**A Beginner's Journey with Stained Glass**

I embarked on a creative adventure to learn stained glass, and what I discovered was both fascinating and challenging. With a new found enthusiasm for this medieval art form, I decided to take the plunge and create my own piece of stained glass. Armed with basic tools and materials, I dove headfirst into the process, eager to learn and experiment.

The first hurdle I encountered was cutting the glass. To achieve a mitered edge, which requires precision and skill, I found myself struggling to cut straight lines. Having extra material proved beneficial, as it allowed me to create a little wiggle room for error. With each attempt, I refined my technique, gradually developing muscle memory and confidence in my abilities.

As I progressed, I decided to abandon the original plan of creating a mitered edge, opting instead for a more beginner-friendly approach. Using an abundance of blue painters tape, I secured the glass pieces together, creating a sturdy foundation for my piece. This unconventional method may not have produced a traditional stained glass frame, but it allowed me to focus on the creative process rather than perfection.

The moment of truth arrived when I was ready to solder the pieces together. Using a soldering gun and flux, I carefully applied the molten metal to the joints, watching as it flowed and merged with the surrounding glass. The process was both mesmerizing and intimidating, but with each pass of the iron, my doubts began to dissipate.

The results were more than satisfying; they were astonishing. As I removed the tape and admired my handiwork, a sense of pride and accomplishment washed over me. This was not perfect stained glass, but it was mine – a testament to my determination and willingness to learn.

In hindsight, I realize that soldering is an art form in itself, requiring patience, practice, and attention to detail. The journey from novice to intermediate artist has been enlightening, and I'm eager to continue refining my skills. For those interested in attempting stained glass, I encourage you to take the leap – it's a journey worth taking.

**Lessons Learned**

One of the most valuable lessons I've learned during this process is that it's okay to make mistakes. In fact, embracing imperfections can often lead to unexpected and delightful results. By not being too hard on myself, I was able to focus on the creative aspects of stained glass rather than striving for perfection.

Another important takeaway is the importance of practice. While I didn't spend hours practicing before beginning my project, it's clear that repetition and experience will only improve my skills over time. With each attempt, I've refined my techniques and developed a deeper understanding of the craft.

Finally, I've come to appreciate the beauty of imperfection in art. Stained glass is often associated with intricate designs and precision-cut pieces, but what I've discovered is that it's also possible to create something stunning without adhering to traditional norms. By embracing this approach, I've opened myself up to new possibilities and perspectives within the world of stained glass.

**The Finished Piece**

My finished piece, though not perfect, has become a cherished addition to my home. With its unique blend of blue hues and quirky design elements, it adds a touch of personality to my space. As I lean it against a sunny window, watching the light dance across its surface, I'm reminded of the joy and satisfaction that comes from creating something with one's own hands.

