Project 5: An Illuminated Kingdom

This week's project is essentially a fancy floating candle holder. I'm not really sure where I got the idea, but I knew I wanted a castle, water and flames. Some castles have moats, so I went with that. The candles sit in the moat and illuminate the castle. I was sort of imagining the scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when the first years travel by boat to get to Hogwarts and their minds are blown when they see how breathtaking the castle is. My castle is not nearly so ornate or immense, but in my head, it's a rockin' castle.  

Harry Potter! See what I was shooting for?

 

The Process:

First things first, I had to sketch my design for both the castle and the box. I made the box pretty boring. It's 5"x 7" if that helps put the size of the project in perspective. 

A pattern was made from the sketch and the actual pieces of glass were cut out. It's hard to tell from the pictures but my castle is a light purple-y color and its roof is a deep blue. 

Lined up and ready to be cut.

Layout

The pieces are foiled and soldered together. The nails are used to hold the pieces in their correct position so the don't move around during the soldering process.

This reminded me of Voodoo 

 

The box construction was pretty standard as far as boxes go. It had a base and four sides.

In the picture below, you will notice that there is copper foil running down the center of two sides. I keep forgetting that glass is fragile and not pliable. While trying to make sure my castle would fit correctly into the box, I pushed too hard and cracked the side. It was a happy accident because the foil ended up giving me a place to attach the castle to the box, but I was mad at myself for cracking another project.

Last step was to attach the castle to the box. I put water in my moat, which you can sort of see in the pictures and added my candles. I struck a match and hit the lights and took a whole bunch of pictures.

 End Result:

Backlit

This reminds me of a fortress with flames to deter invaders!