Fragile, Glass Beauties

As part of my course I have had to create a sample of stained glass (as well as the world's longest essay on glass, the history of it, it's structure, its relevance with religion and the arts, inventions, architecture.....). It may have taken around 8 hours to do, but I am fairly pleased with the outcome. As you may be able to tell it is not stained glass in the sense that the sections are cut to size, and then held together with lead. Rather, I purchased a piece of glass, cleaned it (with nail varnish remover!) and once I finally chose what I was going to do in terms of a design, used the ever frustrating stick on lead (3mm) to create the outline. Once this was done (which certainly took the majority of the time - and there was MUCH cursing involved!) it was just a case of using glass paints (available from most good art shops) to fill in the gaps and leave to dry.

Tips for anyone thinking of creating some stained glass:

1) try and avoid doing curves as much as possible - they are hugely tricky!

2) make sure that the glass is thoroughly clean and properly dry before using the lead - use a piece of scrunched up paper to wipe the glass and remove any residue

3) do it on a clean surface - NOT on the carpet as you will (as I did) end up with carpet fibres attaching themselves to the glass paint which goes highly sticky whilst in the drying process

4) either use very cheap paintbrushes which you don't mind throwing away after, or invest in some white spirit to clean the paintbrushes - DO NOT just run under that tap (again - from experience!)