The experience has been nothing short of addictive, and I find myself itching to take on new projects and challenges. Who knows what the future holds for my stained glass journey? Perhaps it will lead me down a path of traditional craftsmanship or perhaps it will introduce me to new and innovative techniques. One thing is certain – I'm hooked, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni've got a soldering iron which i've never used before i've got glass cutters i've got sheets of glass um this is gonna go great okay all right last time around you guys saw my team challenged me to learn the art of soap carving oh can i fix i that i just cut off part of the dog's head oh and this week well i thought why not try my hand stained glass i mean honestly what could go wrong i've never done this before in my life this is not completely my fault there are some videos floating around out there on the internet well i'm not going to say they make it look easy but they make it look possible so i decided i don't know let's try it out let's take on an ancient art form and see if someone like me can learn how to do it just by watching videos on the internet what are the odds i'm actually going to pull this off stained glass as a hobby is not cheap glass itself especially the beautiful colorful glass that you want to use for stained glass is fairly expensive you have to buy some specialty tools you need a soldering iron i already had one or my husband did thankfully and then you have to buy the metal bits that keep stained glass together which is called cane c-a-m-e most traditionally it's made out of lead which these are it's harder to cut and join stained glass at angles other than right angles so we're doing we're doing something really simple today guys i picked some colors like this really pretty dark green and then three ombre shades in this amber and yellow color family and then this kind of fun streaky white i thought it would almost be like a modern sunrise with the green at the bottom representing the land and then the shades of amber getting lighter and then the white at the top representing the clouds why am i so nervous i am nervous it feels wrong to break glass on purpose i just want it to stay together and look like i did it on purpose i feel like that's a realistic goal don't you so i've got my template i drew this i just used a t-square to draw it kept it again very simple and i'm hoping hoping that some of my glass has square edges so this looks like it does i'm going to grab my t-square again and i think i'm just going to do one long line down this whole side so that ideally i'm only having to make two cuts just feel like that is going to make my life easier and because all of these rectangles are the same size i'm just going to use the top one as the template for all of these again i'm a beginner so if i can make two cuts per color try to make it a little easier on myself and that is what i am going to do oh the really nerve-wracking part we are going to cut and break the glass so i am using um a glass cutter like this it's it's got a grip like this that is again supposed to be good for beginners i really tried to set myself up for success it has a little wheel here it does have an empty chamber and some things i've read said you should put glass cutting oil in this other things i read said that is not necessarily necessary it could just make your cutting wheel last longer i don't have any glass cutting oils so we are just going to try it like this i also grabbed some work gloves when it comes to the actual breaking part again nothing necessarily specified that you should wear gloves but i just really want to make sure i am protecting my hands let's do this guys i'm just going to press firmly and score the glass and i should i don't know if i really i don't know if that didn't to be honest that definitely sounded like it was doing something maybe the straight edge is not the right put a glove on the hand that's going to hold the glass gently but firmly we are clamping on these i'm so nervous like my hands are shaking okay and if i did it right this is just gonna snap one two okay okay i don't think i scored it enough i'm so nervous okay i don't know we're gonna try we're just gonna try to go over it again no i definitely heard it i heard it doing something all the real stained glass people out there are watching and just cringing right now okay i think maybe this is just a really big piece to try to break off okay i mean that is that is a pretty sh pretty clean edge i think i can work with it let's just carefully again this is you know the edges it's glass so be careful guys honestly don't try this at home i certainly shouldn't okay so i think the key is i need to be a little more forceful with my scoring tool oh my gosh you guys i did it i mean i made one i made one rectangle of glass don't worry about the sharpie we can use a little nail polish remover to take that off but just have four more colors to go right into the glass three yes oh that one was so good one two three oh my gosh i'm doing it guys after some trial and error i find that a damp paper towel is the best thing for picking up all those little shards of glass and keep them out of your fingertips okay okay i guess you're gonna be home from school and the last thing i want to be doing is like breaking glass and soldering lead together so i think i'm going to tidy up and tackle part two of making stained glass in the morning so i'll see you guys then i have transferred all of my anxiety i've put all that anxiety on putting the stained glass together and using the soldering iron i've just never done anything like this before so i've got an apron on i've got my hair back because i'm going to be bent over using the soldering iron i have really long hair you know be safe i've also opened a