I am seriously the luckiest girl alive sometimes. Blessed. That's what it really is. Heavenly Father knew I needed an inspiring, creatively fulfilling project, so he had my friend Melanie add a second story to her home, creating a crawl space behind three large windows, which she was inspired to declare should be replaced with stained glass. And THEN, the true miracle, she emailed me saying, "Do you have any interest in learning a new technique and doing 3 murals on stained glass??!!"
I told her I was definitely interested but that I'd have to learn how...and I asked if she'd have time for that. She replied that if I was interested she'd give me the time. And she said a friend of a friend knows how to do stained glass, "but I thought I would try you first - we already know and love YOUR work."
How COOL is that!!?? She trusts that I can learn a brand new medium well enough to make three large pieces for her home!
So I signed up for a stained glass class at a great place here in ABQ run by two older women. It's called "Hot Flash Glass." ;) Karen helped me and she was so super flexible with the scheduling and very direct in just teaching me how it's done and giving tips.
I thought I'd share what I learned:
The white paper is the pattern I chose from two that she had available for the class. I traced it onto the brown paper with carbon paper. The brown paper is sturdier and holds up better later when the glass is being cut and ground. The numbers are underlined because later when you cut out the pattern pieces you will need to keep track of which direction the glass goes.
I cut the pattern out with special scissors. These scissors cut away a thin strip of paper that accounts for where the copper foil will later go. See that thin black line on the left part of the scissors? It will remove a really thin strip of paper between two pattern pieces.
Here's what the pattern looked like after it was cut out:
The hardest part of the project might have been picking out the glass! Karen said to not mix transparent and opaque glass because the opaque glass gets all of the attention and the piece looks unbalanced. There were so many options but I eventually went with a yellow and orange flower, blue green leaves and stem, and a clear background.
Once the pattern pieces were cut, I glued them onto the glass with rubber cement.
Here are some of the tools I used:
This one is a pistol grip glass cutter. It has a tiny carbide wheel that scores the glass and leaves a super thin white line on the glass. The grip has a little bit of lubricating oil that wicks down to the wheel.
These are groziers. They are for breaking off curved pieces of glass after they have been scored. You have to use them directionally - see how the bottom of the pliers is curved up? Karen called it a happy face. You have to have happy face pliers to make them work.
I don't recall the exact name of these pliers, but they are used when you are making a straight cut. So first you score the glass with the glass cutter, and then you place these pliers on the edge of the glass with the white line on the pliers centered on the score line. Just a little pressure and the glass breaks.
I would cut a few glass pieces and then take them to the grinder to smooth out any rough cuts or edges. Here's what the grinder looks like:
The edges have to be smooth so that when you go to line them with copper foil they won't tear the foil. The copper foil comes in different widths. I think we used 7/32 (???). It has to be centered on the edge of the glass and wrap around both sides evenly.
Later when you go to solder the glass pieces together, the copper foil is important because it is what the solder sticks to. It doesn't stick to glass. So the copper foil has to be in place to successfully join the pieces together.
Here is my project with a few of the pieces wrapped in copper foil.
Once all of my pieces were wrapped in copper foil, I was ready to begin soldering. Karen had a piece of sheet rock on the table and metal push pins to hold the glass pieces in place. I pinned everything down.
Solder has to have something called "flux" to enable it to flow. I used blue flux and applied it with a cotton swab to all of the joints. I soldered each of the joints and then applied more flux to the remaining edges.
Soldering was not as hard as I worried it would be. It just takes a steady hand and slow steady movement. Once I had the front soldered, I flipped it over and soldered the back. We cut thin pieces of zinc framing to fit each side and pinned them in place. Then I soldered the corners of the frame and the parts of the glass that needed to be soldered to the frame. I also soldered jump rings onto the top two corners so that the piece could be hung later. (Not shown.)
Once it was all soldered I had to clean all of the flux off of it. I think she said that if the flux doesn't get cleaned off, the glass will later have a foggy appearance. I used soap and water, and then applied a black patina that changed all of the soldered lines to black.
I cleaned it up with a finishing compound and it was done!!
Now I am looking forward to doing Melanie's project! It will be much more detailed and complicated, not to mention MUCH larger, but I'm looking forward to the challenge!
