This project to convert a kidney-shaped coffee table with a cracked and scratched clear glass center, into a stained glass mosaic, took nearly a year to finish. From figuring out the design to cutting the glass and piecing it together. I did every bit and I cut myself more times than I could remember. I tried to use gloves to protect my hands at the beginning, but it didn’t leave me with enough dexterity when I was manipulating the pieces. So I bought a big box of Band-aids and resigned myself to a sliced up finger here and there. Getting cut actually became my signal that it was time to take a break and walk away for awhile.

While I shunned protective gloves, I was adamant about my eye protection. Little shards of glass like to fly when you’re breaking or cutting a sheet of it. I never worked on this project without wearing a pair of safety glasses. In fact, I know you can see one of the pairs I wore in a slideshow photo.

My father was a stickler for safety glasses. He got a sliver of metal embedded in his eye when he was a young man in the Navy. He used to tell the story of having the ship’s doctor remove it as the ship rocked and rolled beneath him. “Keep absolutely still or I’ll blind you,” the doctor told him.  So he stayed still and thankfully the doctor got the sliver out of his eye and my father kept his sight.

He learned an early lesson in safety and made sure to pass that lesson on to me. He admired this table whenever he came in my house after it was finished. To the day he died, I think he was stunned that his daughter made something he considered so beautiful.

And it is a beautiful table. No photo does it justice. When the blinds are open and sunshine pours in, the table sparkles. If I light up battery-powered disks beneath it at night, it casts colored shadows and patterns on the walls and ceilings.

Was it worth of year of work and quite a bit of blood shed that I shed from my fingers?

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