New “Stained Glass” for Castlebank

Some time ago I took a photo of the stained glass window Anne Black had commissioned for the Old Kirk in memory of her father and brother.  I decided to make a version of it to hang in the call here in the memory of the family who built the house – not real stained glass unfortunately as I cannot justify the 10K it would cost as R is looking towards retiring at the end of next year (I will believe this when I see it btw).

So first I cleaned the image up and ran it through a program to improve its resolution.  Then I got a very large print of it professionally printed – to do justice to the original I was trying to get it as close to the original size of the window as possible.  So the frame I bought was A0, but the shape of the window is such that it is not A0 shape (it is long and thin), so I had to carefully paste coloured card around the outside to cover the backing.  Then I put it in its frame.

I have to admit what happened next was partially my fault.  I had ordered a very cheap mount – not really a frame at all, but a piece of hardboard with clips to attach it to a large sheet of perspex.  I had also had yet another contentious conversation with R and J about them never helping me with anything and was not feeling in the mood for asking them for assistance.  So I tried to mount the picture on to the backing, and lift the perspex on to it.  This went well and I managed then to flip the whole assembly over.  I pressed the clips into place without much difficulty, and flipped it back.  But disaster had struck – the clips had obviously twisted it a little, and because it was so huge, the plastic couldn’t take the strain and it snapped across.

So back to the drawing board and I bought the expensive frame it should have had in the first place.  R and I then hung it – in my opinion it looks magnificent.