Creating "Stained Glass": WIP & Frustrations

[AJLoCascio]

I'm in the process of "Haunting" my room and making it look as Spooky and Gothic as one can manage in an apt on a budget.

So I've been working on making a pattern to convert two of the smaller windows in my room to a fake stained glass... Which I thought would be simple:

Here is the Pattern:

So I drew it ( first cutting it out of foam core which was a failure) - then I dremmled it out of MDF which worked alright.

I cut styrene from an old poster frame to make the "glass" and layered bits of the self adhesive "leading" you can get from Micheals.

Once I got to the painting process I made a real mess of things. First off the paint does not look great if you apply it in a thin layer - it simply doesn't look like glass - it looks streaky - but if you apply too much.. no light gets through.

Needless to say it looked like crap - so I Johnny 5'ed it and disassembled- which sadly destroyed the mdf frame I had made.


I'm quite frustrated and If anyone has an advice on if there is:

A) Something better to cut the "frame" out of ( the spider and black part of it )

B) Suggestions on the "Staining" process are VERY welcome; either painting techniques / something I'm flubbing up or suggestions for are an alternative method are greatly appreciated.

I've contemplated employing the use of Lighting Gels instead of paint - but I'm not sure that would be the smartest route... or would it ?

Cheers!

Moony


This first pic is rather deceiving - making it look not like a mess...

The messy results:

​

 

[Bizarro Lois]

I have a friend who makes real stained glass. Would you like me to put you in touch with him?
You're just making this to sit in the window, right? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see what kind of paint you were using. What about those suncatcher kits you can get in craft stores? Would that kind of paint work? Maybe you could use the gels, like you mentioned, or something similar. Then you could just make a second black frame and sandwich the colored pieces between.

 

[Contec]

why don't you use Thin coloured paper to make all those small facets and sandwich it between two styrene frames.

 

[Pete SSS]

If you have acess to an airbrush, then lots of thin layers of glass paint over the acrylic should do the trick, if you don't have an airbrush, then Contec's plan sounds good to me

 

[AJLoCascio]

I have a friend who makes real stained glass. Would you like me to put you in touch with him?
You're just making this to sit in the window, right? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see what kind of paint you were using. What about those suncatcher kits you can get in craft stores? Would that kind of paint work? Maybe you could use the gels, like you mentioned, or something similar. Then you could just make a second black frame and sandwich the colored pieces between.

I dont think I can afford real stained glass - in fact I know I cant. The kind of Paint I'm using is vitrea 160 from Blick:

why don't you use Thin coloured paper to make all those small facets and sandwich it between two styrene frames.

I thought about it - not sure how that would look - I want it to be semi transparent.

If you have acess to an airbrush, then lots of thin layers of glass paint over the acrylic should do the trick, if you don't have an airbrush, then Contec's plan sounds good to me

Not sure I can afford an airbrush at the moment - but I'll look into it.

My thing now is deciding what material to cut the Spider/frame are out of since MDF isn't really the best.

 

[mrsmartypants]

Have you thought about colored plastic film? Light can get through and it gives the appearance of glass, but it's just a thin film. Sandwich between styrene as suggested above and voila!

 

[AJLoCascio]

Anyone got an intelligent source for clear styrene that isn't going to a salvation army and taking apart old poster frames ?

 

[vaderdarth]

go to Lowes and get the clear thin plexi. Not expensive. There is an entire line of stained glass paints at Michaels. The end results are identical to real stained glass. I think hobby lobby carries them also.

 

[Contec]

Anyone got an intelligent source for clear styrene that isn't going to a salvation army and taking apart old poster frames ?

Coloured cd case. not styrene but thin coloured plastic.

 

[rollerboi]

You're practically halfway there when it comes to making real stained glass, honestly. You've got your pattern, all you have to do is cut out the glass, apply the stain, and join the pieces with flux.

Barring that, I'd do some cuts (scribed lines) on plexi (to stop the dye from flowing past boundaries) and stain it. Your overlay looks fantastic. Lighting gels wouldn't be a bad way to go either, if you wanted to keep it lightweight and portable.

 

[badmojo]

I did a treatment on some basement windows using colored report covers. You can adjust how deep the color is by using more than one sheet, plus you can overlay colors.

 

[Kingpin]

A cheap alternative could've been printing the design onto acetate, a couple of sheets of A3 or A4-sized material would do the trick nicely, sandwiched between two layers of the "frame".

Still, goodluck with the build, the execution if it comes out will be spectacular.

 

[Moviefreak]

Just take a rectangle piece of plexiglas, paint all the black on the reverse side, then buy stainglass paint. It paints on clear plastic or glass and looks like colored glass. No cutting of material, just drawing

 

[hansicle]

Ah, my mom used to make the fake stained glass, it used stuff called liquid lead, which I think was some sort of thick acrylic paint, then there was the "glass" which was like a paint, you put it on really thick, it would level off, and you had to pop any bubbles with a needle. Once dried it looked similar to leaded glass, but it's a bit much.
http://www.amazon.com/Gallery-Glass-16405-Window-Combing/dp/B0018N27JU/ref=pd_bxgy_hg_text_b

I would suggest the acetate colord film. You could probably get clear plastic wrapping paper and use that. I saw a thing on Marth Stewart (yeah I know) where she made a mirror with a sugar water solution to attach the silver leaf to a piece of glass. I wonder if you could use the same sugar water to attach the plastic to the glass, once you're done, you could probably peel off the plastic and just wash the window to get it off without using glue. Or maybe even future floor wax could be used to hold it on the window.

 

[Shylaah]

A lot of good suggestions already..........

We use to make fake stained glass windows at school for the front entry for Christmas.....They had these big pieces of Plexiglas with the design painted on and we used colored gift tissue paper dipped in diluted glue and laid the pieces on. They were plenty light letting but not all that transparent of course.

For more transparency, might try colored cellophane. It's cheap should be readily available this time of year in the Christmas wrappings section.....and as badmojo said of the report covers, you can control the color some what by layering pieces....which would work out well on that fading orange in the spider web.....

I wouldn't try for making a cut out frame unless you just got to have some dimension to it, I would either paint the design on plexi or cut it out of black paper.

Good luck with it.......

Shylaah

EDIT: This place even advertises their cellophane to make stained glass windows!:lol

 

[Johnny Fever]

What about using color lighting gels meant for stage lighting?
130: Color Gels

-John

 

[AJLoCascio]

Just a wee update - I got some Lighting gels, Some Plexi from Lowed, some frosted glass spray paint and cleaned and sanded my Spider MDF outline... Expect pics in the AM !

G' Night !

- Moony

 

[Don Jarr]

Hi All

Ages ago a friend had a Halloween party and we wanted to put spiders and ghosts etc on the windows, so just got some inkjet self adhesive film and printed them on it, then stuck that to clear pvc sheet and fixed to the window. It was really simple and cost about a tenner for pack of inkjet clear film then just found the images we wanted and printed them off. If you have photoshop you can apply all sorts of glass effects which look really good.

As you have the frame you could do the same and break the bits down to fit on sheets and if its only for one day is a cheap way and works a treat.

Don