Stained glass tutorial on how to make stained glass patterns using the Cricut and the Cricut remove-able vinyl. Stained glass pattern making made easy. Quit using patterns shears!! Cricut will completely change the way you make stained glass. In this video I show you how to go from drawing to Cricut to glass cutting. No longer lose your pattern in the grinder or spend hours drawing very single piece on with a sharpie. The Cricut makes stained glass a breeze and extremely accurate. Please find me on Instagram if you have questions or want to see what I am working on @k_c_glassworks.
This is what you will need to use this pattern making method:
a digital design software (like Procreate), Photoshop, a Cricut of any kind, Cricut remove-able vinyl, 100% acetone, Transfer tape, a program to print out a pattern to follow (like Rapid Resizer), and stained glass supplies.
There are many way to make stained glass patterns but the most common way was to use stained glass pattern shears. Although this isn't a bad way to get started, when you start doing more complicate and larger patterns these pattern shears can be quite the pain. It also takes forever. A lot of people like to glue their pattern onto the glass. The problem with this method is that the glue is pain to clean and it also gums up the glass scoring tool.
To be able to use this method you will need some sort of digital design software to create you drawings. This can be anything you want to use. I use Procreate to draw on my iPad. This works best for me but you can also use Photoshop or Illustrator to create you drawings. I personally don't know how to create stained glass drawings on these programs. Photoshop is a relatively complicated program because of how much can be accomplished. I only know the basics of Photoshop and how to do this pattern making for stained glass. If you need to slow the video down so that you can follow every single button I click you can change that setting in the video. I really try to close all gaps so that you can go from start to finish.
There is also a way to make patterns larger than 12"x12" on the Cricut. I can make a video on how to make large stained glass patterns as well using this same method. There is just a couple extra steps but then you aren't confined to that 12" x12" square.
Stained glass patterns play such a huge role in the quality of your work. If you have a crappy pattern then you are going to have crappy stained glass. It's really what separates good stained glass artists from bad ones. You can make extremely accurate stained glass pieces from pattern shears but it takes an insane amount of time. And a ton of grinding. I don't know about you but I hate using the grinder. The less time I use it the happier I am.
I use Rapid Resizer to be able to print out my large patterns on 8.5x11 sheets of paper. I haven't found a good way to do this on Photoshop yet. If you know how to print large documents on Photoshop please let me know how. Rapid Resizer is relatively cheap and is great for stained glass. It was the program I used when I was still using pattern shears to make my stained glass patterns.
I started doing stained glass in 2020. I started my stained glass journey using the copper foil method and have quickly progressed to using only lead came. I absolutely love the look of lead came and the entire process. I started doing stained glass as a hobby and just something fun to do on the side and now I have my own stained glass business. My business is called Kingdom Creative Glassworks. I quit my full time job not too long ago and haven't looked back.