One beautiful new design, coming right up! Today’s project is a creative merging of two things I love: stained glass art and birds! Read about what prompted this stained glass blue heron piece, and make one for yourself with just a few simple tools/materials.

It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of winter: the cold weather, the darkness, the overall wet/muddiness of it all…pretty much any of it. And since I don’t ski or snowboard, I’m left feeling trapped inside all winter long, which doesn’t really help my mood.

This year, I resolved to change my attitude (at least a little bit) by finding one outdoor, winter activity that I could do with my family. Utah is known for its recreation; and, one of those recreational activities just happens to be birding! The great thing about birding is that it can be done year-round, it doesn’t require expensive equipment or lift passes, and even if you don’t know all that much about birds, you can still have a good time.

So, that’s how I came to discover my newfound winter (and hopefully year-round) hobby of birding. I bought a pair of binoculars, and a nifty little Birds of Utah Field Guide, and we were on our way!

After a few birding excursions, we’ve seen more species than I could have imagined, including some amazing blue heron. I had never seen blue heron before, and I was completely awestruck when we saw dozens of them amongst the frozen, foggy landscape of a local bird refuge!

While contemplating what type of design to do next, my mind just kept coming back to these stunning creatures, and that’s what spurred me to create this stained glass blue heron design.

When I first conceptualized this piece, I imagined that I would do layers of cardstock, like usual, but two things struck me: (1) if all of the colors were cut individually out of cardstock, they would come out super tiny and be hard to work with, and (2) wouldn’t it be awesome if this could actually be translucent (like an actual stained glass window)!?

That’s why I decided to utilize vellum for the “glass” piece and reserve cardstock for the “metal” outlines.

I’ve never experimented with printing on vellum before, but I was extremely happy with the results! I was also nervous that the “print then cut” feature wouldn’t work properly because of the translucent quality of the material, but my Cricut kicked butt, as usual.

Note: if you’re planning on utilizing Cricut’s “print then cut” feature to do this project, make sure to ungroup all fo the layers first; then select everything, besides the “outline” layer, and hit flatten.

Once I had my vellum piece printed and cut out, along with my cardstock outline, I just attached them with a little hot glue, and voilà!

I use Adobe Illustrator for all of my designs, and a Cricut Maker to bring my creations to life. For tips on creating fun paper cuts like this one, see the FAQ section on my website. Also, be sure to check out the other awesome freebies available on my blog!

Enjoy making this lovely stained glass blue heron craft! What is your favorite bird to see in the wild?

 

 

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Mandee is a professional graphic designer, amateur bird watcher, and rollercoaster enthusiast. She is a wife to hardworking high school teacher and mommy to three adorable little humans. She fell in love with graphic design when she started working on a comedy website with a guy she met her freshman year of college. Design wasn’t the only thing she fell in love with, and they were married a year and a half later. She created Designs By Miss Mandee to be a place where she could merge her passion for design with her lifelong love of crafting.

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