window just to like bring in some ventilation i read varying degrees of like if soldering iron you know release a lot of fumes and i just again decided better safe than sorry this bad boy i mean before we deal with that we have to cut the cane to fit the glass and we're just going to dive in guys we have our glass pieces and we have our two kinds of came so this kind almost looks like a letter h it has two channels a channel on each side and this is for joining the glass together on the inside of the piece and then we have this kind of came which is more of a u channel if you can see that looks like it looks like the letter u and this is what you use to put together the outside of the frame so to do this i'm going to grab my t-square measure it mark it snip it that will fit right there and this piece will fit right inside of it i left a little bit of space on each side i'll probably have to trim it even one more time because this will overlap some so far so good right guys now the way these snips work they tend to cramp one side so i'm gonna cut off that crimped side so we have a nice fresh cut straighten there out and we're just going to cut one two three more of these pieces it's very satisfying to cut this it's so soft so they're to fit together like that now i'm seeing why some videos i've seen people used almost like a frame that really held everything in place and i am seeing why now because without the solder this this is just going to slide all over the place so i need to troubleshoot i need to really look at my life to be honest we're just going to cut the frame pieces and then i'm going to do a little troubleshooting so for the outer frame i'm going to cut them to size obviously there's going to be some hangover i want to be able to cut it with a mitered edge so having a little bit of extra is good that's what we're going for right there because this one is just a u it is slightly more delicate and it will want to crimp but from what i'm i've read you should just use your snips to kind of reform it i don't know i don't feel like i did very yeah that's better that is better than that we can just bend it bend it back all right that's our top cutting everything a little wide because i just want to be able to have a little wiggle room to hopefully get that mitered edge so it looks you know really professional but i might just have to do like a straight a straight cut okay it's done oh it's so not done you know everybody thinks cutting the glass is the hardest part of stained glass it turns out all right i spared you guys a lot of cursing i gave up on doing the mitered edge i just decided this was more beginner friendly and lacking you know a true like stained glass frame i just decided to go with lots and lots of blue painters tape to hold everything together i think now it's time to solder or try to i've never used a soldering gun before soldering gun soldering iron it's not a gun right i mean it's finished for better or worse it's it's kind of moment of truth time here guys uh we are going to solder this so i'm assuming it needs to be soldered on the front and the back so i flip this over this is the back i have some flux here um this is a rosin that helps the solder kind of flow onto the surface mine was kind of crystallized so i warmed it up in this ram again and i just have an old paintbrush it doesn't take a lot and you just kind of swirl the flux on the joints where you are going to want your solder to go you just never know if you can do something unless you try so we are going to try guys try guys it sounds like a youtube channel we have a well ventilated area we have our soldering iron we have our solder oh boy okay we're just going to trip some of that right there i mean it ain't pretty but it looks like it's working i mean it looks like it's working guys oh my gosh do you see that i mean that looks i don't know it doesn't look wrong this is honestly like really fun do i like making stained glass the jerky's out let's see if it actually works so we're just getting a little bit of our flux oh my gosh i'm just gonna let this cool then we will flip it over do the other side okay listen i'm not saying this is like the most beautiful soldering job i've ever seen but it looks like it worked and that's honestly all i could hope for so i'm just gonna let this cool and we will flip her over to the other side and then i mean maybe we're done this honestly did not take nearly as long as as i thought it would like who knew i did find that if you have kind of like a lumpy bit of solder you can go back over with the soldering iron and smooth it out do not come for me in the comments about my lack of soldering skills like i know guys if you get any you know little weird lumps of solder you can kind of go back and smooth it a little bit with your soldering iron now some real moment of truth time we're going to remove tape see it's all together you guys i made stained glass i mean is it perfect no but did i teach myself how to do it in like just a few hours yes and it works oh my gosh now if i really wanted to make this look super pro you could solder on a couple of jump rings on the top honestly i didn't have any plus that felt like a little bit of a stretch for a first timer so i think for now i'm just going to find a pretty windowsill and lean this up and just let it catch the sunlight as it comes through i have to say it's been a while since i have learned something new and like genuinely been so pleased with the results i mean let's just moment of silence for the soap carving right but i want to hear from you guys have you ever tried stained glass because i can see how it would be totally addictive but i definitely have a lot more practice that i need to do let me know in the comments down below what you guys think if you felt inspired to take on this kind