Getting Crafty

It’s hard to believe but I’m nearly done with my stained glass project now. It’s been a really great class that I’ve very much enjoyed. One more class and we’ll be done!

This past week we finally started soldering our projects. First off we discussed some safety precautions.

1. Soldering irons run at about 700 degrees Fahrenheit and you can’t tell from looking at one whether it’s on or off, so always assume that it’s hot!
2. Solder is comprised of tin and lead, so no eating or drinking or smoking, while soldering
3. Always wear closed toe shoes and non-flammable trousers. Hot lead dropped on exposed body parts can be very painful!
4. Be sure that you have good ventilation. Those of you who are particularly sensitive to fumes, may want to purchase a flame trap
5. Flux, which is used to help stick your solder to the lead, is acid based. You do not want to get in on your skin and you do not want to leave it for prolonged periods of time, on your glass, or it will etch your glass. Work in small areas at a time and neutralize the acid when you’re done soldering.

Solder, as I mentioned before, is made up of tin & lead. It typically comes in:

The first number represents the percentage of tin and the second number represents the percentage of lead in your solder. The lower the amount of tin in your solder, the longer it will stay molten and the longer it will take to harden. 60/40 will fill gaps easier because hardens faster. 63/73 is most often used for decorative soldering.

You can also find solder that contains no lead. This is typically used for jewelry and other items that are worn next to the skin.

Tip 1 - Outlining and Flood Filling your cookies:

One of the very neatest things I learned from Penny McConell that I love to do is to outline my cookies with watered down, colored cookie dough before baking. What I love about this technique is that when the cookies cool you already have your flood dam in place for your royal icing and it adds a beautiful border without additional work or for that matter, additional sugar. Baked in cookie dams never break, either!

A little bit goes a long way with this and you’ll only need a fat dollop of dough for your batch. I did red & green for mine and that was plenty. The red was mostly for the candy canes and I used the green mostly for Christmas trees. Add your water just a little bit at a time until it’s thin enough to pipe through a piping bag. You can use a size 3 writing tip or just cut the end off of the piping bag like I did. This is what your cookies will look like with the dough piped on:

To flood fill your cookies you will also water down your icing. Adding just a tiny bit of water at a time, thin your icing down to where it is the consistency of corn syrup. If you’ve chosen to outline your cookies in your royal icing, use it full strength to outline, allow to dry, and then flood fill with your thinned icing.

Once you are ready to ice your cookies you’ll hold your bag at an angle and gently squeeze your bag, allowing the thinned icing to “flood” into the open areas and fill the space. Set your cookies aside and allow to dry thoroughly. I usually let mine dry overnight. The icing will be shiny and beautiful. Here is a look at a flood filled cookie with a cookie dough border:

Pretty, yes?

It is my humble opinion that the sweetest valentine is the one that is home made and what kind of crafty gal would I be if I didn’t have a few suggestions? Well, of course I do!

Is there anything sweeter than home baked goodies? I’m talking about those delectable chocolates, cookies, brownies or whatever your love most desires.

I am particularly fond of making beautiful sugar cookies. You can make them into beautiful bouquets, pile them onto a pretty plate, box them up in colorful tissue and a myriad of other fun things.

Here is my very favorite cookie recipe from cookie diva, Penny McConnell. Because of it’s versatility, it’s a great recipe to use with children and it requires no refrigeration! Needless to say, these would make great holiday gifts or hostess gifts for parties and everyone loved them at my cookie exchange!

Penny’s Butter Cookie Dough

Yield: 3-4 dozen cookies
Temperature: 325 degrees F

2 Cups butter, salted
2 Cups sugar, granulated
2 large eggs
4 Tablespoons pure vanilla
4 Tablespoons Almond (or other flavour) extract
6 Cups flour, all purpose
1 Tablespoon baking powder

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare cookie sheets with kitchen parchment.
2. In mixer bowl, mix butter with sugar until smooth. Remember to just incorporate these ingredients, do not cream until light.
3. Add all liquid ingredients to bowl. This mixture will probably curdle but the finished dough will be just fine.
4. In a separate bowl, mix flour with baking powder.
5. Add the dry ingredients all at once to the mixer bowl and process until heavy dough forms.

