A fantastic way to liven up a boring piece of glass. (Glass Painting)

Member Name: casarka

Product:	Glass Painting
Date:	06/07/01 (961 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great way to liven up any piece of glass, Very therapeutic, Not messy

Disadvantages: Can be a bit fiddly to begin with, You need patience, Rome wasn't built in a day

Glass painting doesn't really take a lot of skill and I've taught many people the basics in just a few hours.

I went to a craft class a couple of years ago at my local YWCA and was amazed at how quickly something can be transformed by just a little gold outliner. We didn't have a lot of equipment. I wasn't very good at it but I was keen to learn so I went to the library and got some books out to see if I could teach myself.

To start off I practiced on some old bottles and I did everything freehand, I can't draw so I stuck to very simple designs like a dot with lines radiating from it, the way a child would draw the sun. I was very pleased with the results and decided it was time to try to do something with the actual glass paints. This I found very hard because, as is typical of me I didn't read the book all the way through before I started and I was trying to paint with the paint rather than fill a pool, the outliner being the sides of the pool. Once I realised that I wasn't using enough paint I was away.

My first few attempts were not too fantastic but not bad for a beginner. After reading more I found that if you put a picture behind the glass and outline over the lines you can do much more intricate work. I have done lots of Celtic picture frames, framed and clip style and these are just beautiful once painted.

The one thing that the books don't all tell you is that a craft knife is going to become your best mate. Any mistakes that you make can be easily tidied up by just slicing off the bits where the outliner has blobbed or gone too wide.

When painting like I said earlier it is best to flood the paint into the pool made by the outliner. There are lots of colours and a pot of paint costing £2.80 lasts me about a year and I paint most days. The best paintbrushes are small ones I usually use a number 1 or 2 and never bigger than a 4.

I started on bottles, square side
d ones are easiest because the paint dries much better when the piece is laid flat. Because the paint goes on so thick it will run if not as flat as possible.

I now sell my work, I started doing that after only 2 months of practicing which was good for my self esteem.

Painting on acetate is great fun and because it's bendy you can paint a butterfly that looks real as you can bend the wings up to look like it's in flight. I've painted lots of things on acetate, dolphins are popular up here also dragonflies, butterflies, moons, suns, trains, bookmarks, the list is endless. I've found people ask me for the strangest things, angels, pigs and giraffes to name but 3. These are very cheap to make but they do take time if you want them to look good so it's just as well that people are willing to pay up to £2 for a 3 inch suncatcher made this way. They look fantastic in the window, on mirrors, on the fridge (you can put tiny little magnets on the back if you wish, all you need is ordinary craft glue, check the glue on a scrap piece just in case it eats into the acetate first, so far I've had no problems with this), on curtains and even on plant pots. I usually try to have a dark piece in the middle somewhere like the body of a butterfly so that they can be stuck to the window with blue tac as this is the cleanest way to display them, double sided tape works too but it makes a mess of the window. I'm trying to see if I can find another way to display them, maybe suction cups or something so that people don't have to go looking for blue tac.

Anyway, off you go and enjoy yourself. The library is a great place to find books on the subject so you don't have to spend lots on books and then find out that you are not that keen on it once you've tried it out.

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