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Stained Glass

Reality TVClubHouse Discussions: General Discussions ARCHIVES: Jan ~ Apr 2009: The Hobby Hall: Stained Glass users admin

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Wargod
Moderator

07-16-2001

Thursday, February 21, 2008 - 1:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Wargod a private message Print Post    
I'm not new to stained glass projects, but it's been years and years since I've done it. When I was a kid, I used to do it all the time and really enjoyed it. I did the type where you get the colored panes of glass, cut it into sizes and shapes you want, and then solder them together and have done it using patterns laid under the glass, tracing it out in liquid lead and then using the glass stain to color it. I pretty much got out of doing it, especially as I got older and started paying for my own craft supplies, lol, because it can be a pretty expensive hobby.

Before Christmas, our uncle moved into his new house and was really excited to host the family Christmas dinner, to get the big tree and really go all out. I thought it'd be a fun gift to have all the younger nieces and nephews make Christmas ornaments for him and decided on having them paint glass ornament balls. It was a great success...the kids had fun, they did an amazing job, and uncle (who is one of those macho type guys, but a huge softie when it comes to the kids) absolutely loves to showcase the crafty stuff the kids do for him loved the gift. They also did some for my great aunt who was tickled pink about it.

Anyways, about a month ago I was having one of those boring days. Darren and Caleb were playing a game, Dakota had a friend over and they were in her room and I really didn't have anything to do. I'd packed up all of my beading stuff before Christmas (nephew was driving me nuts getting into it) and still hadn't gotten that stuff put away and didn't want to dig through the box so I was kinda wandering around looking for something to do. I found a piece of glass in the garage and remembered the paints and thought, hey that sounds like fun.

I already had a bunch of bottles of glass stain and liquid lead left from Christmas so all I really needed was a book of patterns. Because I hadn't done anything like this in years, I was just messing around on the first one:

firsttry

It came out halfway decent. If you get right up to it you can see several mistakes (ok, quite a few, lol) but for doing it for the first time in about 15 years, I was happy.

Dakota saw it and liked it and asked me to do some for her room. She picked out a couple patterns she liked and I scrounged around the house for some glass. Found a couple of old picture frames we weren't using and figured that was good enough for me, lol.

dakotasroom

The "LOVE" one has clear beads on the letters that don't really show in the picture. It's quite a neat trick, the stain shows through the beads but you can clearly see the beads. The one closest to the flower painted on the wall is a dragonfly (it's hard to see in the pic.) With the flowers on her wall, her room is decorated with butterflies and dragonflies so that one really went well with the room.

Well of course my nieces saw those and liked them, lol. They are getting ready to move into our great aunts house and the girls are a little disappointed with their daddy's decision on paint. He's one of those who likes white, or variations of white, walls and they were hoping for something different. Sis told them she'd paint stencils and stuff on the walls like in Kota's room (with bil grumping, lol) and I told them I'd do some stained glass to decorate. I chose this one for them:

girlsroom

girlsroom2

It took me a good two weeks to do the girls and I have to be honest and say I've damn near wrenched my shoulder out of the socket patting myself on the back, lol. It turned out so much better than I expected it to and I'm really happy with it. The butterflies also have some of the clear beads though they don't show up in the pics either.

Caleb has a request in for something not girlie. I looked through pattern books and really didn't find much, then thought about the posters on his walls. He's got those velvetie ones that you color in and I took one off the wall and traced the dragon on one sheet of glass. I'm working on the castle and the knight defending it on another now. My nieces have more requests...they want one like Dakota's "LOVE" one and oldest niece asked for a high heel shoe and other girlie things, lol. Dakota also has her eye on some more patterns in the books but she's being patient and waiting til I finish the others first. What I'd love to do is one or two windows, lol, but Darren looked at me like I'd grown a second head when I told him that.

The only problem I'm really having with this is that with carpal tunnels I can only work for so long before I have to stop. After a while I notice my hand shaking so bad that I'm making huge mistakes I have to fix later. Which really sucks cuz given the chance at a craft I'm enjoying I'm likely to work most of the night, kinda interrupts the creative flow when I have to take a few days off!

Lumbele
Moderator

07-12-2002

Saturday, February 23, 2008 - 3:12 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Lumbele a private message Print Post    
War, those are lovely!!!!!!!!!!

Years ago, I took a course on stained glass (the expensive type). Bought all hte equipment, too, including a grinder. Then we were posted and I never got back to it.

My problem was getting a good bead going while soldering. Never did get the hang of that. Maybe I'll give it another shot this summer. Too cold right now, it'll be enough of a feat to keep these shaky hands still, much less at freezer temps in that garage. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

So this glass paint makes it look like real coloured glass - close-up, too? Much cheaper than the coloured glass? And where do you get the patterns from?

Wargod
Moderator

07-16-2001

Saturday, February 23, 2008 - 5:24 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Wargod a private message Print Post    
Well, I think the real colored glass kind, cut and soldered is much prettier, but the paint works really well too. With these, when you flip them over to show the other side, the reverse just isn't as nice looking as the painted side. That's the big difference for me.

There's a similar problem as having the solder bead up with liquid lead too. If you look at the bottom pic you can see (or at least I can, lol) where my hand got shaky in several spots and the lines aren't as even as they should be. I think though that's more a combo of my wrists being bad and not having done it in a long time. However, with liquid lead and glass stain, if you make a mistake you can fix it pretty easily by letting it all dry and then scraping it off with a razor blade.

I do think this is cheaper than the colored glass kind. I haven't bought any glass yet...I found it all around my house and my aunts (most is out of old picture frames, some of it I'm not quite sure what it was from.) But, since the majority of what I'm doing is for the kids, I've already decided if I do have to buy glass, I'll be buying cheap picture frames. The glass stain is $1.47 a bottle (and last through I don't know how many projects, I haven't had to buy any more yet unless I need a new color) and the liquid lead is something like $1.77. That's pretty much all you need! Razor blades, a set of paint brushes if you want. The most expensive thing I've bought was the book of patterns for 9 or 10 bucks (got that at Michaels.)

Years ago, my Granny and Mom did all the windows in the back room of the house with the glass stain. I'll have to get some pics of those later. Now they are old looking and you can see some cracks and wear, but when they did them they were gorgeous.

LOL, I could just picture you in the garage, freezing your butt off and trying to operate the little iron thingie to solder glass together! If I remember right, that wasn't really an easy task if you were perfectly comfortable.

Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Saturday, February 23, 2008 - 6:28 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Wow those are beautiful War!!