This is quite a soft dough so don’t be afraid to use plenty of flour rolling it out, or roll it out on parchment paper and tear away the excess dough. Then just place the parchment on your cookie sheet and pop it straight in the oven. This makes for easy clean-up!

Penny mentioned that if your cookies come out inconsistent then you’re probably not thoroughly mixing your dough. She said your cookies should look almost uncooked with the bottoms being a slightly darker blond. I rolled mine out approximately 1/4 thick and cooked them for 12 minutes a pan.

Stay tuned tomorrow and I’ll let you in on Penny’s Royal Icing and over the next few days I’ll give you some great tips on fun and clever ways to decorate your cookies!

Earlier in the week my classmates and I each found the time to stop by the glass store and choose the glass for our project. It’s amazing how different the same pattern can look when done with different colors and types of glass.

Last week we learned to cut. The glass we learned on was clear window pane style glass, the easiest glass in the world to cut. It has no bumps, no ridges, nothing that would impede your cutter from flowing with ease down your piece of glass.

Last night we made our first cuts into our purchased art glass. Let me tell you, it’s a lot scarier. You’ve paid good money for this glass and if you make too big of a mistake you could find yourself purchasing more!

The method we are using is to place your glass over your pattern, on a light box if necessary, and just cut but there are, of course, many other methods.

We began by numbering the different sections of our pattern and by writing in each an identifier as to which glass we’d be using. That just helps to avoid confusion and it also helps to ensure that you cut all the pieces in one color at the same time, which is more efficient than going back and forth with different colors of glass.

Your first step is to clean your glass. After each segment is cut, we grind it where necessary and then mark it with the corresponding number from the pattern. Additionally we put a dot on the pattern itself to indicate we’d already cut the piece.

Another thing you may want to do is to mark your sheet of glass with an arrow to identify the grain. This is important if you want the grain the same on all pieces within your project. If you window pane will have a front & a back, which it may have if, for example, you’ve added a beveled piece, then you will also want to identify it.

Last night was a bit challenging for me because one of my pieces of glass was slightly warped and kept moving around on the paper.

If you’re fortunate enough to be taking a class to learn leaded stained glass then you’ll probably be provided with your first pattern. If you’re self-teaching then start with something relatively small and easy. It is a good idea, however to do something that has circles and curves and isn’t just squares and rectangles. My instructor talked about how in his first class his project was nothing but straight lines and so for his first year or more of window making he never did anything else because he hadn’t learned how to cut circles and curves. Don’t fall into that rut or you’ll severely limit the types of projects that you can do.

My pattern is very similar to this one only mine is a rectangle:

The rectangular frame gives you the opportunity to learn both straight cuts as well as curved ones.

There are a ton of free resources out there for free patters. Just google for free stained glass patters and a ton of them will come up.

Here are a few to get you started:

Acadian Glass Art - they have some great victorian window pane patterns
Stainedglasspatterns.com
Warner-Crivellaro
Paned Expressions Studio
Chantal’s Stained Glass Patterns
Art:erty - a big collection of patterns for all skill levels

Here is a really cool site that teaches you how to make your own patterns:

Stained-Glass-patterns.org

Whatever you choose, start with something small. Starting with something too big or too complex will only lead to frustration. I’m hoping to graduate to something more ambitious as time goes by. I’d love to do the eyelash window in my parent’s kitchen as this year’s big Christmas gift. Wish me luck!

Probably the most important tool you’ll own with your stained glass hobby is your glass cutter. You can’t exactly use your fingernail, now can you? There are several types of glass cutters on the market and I recommend that you go to a shop and try them out because choosing a glass cutter is very personal and unique to every person. You need a cutter that fits your hand and allows you to cut glass in the easiest way possible

Some examples:

• Pistol Grip - This is my personal favorite and a top seller. It fits nicely in your hand and the cutter is at the perfect angle for glass cutting



• Pencil Grip - As the name suggests, this cutter is pencil shaped. Some folks love this design because it’s more natural for your hands and they feel they can get right down in there close to the glass.



