Gone are the days when you had to purchase mass produced templates of stain glass designs for your home. Now you can create your own designs and you may not even have to leave the
comfort of your chair! Furthermore, you don’t have to be a professional artist of stained glass designs to do it. It is as easy as scribbling a design on a piece of paper. The following are a few guidelines on how to go about in making your own stained glass design patterns. You can choose what method fits your preference and carry on with it.
Start your design on a computer
Use of computer software to create your stained glass designs is perhaps the easiest and fastest way to do it, especially with the advancements in computer technology. Using computer also gives you the ability to try out manipulations that you wouldn’t normally think of if you were just using a pen and a paper. On a computer, you can be able to change the size of your design while still maintaining the shape. While there are currently many complex software for stained glass designs in the market, there are still some simple ones that you could start with as you learn the skill. If it is your first time designing, it is advisable you start with simple designs that have fewer lines. This will make it easier to put together the pieces when you come to the real glasses.
Make copies of your design
After you are satisfied with the design that you have developed on your computer, it is important that you print out at least five copies of the design. Another thing that you should make sure is that your print-outs are of the same size as the window that you are going to work on. Take one of the copies for stained glass designs and cut out the designs and label them with a marker. Make sure that you label them in a way that you can make sense of them in case they get disorganized. Put these labeled pieces aside as your templates. You can use the other copies to label the different colors that you are going to buy at your local hardware store.
Handling the glass
You should always make sure that none of your design pieces are too small because these can prove to be very difficult to handle especially during the soldering process. Also, you should minimize using designs that have many converging lines meeting at a single point. The reason for this is because soldering such points could end up being messy. Finally, make sure that you handle glass carefully to reduce breakages. You should always start with smaller window sizes if you are still a beginner. This is because putting together stained glass designs for a very large window may require extra reinforcement since the soldered joints may not be able to effectively hold up the whole window pane. Now you can enjoy your very own stained glass designs that you don’t have to fear bumping into a similar one at your neighbor’s.
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