Cleaning Glass for Stained Glass Patterns

Series Summary

As you walk into a Christian church, your eyes are immediately drawn to the elaborate patterns and colors of the windows. As the light floods through, images of the legendary and mythical events of Christian history are illuminated in colorful glass. This ancient art form is known as stained glass, and many of these ancient stained glass works have survived for centuries. Throughout its thousand-year history, stained glass has been displayed in many different forms and varieties. However, the most common (as any connoisseur of religious traditions will tell you) is depicted on the walls and windows of Christian churches.

Though the religious connotations of the art still exist, a modern movement has also shaped the stained glass craft. For instance, many use stained glass in their own windows at home. Some have designed stained glass patterns that are abstract and creative. There are many ways to solder stained glass, and because of this, new forms of stained glass art are emerging everyday. For those who lack the expertise of soldering and cutting glass, many have discovered the beauty of sun catchers. A smaller form of stained glass art, these sun catchers have become a favorite craft of children and adults.

In this free video series, learn how to prepare art glass for stained glass projects. Our expert, Anna Comly, shows you everything you need to know to start making beautiful stained glass designs. Learn how to clean the glass. Also, learn how to number your stained glass pattern. If you are trying to cut glass, learn how to score and use glass cutters. If your glass pieces are jagged, get tips for using a glass grinder. With her tips, you will be on your way to beautiful stained glass artwork today!

Video Transcript

"Okay, when you purchase your art glass, sometimes it comes with these sticky little tags on here that has the prices, and so you're going to need to remove that. Just take yourself one of the little craft blades or a razor blade of some sort and work it through there and get that off. You want to make sure your glass is clean while you're working with it, it's going to make for an easier way to have a cutting surface. This was actually marked on by one of the semi-permanent, or the permanent Sharpie markers. It can come off really easily using alcohol and water. And you want to clean each of your pieces of glass. So see just like this is coming off, the parts that you are marking on your pattern, they're going to come off too. Now you don't want to use those real industrial permanent strength markers, Sharpies work great, so just keep that in mind as you are marking your pattern so that you don't end up with something on your glass and then you're not able to get it off. So I'm just cleaning both sides of this. Alcohol and water works great. A little bit of that sticky stuff there, but I'll get that, if I don't use it in my cutting, I won't need to worry about it. So there you go, nice, clean piece of glass to work with."