Faux Stained Glass Project

Thank you Uncle Matt.  His advertising firm had some leftover glass that he donated to my art class.  What can we do with it?  Faux Stained Glass!

This semester I have 65 8th grade students.  We have enough glass for everyone to get about  7x9 or slightly bigger.  

This one-off project was inspired by this blog post, check her work out.  

Here is the glass cutting.  pretty easy!

Once we have enough, each student gets one, cleans off the glass shards, and we need to protect those edges.  For real stained glass, the outside is sealed with a metal channel called "came".  We have none, so I used the paper cutter to cut 1/2 in strips of metal that we would use for tooling.  I had a roll of 40 pound copper and bronze metal foil. 

the students bent it around the glass, and I used hot glue to attach the metal to the glass.  Also, I used hot glue to attach hemp cord hangers to the back side.

The process is simple.  Glue + acrylic paint = faux stained glass.

The "lead" lines are created using black acrylic/glue mix in old glue bottles.  Students make a design in their sketchbook and then set the glass on top.  Trace using the glue.  They had to be careful not to include too much detail for such a small project.  

This had to dry for a day before starting with color.

The color was made by using regular glue.  Squeeze out about a quarter size drop of glue, add a small amount of paint, mix and paint in.

the results are pretty astounding!

These dry for another day, and finish with some sharpie where the paint/glue mix went over the "leading"  

These were done just in time for some kids to take home as Valentine's Day gifts!