of medieval art project and don't forget to give us a thumbs up and subscribe i'm gonna go find the perfect place for my new piece of stained glass i can't believe it i'll see you guys next time youi've got a soldering iron which i've never used before i've got glass cutters i've got sheets of glass um this is gonna go great okay all right last time around you guys saw my team challenged me to learn the art of soap carving oh can i fix i that i just cut off part of the dog's head oh and this week well i thought why not try my hand stained glass i mean honestly what could go wrong i've never done this before in my life this is not completely my fault there are some videos floating around out there on the internet well i'm not going to say they make it look easy but they make it look possible so i decided i don't know let's try it out let's take on an ancient art form and see if someone like me can learn how to do it just by watching videos on the internet what are the odds i'm actually going to pull this off stained glass as a hobby is not cheap glass itself especially the beautiful colorful glass that you want to use for stained glass is fairly expensive you have to buy some specialty tools you need a soldering iron i already had one or my husband did thankfully and then you have to buy the metal bits that keep stained glass together which is called cane c-a-m-e most traditionally it's made out of lead which these are it's harder to cut and join stained glass at angles other than right angles so we're doing we're doing something really simple today guys i picked some colors like this really pretty dark green and then three ombre shades in this amber and yellow color family and then this kind of fun streaky white i thought it would almost be like a modern sunrise with the green at the bottom representing the land and then the shades of amber getting lighter and then the white at the top representing the clouds why am i so nervous i am nervous it feels wrong to break glass on purpose i just want it to stay together and look like i did it on purpose i feel like that's a realistic goal don't you so i've got my template i drew this i just used a t-square to draw it kept it again very simple and i'm hoping hoping that some of my glass has square edges so this looks like it does i'm going to grab my t-square again and i think i'm just going to do one long line down this whole side so that ideally i'm only having to make two cuts just feel like that is going to make my life easier and because all of these rectangles are the same size i'm just going to use the top one as the template for all of these again i'm a beginner so if i can make two cuts per color try to make it a little easier on myself and that is what i am going to do oh the really nerve-wracking part we are going to cut and break the glass so i am using um a glass cutter like this it's it's got a grip like this that is again supposed to be good for beginners i really tried to set myself up for success it has a little wheel here it does have an empty chamber and some things i've read said you should put glass cutting oil in this other things i read said that is not necessarily necessary it could just make your cutting wheel last longer i don't have any glass cutting oils so we are just going to try it like this i also grabbed some work gloves when it comes to the actual breaking part again nothing necessarily specified that you should wear gloves but i just really want to make sure i am protecting my hands let's do this guys i'm just going to press firmly and score the glass and i should i don't know if i really i don't know if that didn't to be honest that definitely sounded like it was doing something maybe the straight edge is not the right put a glove on the hand that's going to hold the glass gently but firmly we are clamping on these i'm so nervous like my hands are shaking okay and if i did it right this is just gonna snap one two okay okay i don't think i scored it enough i'm so nervous okay i don't know we're gonna try we're just gonna try to go over it again no i definitely heard it i heard it doing something all the real stained glass people out there are watching and just cringing right now okay i think maybe this is just a really big piece to try to break off okay i mean that is that is a pretty sh pretty clean edge i think i can work with it let's just carefully again this is you know the edges it's glass so be careful guys honestly don't try this at home i certainly shouldn't okay so i think the key is i need to be a little more forceful with my scoring tool oh my gosh you guys i did it i mean i made one i made one rectangle of glass don't worry about the sharpie we can use a little nail polish remover to take that off but just have four more colors to go right into the glass three yes oh that one was so good one two three oh my gosh i'm doing it guys after some trial and error i find that a damp paper towel is the best thing for picking up all those little shards of glass and keep them out of your fingertips okay okay i guess you're gonna be home from school and the last thing i want to be doing is like breaking glass and soldering lead together so i think i'm going to tidy up and tackle part two of making stained glass in the morning so i'll see you guys then i have transferred all of my anxiety i've put all that anxiety on putting the stained glass together and using the soldering iron i've just never done anything like this before so i've got an apron on i've got my hair back because i'm going to be bent over using the soldering iron i have really long hair you know be safe i've also opened a window just to like bring in some ventilation i read varying degrees of like if soldering iron you know release a lot of fumes and i just again decided better safe than sorry this bad boy i mean before