Stained Glass Patterns and Tips from GlassSorcery.com

Christmas is fast approaching. Have you got your suncatchers, ornaments, and Christmas gifts ready yet? it can be difficult to complete projects quickly with work, school, kids, and other competing responsibilities.
Don’t panic! Here’s a suggestion to help you finish early with less stress.
Have you considered a pre-cut stained glass kit?

It’s OK, it’s not really cheating. After all, it’s better to create a nice looking piece from a kit than not to create one at all. Most of your family and friends won’t even know that you cheated took a shortcut.

Go ahead and just take a look at some of the really cute pre-cut kits available.
They might make great projects to do with your kids. Order soon and take care of other things while your pre-cut kit is shipped to you.
Stained Glass Warehouse has these holiday pre-cut kits: Snowman, Poinsettia, Snowflake, Wreath, and Angel.

Delphi Glass has the following seasonal pre-cut kits: a selection of Santas, poinsettia wreath, and a Christmas Moose.

AmeriGlas has an angel kit.

Maple City Stained Glass has these holiday kits: a nutcracker, an angel, a moose, and two Santas.

Down East Stained Glass has pre-cut glass pieces, not in kits: Christmas stocking, ornament, holly leaves, bells, and dove

• » Comments (0)

In order to get the best solder seam you must use high quality solder. One solder that I have come to trust is Canfield solder. Their quality is very consistent. A major reason for this is that Canfield makes its own solder. Stained glass teacher Vicki Payne recommended Canfield in a seminar I took at Glass Expo 2005.

Some companies market solder that they do not make. They obtain it from a variety of sources which results in inconsistent quality. Further, if the supplier they buy from uses re-cycled materials, the solder can include impurities that contaminate it and ruin your soldering.

Another possible source of contamination in your solder is the materials you are working on; if you spend too much time working and re-working an area, copper and other contaminants may leach from your work into the solder.
After you have spent all that money on beautiful glass, don’t ruin it with second rate solder.

• » Comments (0)

I have spoken with people who refuse to use glass saws, perfering to do things the “old fashioned way.”
While I am not such a purist (I have my glass saws- two of them in fact,) I do find it interesting to try working the “old fashioned way.”
Have you ever wondered just how stained glass artists of the past got rid of the rough edges after cutting a piece of glass? (There was stained glass before electric tools - how did they do that?) 

They used stained glass hand tools, such as the abrasive stone. An abrasive stone is one of the tools I do have and do use, though certainly not exclusively. It looks like a huge, thick, metal emery board, and you use it in basically the same way, except on the edges of glass. It is made of aluminum oxide, and it is about 10″ long by 2″ wide, and 3/4″ thick. As advertized, it “safely removes sharp edges from glass.”

There are some times when I simply do not want to fill my grinder with water and coolant for one little spot, or waste an expensive grinder bit on an excessively rough edge. (Of course, a good pair of grozing pliers will help you there, and I’ll have a suggestion about that soon.)
The abrasive stone is only $5.95, and I found one at Stained Glass Warehouse, Inc.

Give it a try. We can learn from past masters.

• » Comments (0)

I have been intending to write a review of the Glass Eye 2000 stained glass design creation software for some time, so here it is.

I absolutely love this program! It makes pattern creation soooo easy. Take a look at this example of a finished design and the photo I started with. This afternoon I brought up the Glass Eye 2000 program and imported a photo of one of our pets, Lucky, a loveable stray dog we rescued a few years ago.

Here is the original photo of Lucky. (This is a big file so, if you click on the thumbnail to enlarge, give it time to load.)

In a short time, using the GlassEye 2000, I was able to create a stained glass design of Lucky. I was even able to select specific glass by major art glass manufacturers and view the pattern as it would appear with the glass that I selected.

Glass Eye 2000 allows you to import a .jpg (among other formats) and trace the image to form a pattern. You can also create designs from scratch. You will get faster and better at using the program with practice, but it really is fairly easy. The Dragonfly Software people include a tutorial with the software program that is easy to follow and will get you started. I will warn you - this can be addictive.

Here is a picture of my pattern as it will look when completed in glass. Click on the picture to enlarge it for the best view.

I love playing around with the glass choices. The GlassEye 2K has (last time I looked) over 2600 glass samples from nine of the largest glass companies that you can select from, and it allows you to change the selected glass with the click of a mouse. It is a simple matter to select a general color range and scroll through choices. You can also be specific about a type of glass, (baroque, for instance,) or texture (vecchio, seedy, reed, ripple) and see only that glass in all available colors, or limit glass choice by the manufacturer’s name.

You can export a picture of your finished pattern as a .jpg, such as the picture of Lucky dog, above, so that you can show your friends and family (or potential clients) how the finished piece will look with different colors and textures of glass and get their reaction or advice. My family is used to me saying “how does it look with the Armstrong granite or the Gecko gluechip? Are you sure it doesn’t look better with this Spectrum blue cathedral or the opal wispy?”

You can also see how your finished art work will look with different lead and solder line widths, lead or foil techniques, and different patinas.

You may have noticed that I can label my patterns and the exported pictures with my copyright or other information. You can add text for directions or title right on the pattern. You can also label your pattern pieces with numbers, or color codes that you select.

You can use the ruler to control the size of your pattern and you can resize it, if necessary, with remarkable accuracy. There is even an option to maintain proportions when you resize. There is also grid you can bring up on the screen and remove with a mouse click that helps keep things square.

There are so many great features to this software that I could go on and on, but the best thing you could do would be to check it out yourself. Click here to visit the good folks at Dragonfly software. They have a FREE 30-day trial that will give you a better idea than I can of how great this program is.

Have fun!

• » Comments (0)

Did you know that you can buy stained glass supplies on eBay? Well, you can, and at good prices, too. You can also find mosaic, fusing, jewelry making, and other glass craft supplies there.
I was surprised at what I found. The items include everything from tools such as pattern shears, grinder bits, pliers, glazing hammers, oak fan lamp bases, and diamond saws, to materials such as copper foil, bevels of all sorts sold individually and in clusters, and sheets of glass. You can also buy pattern books or individual patterns. There are also pre-cut suncatchers that allow you to get right to foiling and soldering.
If you need mosaic supplies, you can find mosaic tiles by the pound as well as mosaic cutter nippers and other supplies. eBay also has hot glass items, including kilns.
Give it a try. I’m sure you will find something you like!

• » Comments (0)