About — Karen Scrase Glass

Hand painted stained glass inspired by nature

About me

My fondest memories of childhood include seaside holidays playing on the beach, swimming in the cold sea and walks at our local arboretum at Westonbirt. This came to reflect in my studies at University where I studied Fine Art Painting and Printmaking (First class) and explored ideas around walking and Journeying, inspired by the books of Bruce Chatwin, Fiona Cambell and the wonderful map like creations of the Native Australian people: in particular Clifford Possum Tjapaljarri.

I have since worked and still work as an Art teacher in secondary schools, alongside which my passion for craft in different forms has grown, working in schools has challenged me to develop and hone a wide variety of skills to engage my students. In 2021 a friend and I enrolled in a evening course in glass fusing, I had many years before undertaken a stained glass course and was very keen to learn more and develop these skills and wow was I smitten!

Since then I have been happily experimenting in my shed up in my garden: playing with glass paint, fusing and exploring the ways I can capture the special moments in nature I experience locally in my garden, on walks in the wilder corners of my home city of Bristol and on day trips and holidays and yes I have seen a mermaid!

My Inspiration

Here are a few of my favorite things

The Stained Glass Process

Working with stained glass involves many different stages. Once you have developed your ideas into drawn designs you then create a ‘cartoon’ which is a line drawing of your lead lines, glass shapes and design using a thick pen.
Selecting your glass colour and texture for using within the piece and then cutting the pieces using a glass cutter is the first practical step which is then followed by ‘tracing’ the key details in line using a light box to work on.
You can then use different glass paints and enamels, my favored is Reusche paints (traditional stained glass paint which has been used for hundreds of years), you mix this from a powder combined with gum arabic to ensure it adheres to the glass prior to firing. This is then fired in a glass kiln to 670C to fuse the paint permanently to the glass.
Next you can add much more detail, adding fine layers of paint all over which is called ‘matting’ and this is an exciting stage as you an be quite experimental with mark making ; stippling, scratching into the paint (scraffito), moving wet paint around, layering brushmarks, dropping beads of water to create watermarks to name but a few. This is then re fired as many times as needed to create the effects you wish to achieve.
Once the glass pieces are ready then leading up is the next step, stretching the lead and then cutting to size and placing all the parts together like a jigsaw: followed by soldering the separate pieces of lead at the joins (using a flux to ensure a strong join).
Finally cementing the glass into the lead to add strength and to make it watertight if it is to be used as a functional window, then a jolly good polish and clean up!
Voila! The finished stained glass piece.