we deal with that we have to cut the cane to fit the glass and we're just going to dive in guys we have our glass pieces and we have our two kinds of came so this kind almost looks like a letter h it has two channels a channel on each side and this is for joining the glass together on the inside of the piece and then we have this kind of came which is more of a u channel if you can see that looks like it looks like the letter u and this is what you use to put together the outside of the frame so to do this i'm going to grab my t-square measure it mark it snip it that will fit right there and this piece will fit right inside of it i left a little bit of space on each side i'll probably have to trim it even one more time because this will overlap some so far so good right guys now the way these snips work they tend to cramp one side so i'm gonna cut off that crimped side so we have a nice fresh cut straighten there out and we're just going to cut one two three more of these pieces it's very satisfying to cut this it's so soft so they're to fit together like that now i'm seeing why some videos i've seen people used almost like a frame that really held everything in place and i am seeing why now because without the solder this this is just going to slide all over the place so i need to troubleshoot i need to really look at my life to be honest we're just going to cut the frame pieces and then i'm going to do a little troubleshooting so for the outer frame i'm going to cut them to size obviously there's going to be some hangover i want to be able to cut it with a mitered edge so having a little bit of extra is good that's what we're going for right there because this one is just a u it is slightly more delicate and it will want to crimp but from what i'm i've read you should just use your snips to kind of reform it i don't know i don't feel like i did very yeah that's better that is better than that we can just bend it bend it back all right that's our top cutting everything a little wide because i just want to be able to have a little wiggle room to hopefully get that mitered edge so it looks you know really professional but i might just have to do like a straight a straight cut okay it's done oh it's so not done you know everybody thinks cutting the glass is the hardest part of stained glass it turns out all right i spared you guys a lot of cursing i gave up on doing the mitered edge i just decided this was more beginner friendly and lacking you know a true like stained glass frame i just decided to go with lots and lots of blue painters tape to hold everything together i think now it's time to solder or try to i've never used a soldering gun before soldering gun soldering iron it's not a gun right i mean it's finished for better or worse it's it's kind of moment of truth time here guys uh we are going to solder this so i'm assuming it needs to be soldered on the front and the back so i flip this over this is the back i have some flux here um this is a rosin that helps the solder kind of flow onto the surface mine was kind of crystallized so i warmed it up in this ram again and i just have an old paintbrush it doesn't take a lot and you just kind of swirl the flux on the joints where you are going to want your solder to go you just never know if you can do something unless you try so we are going to try guys try guys it sounds like a youtube channel we have a well ventilated area we have our soldering iron we have our solder oh boy okay we're just going to trip some of that right there i mean it ain't pretty but it looks like it's working i mean it looks like it's working guys oh my gosh do you see that i mean that looks i don't know it doesn't look wrong this is honestly like really fun do i like making stained glass the jerky's out let's see if it actually works so we're just getting a little bit of our flux oh my gosh i'm just gonna let this cool then we will flip it over do the other side okay listen i'm not saying this is like the most beautiful soldering job i've ever seen but it looks like it worked and that's honestly all i could hope for so i'm just gonna let this cool and we will flip her over to the other side and then i mean maybe we're done this honestly did not take nearly as long as as i thought it would like who knew i did find that if you have kind of like a lumpy bit of solder you can go back over with the soldering iron and smooth it out do not come for me in the comments about my lack of soldering skills like i know guys if you get any you know little weird lumps of solder you can kind of go back and smooth it a little bit with your soldering iron now some real moment of truth time we're going to remove tape see it's all together you guys i made stained glass i mean is it perfect no but did i teach myself how to do it in like just a few hours yes and it works oh my gosh now if i really wanted to make this look super pro you could solder on a couple of jump rings on the top honestly i didn't have any plus that felt like a little bit of a stretch for a first timer so i think for now i'm just going to find a pretty windowsill and lean this up and just let it catch the sunlight as it comes through i have to say it's been a while since i have learned something new and like genuinely been so pleased with the results i mean let's just moment of silence for the soap carving right but i want to hear from you guys have you ever tried stained glass because i can see how it would be totally addictive but i definitely have a lot more practice that i need to do let me know in the comments down below what you guys think if you felt inspired to take on this kind of medieval art project and don't forget to give us a thumbs up and subscribe i'm gonna go find the perfect place for my new piece of stained glass i can't believe it i'll see you guys next time you\n"