• Fletcher - This is the old fashioned cutter that’s been around forever. It doesn’t hold oil and needs to be dipped in oil before you begin to cut. This is not really an ideal tool for the stained glass hobbyist but for cutting inexpensive glass that you pick up to replace a broken window in a door or something of that nature, then it’s ideal.



• Custom/Thomas Grip - There are a few varieties of this cutter but basically they all have a “saddle” that fits between your thumb and, allowing the fingers to remain straight, relieving them of strain. To fit all hand sizes, the saddle is often adjustable to different heights.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to go to a shop that will allow you to try out different cutter so that you can find one that works best for you!

As with any new craft, this one will require some tools. Here is a list of basic tools you’ll need:

• Safety Glasses - Always protect your eyes!
• Glass cutter - We’ll talk on this more later.
• Running Pliers - Running Pliers place pressure evenly on a score line to start and then to run a break in your glass.
• Grozing/Breaking Pliers - dual purpose pliers with a flat jaw and a curved jaw. Both jaws are serrated for removing flares and tiny points of glass
• Fine point black Sharpie - For marking your pattern and for marking your glass.
• Cork backed ruler - the cork will help keep it from sliding around on your glass
• Glass cutter oil - Don’t overfill your cutter. They have a tendency to leak and the more you have in your cutter, the more you have to leak.
• Bench brush - the clean your workspace.
• Glass - The choices are astounding.
• Pattern - Start with something easy. There are lots of free patterns out there.

Nice to haves:

• Waffle Grid cutting matt - this is a nice hard surface to cut on but it won’t scratch your glass. Small glass fragments fall into the grid and you can easily pick it up and tip it into the garbage. This is very handy!
• Glass grinder - One of these will make your life so much easier but proper cutting can help you avoid the need to have one. Less important with lead than with copper foil as lead does not require you to be quite as precise. Use this tool with the curved side down.

Please keep in mind that I am no expert. I’m learning and I’m taking you along for the journey.

Next post I’ll talk about the various types of cutters. Stay tuned!

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve just started a new stained glass class. For those of you who’ve never done stained glass there are basically three styles for creating stained glass art:

Lead - Glass pieces are cut and fit together through channels of lead known as caming. These pieces are then soldered together, framed and cemented. Lead is most often used in projects needing greater strength or waterproofing such as windows.

Copper Foil - The copper foil method was made popular by L. C. Tiffany at the turn of the century. With copper foil your cuts need to be more precise than with lead. After cutting and grinding your pieces are wrapped in copper foil which provides something for the solder to adhere to. The copper foil method is most often used in lamps and other projects requiring intricate detail.

Dalle de Verre - Also known as faceted glass, dalle de verre literally means “slabs of glass” and is a very thick glass first used as an art medium by the Byzantines. These thick slabs of glass can be scored and etched and are most often seen as walls in churches. The faceting of the glass and the reflections it gives off with light give the illusion of precious gems.

The method I am familiar with is copper foil but I’ve always wanted to learn lead and that is exactly what my new class will teach. I’m fortunate enough to be in a very small class of only 4 students which means that I will get a lot of personal attention. We are going to start off doing a small class project of a Victorian window. This week I will spend some time deciding what glass I want to use and next Monday I start to cut. I look forward to sharing the things I learn with you.

Hi, my name is Kyla and I am the new writer for this blog. I am very excited to get the opportunity to write about crafts. I inherited my love of crafts from my mother who taught me and my brothers how to make a lot of things as children. We did leather tooling, drawing, painting, sewing, needlepoint and ceramics, just to name a few. I carried that love of crafts into my adulthood and am forever taking a class in one thing or another. In fact I just started a stained glass class tonight with a wonderful local glass store here in Austin, Tx, Blue Moon Glassworks. I’ve taken several glass beadmaking (or lampwork) classes from them in the past but this is my first stained glass class.

