Love the design, but I'm kind of envious of how easy you made this look! Haha. My wife and I got super into stained glass work for a while there, and while she kept getting better, I never really did. It's hard to do it well, so mad props to you for making it look so easy!
I was surprised and please how much I took to it, honestly; I went in cold and was prepared to not really get a knack for it.
But easy-looking is also a product of writing it up after the fact, and learning under good instruction; it was still a solid 20+ hours of work with a fair amount of cursing and bits of messing up and redoing stuff.
In any case, whether or not I caught on quicker than average, the process itself feels very accessible to me. I can recommend giving it a shot a lot more readily than I'd have guessed before I tried it myself.
Also, if you like my mathy design instincts with this stained glass piece, you may enjoy looking through the painting work (mostly oils) I've done over the last couple years:
Now that you've learned how to do this in the class, how feasible would it be to do at home? It seems like the grinder would be the most difficult part to replicate at home. I imagine a woodworking router with some sort of diamond grinder bit couldn't be used since I think you said it has water running on the bit.
Totally feasible! You could probably put a whole one-person workspace into about fifty square feet without getting cramped, less with some squeezing and multitasking, and I'd guess basic toolset would run you less than $500 retail.
The grinder I used is a pretty simple unit with a water reservoir tray under the grill that keeps the bit wet via a sponge feeder; probably about $100 new, used bargains if you go looking, but, yeah, water feed of some sort is key to the grinding working well on glass.
Looks like a fun art project, thanks! As you say, there aren't too many tools needed. If you were doing this on your own, though, not part of a class, where would you get the glass? It looks like you had a nice variety of interesting pieces to choose from.
I got to use the studio's supply, so I haven't had to really sort out glass buying myself. And yeah, I was lucky to benefit from access to a really great collection of glass. But there are some commercial firms (Spectrum does very flat, transparent glass; Delphi does stuff with more character) and you can go haunt estate sales, watch for hobbyists getting out from under their supply, check with art schools, etc.