Project Complete: Bird Flower Painting

I'm finally done with this project and I'm satisfied with how it turned out. The solder lines are much smoother than I'd feared. It generally has a professional look, at least to my non-professional eye. The most frustrating step was actually installing the wooden frame. I've learned something important about guide holes for screws... and how wide they should be.

Here is the project after I had finished foiling every piece with 7/32 or 3/16 inch strips of foil. I had to evenly wrap all the edges of glass so about 1 mm of foil overlapped off the edges onto both the front and back of the glass. When two foiled pieces are then placed alongside each other, this creates an "I"-shaped support for the lead solder.

[Click images to enlarge]

This is another close up of the bird section, all foiled this time:


And here is the finished piece. I'd like to get a better shot of it eventually, since this image doesn't show any of the subtleties of the glass whorls and distorts the lighting. The piece is a little more cartoony than I was going for. I think this effect comes mainly from the flat green of the leaves. I should have used an art-glass for the basic leaf color instead, to create a more organic effect.