In addition to the stained glass, my other passion right now is cake decorating and sugar arts. I’m the President Elect for Capital Confectioners of Austin. Each year we hold a big cake show in February. This year’s show will take place from Freb 28- Mar 1st and will have around 300 cakes and 3000 attendees. We have some amazing artists lined up. We have Debbie Brown coming in from the UK. Debbie is the most prolific writer of cake decorating books in the UK. We also have Nick Lodge coming, who is British but he lives in Georgia and Elisa Strauss from Confetti Cakes as well as Jacquy Pfeiffer, the founder of the Chicago. It’s going to be an amazing show! Visit out website at www.thattakesthecake.org.

I’m interested in all kinds of crafts so please feel free to share your passions with me!

Leaves are my latest obsession: I seem to be on the lookout for the perfect leaves with which to make some jewelry, earrings mostly. Want to see what I’ve found so far?

Walmart has been a surprising source of leaves:

I see these ones as pendants more than anything: they’re a bit too heavy to be anything else in my mind. Black cord would be a nice contrast, and go nicely with the black veins that are visible in the leaves.

These cuties could be used on a necklace too, or mixed with some fine chain and tiny jump rings for a long and delicate looking set of earrings. It might look nice to have different lengths of chain too in one pair of earrings.

If you’re into making jewelry and live in Canada, the best place you could go is the The Sassy Bead Co. This store is a delight for any jewelry lover: every surface is covered with glass jars, from the tiniest of jam jars to larger mason jars of beads. The beads all have funky names too, clearly chosen by the employees. The newest location in Ottawa is so bright and sunny that I was surprised to find the store all but empty the last time I visited it. While I was there I picked up these delicate looking leaves:

Another thing I’m rather taken by is kidney clasps. No, this isn’t an extreme jewelry fetish of mine, they are the delicate earring clasps that are used in this beautiful etsy offering:

(photo courtesy of juneshin)

Dooce also featured a pair of earrings with a kidney clasp opening in her daily style section, which you can read about and see here. I found a large pair of sterling silver ones that I can’t wait to use:

How fitting that the results of preliminary adventures with shrinky dinks coincides with the demise of my camera! Never fear though: I managed to borrow a camera so that you could share in the magic that is shrinky dinks.

Prior to this year, I had never heard of shrinky dinks. A coworker had the cutest earrings and when I commented on them, she informed me that they were handcrafted. Another coworker, overhearing our conversation, told me that she strongly suspected that shrinky dinks were involved in the making of the main “bead” of the earrings. After hearing that I just had to know all I could know about shrinky dinks.

What I found out is the following:

• shrinky dinks (SDs) is the brand name for shrink plastic
• when put in an oven (not the microwave!) this plastic sheet which resembles a sheet of acetate used on overhead projectors more than anything) will shrink up and thicken
• the stuff has been around since the early 1970s and seems to be making a comeback

When I did a search for jewelry made with shrink plastic, the first thing that caught my eye was Planet June’s tutorial, which I shared earlier. A search on etsy revealed the beautiful rings of Dillon Designs

I decided to pick up some ink made for unusual surfaces such as plastic, and some of this plastic and see if I could fashion some cute earrings.

Here’s what I started with:

…and here is the final result.

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WIBW is late this week, not because something wasn’t bought but because the purchased item was misplaced. But it has surfaced:

I love these fabric flowers, and they come with jeweled brads for their centres. Who can look at these bright colours and not be happy? Certainly not I!

These would brighten up any card, or they could be arranged in a cluster at the corner of a photo if you’re scrapbooking. I see these being used on yellow or black paper; the colours would really “pop”. And one day, instead of talking about how you could use them, I promise to actually use them and let you see what I’ve come up with.

