all mixed, and they were offered to me since the other glass artist did not have any use for them. She actually remarked "I would like to someday see what you'd make of them" - and now it is time to show and tell.
I love bevels and I thought they were very beautiful. Also, I liked the inevitable creative aspect of this - the bevels were mismatched and, therefore, they did not fit neatly together. The first thing I did was to sort them. I sorted by size and shape, so I ended up with quite a few piles that I marked "diamonds", "shields", "drops", "leaves", "miscellaneous medium", "small squiggles", "odd large"…
Very soon I started making my stand-up 3D angels using bevels that looked like wings. There were a lot of them, more than 10 pairs, so I could create a lot of angels in different colors. After that my ideas have dried up. Of course, I knew what I wanted to do with shields and diamonds, and they were waiting patiently for a request for a geometric panel or a Victorian transom to come my way. And I knew that I would use the small bevels, however oddly shaped they may have been, in candle holders and as accents. However, I also had a pretty large pile of large bevels, the size of my palm and even larger, that seemed not to fit anywhere. I kept coming back to them periodically throughout the year and - nothing, no ideas came to mind.
That is until a month ago. I saw decorative window corners in a window of a brownstone and it has instantly clicked - THERE! This is what those large bevels would be great for. I resorted them and picked out pairs and groups of four, drew a triangle on a piece of modeling paper and began to lay out and rearrange bevels, again and again. I must say that the first pair of window corners took me a long time, but then the process got smoother, I was really enjoying it by the 3rd pair, and when the 6th pair was completed I was sad - there were no more large bevels left.
So, here they are, my shiny treasures made of salvaged pieces. They got a new lease on life and I hope they will find a loving home soon. I will definitely show the photos to the artist who gave the bevels up in the first place, and I will have to make sure to ask her whether she has any more. Maybe she does, and I would enjoy upcycling them much more than if I just bought bevel clusters and pulled them apart.
You can see more detail on each pair of window corners here in my shop.
