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Well, the first problem I ran into when making my Round 1 project is that my design ideas don't always keep pace with my skill level. And many of my ideas are probably only clever to me (like my first idea, which was to make little stained glass ZZ Top beards for the little guys). Then for some reason I started to think about those "Mighty Dog" commercials, and the idea of little dogs with big personalities (doggonalities?) got me thinking about hummingbirds--little birds with the attitude of Thunderbirds. And that turned into the idea of a hummingbird totem pole.

I really debated about what glass to use. I was originally using different shades of iridized opalescent glass--iridized glass is a natural for hummingbirds, and I thought the streaky pieces of glass would look like feathers. But then I realized that my totem pole looked less like a totem pole and more like just a stack of hummingbirds. So I switched to primary colors of cathedral glass since that seemed more appropriate for the design. I also hoped that might help focus the design as a totem pole first, so that the hummingbirds would be kind of surprising and make you take a second look.

I had a lot of trouble getting the birds to stand upright--especially since I wanted to have the wings graduated in size, so it's rather top-heavy. Originally the bottom bird was also standing on a pointy tail, but it was just too unwieldy. So I had to clip the bottom of his tail of so that he could stand flat. I also had a lot of trouble getting the copper foil to support the weight, so I kept trying to reinforce everything with a lot of 67/37 solder, so it would set up quickly. Too bad we're not being judged by weight of our entries--inch for inch, I think my hummingbird-n-solder creation is the densest substance in the universe, outside of black holes.

So there's my hummingbird totem pole--the first creation of what art historians will no doubt come to call my "Great Spools O'Solder" period.

Suzanne Gunn was unable to complete her project by the deadline.