A comprehensive guide on how to contract lead-poisoning, a summing up of the symptoms and an estimation on how long it takes before you can exercise again.

I have wanted to build stained glass windows for quite some time. I still endeavor to learn how to do it even now. This one, which I built last summer, had to be constricted by a lack of money. I didn’t have the funds to get into the real stuff, so I opted for the second best option: acrylic glass with self-adhesive lead tape and glass paint.

I started off by building two large frames out of pine that would fit snuggly into one of my windows. I sandwhiched a massive sheet of thin acrylic glass in between and screws them together. Below you can see me revel in the succes of that part of the build.

I then went on to design the image I wanted to work with. I leaned towards taking on Borderlands for a bit, but chose for a Bioshock themed window in the end. I collected some images and put them together to get this design:

Satisfied with how much tention this design carries and how recognizably Bioshock it is, I printed it. After sticking the A4 sheets together with hot glue (wood glue tends to wrinkle up the paper), I taped it to the back of the acrylic glass and working on the lead lining.

And here’s where the trouble started. On the second day of working with this stuff, I felt a slight tingly in my fingers. Meanwhile my stomach had started to complain. I foolishly ignored these warning signs and went on. A day later, I start losing vision slightly, I can’t walk normally – as if I had forgotten how to do it – and my fingers had turned blue.

A trip to the doctor was warranted. He made it quite clear that I was a fool and that I should avoid all contact with lead based products. But at that point, I was already on to painting.

Getting more and more tired and ill I let my pencils soldier on. I started off with the Big Daddy, who I had to get really, really right.

After the base layer was all done, I added more and more colours to get that rusted look. Adam Savage has got a great guide on how to paint rust. Look it up, even if you are not into crafting, as it will change the way you look at the world.

When I was please with the Big Daddy, the Little Sister and the Splicers, I moved on to the backdrop. I wanted to recreate that Rapture feeling of having an underwater metropolis with the skyscrapers and the lights. I lined out the buildings in the background first with some dark brown. I painted several layers of dark blue over them until I was happy with how bright the colours were. A lot of effort and paint went into this part.

The effect, however, was grand. Because I painted the blue over the buildings, those would only be visible when light was shining through from the back of the glass. I emphasized this some more by recreating the glassy effect with relatively dry strokes of blue-ish white.

The final result is not so much a stained glass window as a painting that changes colours depending on the weather and the time of day. It looks great, but maybe it wasn’t worth being unable to exercise for two months.

Choices. Choices.