Today I want to share a simple stained glass DIY project that I’m absolutely in love with! Once you’ve made your own stained glass plant stake, I’m sure you’ll think of so many other cute ideas for more.
Aside from the usual stained glass process, there isn’t a ton of new information with this tutorial, so it’ll be a short and sweet one.
Let’s get into it. 🙂
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Supplies You Need
If you found this tutorial and you’ve never made stained glass before there is a lot of information that would need to be digested, and supplies purchased. Luckily, if it is something you really want to pursue I list all the needed supplies here. I also have an in-depth blog post covering how to make stained glass from beginning to end.
For those of you who already have all the standard supplies, the only other thing you’ll need are these copper rods. You can also use brass rods, however although the price is better they are a little more difficult to solder, and the patina.
And of course the stained glass pattern if you want to make this same rose. This is a paid pattern that I offer on my Etsy. I also have an open rose pattern for this plant stake, however it is more difficult, and does require a ring saw.
Assembling Your Stained Glass Plant Stake
For this tutorial we will skip the process of cutting the glass, grinding, foiling, etc., and go straight into attaching your pieces to the copper rod to create your plant stake. As I mentioned above, those steps are in a previous blog post.
Just for a quick overview however, here’s a little graphic showing the steps:
NOTE: You WILL NEED hobby came for the heart-shaped leaf pedals! This part of the design is too simple and without the support of hobby came the pedals will just break away.
Step One: Cut Stake Down to Size
We still want the stake to be roughly 10” – 11” (doesn’t have to be exact), however we’ll need to cut it down where we want our heart-shaped leaf petals to go.
Lay down your rose and petals where you want them on the stake. Then place your stake over or under and mark where you should cut. This will be how far down your pedals will be from the bottom of your rose.
Step Two: Attach Stake to Stained Glass
Now that you have two pieces of your stake, the first (shorter piece) will be soldered to the bottom of your rose.
Remember to add flux to both the rose and the copper stake where you intend to solder. These stakes take solder well, however you will need to hold your soldering iron in place for a few minutes to get the solder to build up around the stake and really adhere to everything.
Continue this with the top of your flower pedals, as well as the bottom until everything is soldered to your stake.
If you don’t line everything up PERFECTLY, it’s fine! For instance my rose and heart pedal face every so slightly in different directions and it still came out so cute!! The most important thing is that you establish a good hold on all of your pieces so the plant stake is sturdy.
My helpful tip: Use these helping hands to hold each piece so that you can solder your stake to them.
I purchased these helping hands way back, and have only recently been getting a lot of use out of them but I LOVE THEM! I’m kind of sad it took me so long to utilize them this much.
Using the helping hands I attached my smaller piece of the stake to the bottom of my rose, and top of my heart-shaped leaf pedals as seen above.
For the bottom, longer piece of the stake, I found it was easiest to attach it with the top piece laying flat down. As seen below.
Step Three: Patina
I usually include “optional” here, but with the copper stake and silver solder you may want to patina the entire thing black, or patina the solder copper.
I find that my hobby came doesn’t take copper patina, so you may want to test a spot on your hobby came before deciding what patina to use.
These stakes do take patina well, but may require a couple of coats.
And there you have it! A beautiful stained glass plant stake and rose that will never die <3