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The biggest obstacle to crafting has been time, and this obstacle remains. Between my two jobs (one full time and one part time) and other obligations, I come home drained and want to do nothing more than sit in front of the computer screen, reading about other people’s lives, barely taking it in but just vegging. Or, I like lying down with a good book, an inspiring or motivating book, then promptly falling asleep the moment I crack it open and read a few words. That’s been happening a lot lately.

Needless to say, it is hard to create when you’re weary, and it’s even harder to get “unweary” when the same routine keeps happening day after day. But before you lose all hope, a lovely day is upon us: Valentine’s Day!

So, Happy Valentine’s day to you! If you need some last minute crafty ideas, may I point you to Martha Stewart? She’s got some beautiful things up that you must see. Enjoy!

What I bought Wednesday will be skipped for this week because in the past week I haven’t bought anything! Shocking, I know. It wasn’t for lack of trying though, at least from the dollar store. A couple of thing tempted me but they were firmly from the brads category and we all know I have far too many brads.

I haven’t been the least bit creative lately, and besides time, the biggest impediment to creating has been clutter. Clutter sometimes inspires people; but it can also be a hindrance because you simply don’t have a clear place in which to create. Everything is a mess, and even if you have an idea, the process of searching for just the tools and materials you need can be an exercise in frustration. Trying to find something in the midst of chaos is a good way to go insane, let me tell you.

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For this week’s What I Bought Wednesday (WIBW), I returned to my tried and true dollar store. They get new things nearly every week, and I make it my job to scope out these new things.

I fell in love with brads. Yes, more brads. I can’t resist them it seems. I did use a whole bunch over Christmas so buying even more was justified.

They don’t look very special do they? Well that’s because they are not the easiest things to photograph. They are almost half an inch wide squares with a capital letter etched on them with a sort of filigree design surrounding the letter. They look elegant. Here’s a (hopefully) clearer picture of a letter:

(You’ll just have to take my word for it that they are pretty). These brads would be great for anything that I want to create a monogrammed effect on, perhaps invitation cards or a wedding card. I see this looking especially striking on a dark grey/black/white colour scheme, and I think I have some perfect background papers to go along with it.

Following my brad theme, I picked up these brad frames:

You can’t see it well but each frame has some detail on it. There are six people in my family, and six frames—perfect! These frames would look so cute in a scrapbook about family, perhaps framing our baby pictures or something. The only problem I see with these brads is that there is nothing on the bottom of the frame to keep it from swinging around: there is only the brad at the top. If I want them to stay put I’ll have to get out my adhesives.

What do you think of this week’s stash? Have you bought some neat crafting things that you’d like to share? Don’t be shy, show me what you’ve got!

I’m going to start a new feature here called What I Bought Wednesday (WIBW). I’ll share with you some of my ever growing stash, including what plans I have for the things I have purchased.

This past Saturday, I went to Watertown, NY for some shopping. Even though we have Michaels in Canada, I like to check out the US locations because there are always some things in there that we don’t have. This time around I found a couple of things that I did not see at our Michaels the few times I’ve been there:

These are gift card tins. I love the bright colourful patterns on them (the pairing of green and blue on the bottom tin is my favourite!). These tins also happen to be perfect for housing marble magnets.

I forget where I had heard of clear stamps but until I bought some I didn’t understand how neat they were. The best part about them is that you can see exactly where you are stamping, and after the hassle I had trying to stamp “Merry Christmas” on various cards with individual letter stamps, I really appreciate having clear stamps that would show me exactly where each letter will be ending up in relation to already stamped letters! I don’t have clear alphabet stamps yet but I’ll be on the lookout for them.

I bought the clear acrylic block and it’s very easy to switch the different stamps around: just peel them off their back and stick them on the block. Magic! My best friend is pregnant, and I think I’ll be planning a shower for her in the future and this little figure on the left will come in handy when that time comes. However, it looks like I need a little lesson on applying ink evenly. Apparently you can even apply different colours of ink to different parts of the same stamp, so I have some learning to do.