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.

In addition to your building board, you’ll need a set of layout strips. These strips will help hold your project in place while maintaining your 90 degree angle. First you place your bottom strip and then, with a t-square, you’ll place another strip on the left side, or if you’re a lefty, on the right side. Like this:

As you can see from the photo above, the layout strips are held in place by the aluminum pushpins. This is very sturdy. Your pattern goes on next. If your pattern has a caming line then you would cut it away and butt the pattern up against the layout strips. Next you’ll want to set your pieces into the pattern to ensure that all pieces fits snugly within the black lines of your pattern. If your pieces don’t fit properly, now is the time to grind them down to size or your pattern will get off kilter.

Next we’ll talk about lead caming and how to cut it and work it around your pieces.

This is one of the easiest and most fun techniques for children. It can be a little bit messy but what’s the fun of making cookies with kids if there is no mess at all?

One again your take some of your royal icing and thin it down. I like to do this with shallow disposable bowls. Trust me, you’ll thank me when you’re tired and it’s time for cleaning up. Take about a quarter cup to a third a cup of icing, add in your colors and then water, just a drop at a time until your icing is just a little thinner than corn syrup. I like to color all my icing before starting so you’re all ready to go and don’t have to keep stopping to color more icing. For Christmas cookies I recommend red, green & white at a minimum. If you’re doing snowflakes then pale blue is nice and for variety you may like yellow for stars and perhaps a darker blue.

Take your cookie and just dip it into your color. Lift it out, give it a little shake to get rid of the excess and then flip it over and give it another little shake to help it settle and smooth it out. Set it down, icing side up, on wax or parchment paper. At this point you can sprinkle it with sanding sugars, dragée, sprinkles or any other toppings you like and then leave them alone to dry. Here are some cookies I made using this method:

You can make cool swirly patterns by dropping tiny dots of colored icing onto other colors and gently swirling the colors together using a toothpick. This is a technique kids never get tired of and yet it still makes adults go ooooh and ahhh.

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?

Penny’s Royal Icing

6 Tablespoons water
3 Tablespoons meringue powder (half this in very hot weather)
3.5 Cups powdered sugar, sifted.

• Put water in mixing bowl. Add all other ingredients.
• Put the mixing speed on low. Mix ingredients untill they form a thick frosting. Depending on the freshness of the sugar, you may need to add additional water. The frosting at this point should resembel thick cookie glaze.
• When the icing is smooth, put the mixer on it’s highest setting an process until the icing goes from shiny to dull and will stand in stiff peaks.

Note: After you make the icing, keep it covered with a damp cloth at all times (including when you have tinted it and put it into the pastry bags) or it will crust over. This icing is not a “keeper”. It does not have a long shelf-life so make just as much as you need for the day of decorating.

There are many techniques for icing your cookies. Here are a few common ones:

* Flood filling, where you outline your cookie and then fill in the outlined areas.
* Dipping, where you dip cookies in thinned royal icing
* Painting, where you paint on your royal icing, or paint over dried royal icing.

Whichever method you use just remember to have fun and not put too much pressure on yourself. As I told my niece, no matter how messy your cookies come out they are still cookies and they will get eaten!

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!

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.

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!

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!

• 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!