The story behind the sisu panel

What is Sisu?

Sisu is a Finnish word that represents the spirit of the Finnish people, and means something like «strength, courage and determination, especially in the face of extreme adversity».

Sisu makes an excellent addition to my stained glass series of Positive Words. My goal in this series is to make art that inspires. Sisu is short and therefore would be quick-ish to design and make, and carries a really encouraging message.  If you like it, it's available to buy here.

Working up a design

The first step is to get out the pencil and paper and start doodling. After a bit of trial and error, I hit on a design that I liked.

Snaky design is interesting but far too hard to cut in glass

The coloured design could work but seemed too blocky

Finally - the one with the prettiest letters

Always need two copies of the final design

I usually take the design to the computer at this point and create a vector line drawing in Adobe Illustrator. This allows me to scale the image to any size, add width to the cutting lines to allow for that tiny extra space introduced by the copper foil, and to print out multiple copies.But that takes time and I wanted to start straight away, and the original design was a reasonable size. So I dug out some carbon paper (yes, she has carbon paper, because hoarding is second nature to an old packrat like me).It was important that the design be symmetrical and an S is hard to draw the same way twice. So I drew the first S and then traced it onto scrap paper. If you look closely at the final design image, you can see the second S is a glued-down cutout. Then I traced the whole word onto another sheet.  Two copies (at least) of a pattern are always needed: one to use for cutting the glass, and the second to hold the cut pieces, and later to keep it aligned when soldering.

Choosing and cutting the glass

I chose a dark blue-green with swirly clouds for the letters. I've never been to Finland but I understand it has many trees and lakes, and those natural forest and sky colours seemed appropriate for the landscape. The bright green is reminiscent of springtime and the hope it brings.

Letters cut out, starting to fill the gaps

The swirly glass is beautiful but was difficult to cut. Art glass always has one side that's smoother than the other -- smoother is easier to cut. This glass, however, contains so many occlusions (bubbles and little lumpy bits) that it was hard to tell which side to cut. Worse, it splintered leaving quite sharp edges. In contrast, the bright green for the gaps was lovely - very smooth on both sides and easy to cut. Oh well. I think the results were worth slightly sore fingers.

All cut out, copper foil applied and ready to solder