How to Make a Stained Glass Suncatcher

Cut your paper pattern apart into its individual pieces. Patterns come from books, from online, or you can draw your own once you have a feel for what cuts cleanly.

Lay each paper piece on the glass you have chosen for it and draw around it with a Sharpie. Think about where the colour and texture fall - on a bell, the grain running down the bell reads better than across it.

Run the glass cutter along the traced line in one continuous pass. One pass only - going over a score twice ruins the edge and the break.

Then break along the score with grozing pliers. Line the jaws up with the score, hold the glass firmly, and apply steady pressure rather than a snap.

Curves come out in several cuts, not one. Take the waste away in slices.

Every piece goes to the grinder. This is what takes the piece from roughly the right shape to exactly the right shape, and it is where a tight-fitting panel is actually made.

Wear safety glasses. Feed the piece against the grinding head with light pressure and keep the water reservoir topped up.

Check each piece against the paper pattern as you go, not at the end.

Copper foil tape goes around the edge of each piece with the glass centred so equal foil folds over each face.

Fold the overlap down on both sides and burnish it flat with a fid or the back of a marker. Loose foil lifts when the solder hits it.

Wrap the glass nuggets too. They foil exactly like a flat piece, just around a curve.

Brush gel flux over the copper foil, then run solder over the foil on every side of every piece.

This tinning pass coats the copper and is what lets the pieces join to each other in the next step. Skip it and you will be fighting bare copper in the middle of assembly.

Lay the tinned pieces back onto the paper pattern in position. Solder the bells to each other first, then add the holly leaves and the nuggets.

Working on the pattern keeps the shape honest. It is easy to drift a few millimetres while joining and end up with a piece that does not match the design.

Put the wire ring on a joint at the top of the piece, where two or more sections meet.

A joint has more solder mass and more foil around it, so it holds the weight. A ring soldered into the middle of a single foil run will pull off.

Hold the ring in place, heat the joint, and feed solder around the base of the ring.

Flux residue is corrosive and it will haze the glass and dull the solder lines if it stays on.

Wash the piece with washing soda and warm water, scrubbing gently along the solder lines, then rinse thoroughly.

Wear rubber gloves. Dry it fully with a towel afterwards.

Thread a decorative ribbon through the ring and knot it at the length you want.

Then hang it in a window that gets direct sun. That is the whole point - the piece is flat and dull under room light and comes alive when light passes through it.

East-facing windows give you morning colour; west-facing catch the evening.