Crafty Saturdays - Glass Painting

Last year Angie, Pat and I started doing Crafty Saturdays. We've had a lot of fun with them!

Some of our first projects were glass painting. You can do so many things with glass paints, between the three of us we've made:

• Christmas ornaments
• Picture frames
• Glasses
• Vases
• Pencil cups
• Pictures

Many of these ended up as gifts - which made it even more fun. 

A lot of people asked how we made these projects - it's actually pretty simple and is not expensive.

We use Plaid paints. To get started, I recommend their book Glass Art: The Easy Way. You can get it on Amazon for about $4 used ($0.01, plus shipping). The book tells you exactly how to lay out the leading and create different paint effects. There are also several patterns in there that you can use for a wide variety of projects.

You can also pick up the paints on Amazon - individually or in packs. Michael's also carries them, and other craft stores may as well. The paints are a few dollars each, and are plenty big enough to use on many projects. 

Here are some of our projects:

This was for my friend Lisa - she had created the picture in the back, I recreated it on a glass.

This one always reminds me of Stephanie <3 td="">

I designed this one - it was my very first project. A Christmas present for my mother in law :)

A Christmas present for my step mom - more on these ones below.

One of my favorites - I just love his expression. 

Pat's kitchen cabinet doors.

This idea actually came straight out of the book I mentioned.

The process is very simple. 

Lay out the leading - either by tracking a picture under the glass or free handing it. 

These were inspired by an artist named Jean Paul

I purchased these canisters from Target - they worked great!

Then lay in the color, be sure not to add too much or it will run. For these, we swirled the colors.

Then let them dry. Finally, add Crystal Clear (it's another Plaid "color") around the edges of the leading to seal the paint. On these we also swirled Crystal Clear over the rest of the canisters to give them sort of a frosted finish. 

If you goof up, and we did a few times on these actually, you can simply score and peel off the portions that didn't work out and start over. 

A to Z Challenge 2014

I've signed up to do the April A to Z Challenge again this year. This will be my fourth year participating! I'm looking forward to it. The challenge (almost) always helps me to blog, because it gives me something to focus on.

I didn't finish the challenge last year - I made it to "L" and my poor sweet Mr. Goo (Guinness) passed away. He had been with me for a very long time -  almost 13 years - and was just finding it too hard to get around. His hips just gave out on him.

I miss him, but it broke my heart more to see him in pain and unable to move freely.

Mr. Goo

But anyways, if you're interested you can check out the A to Z Challenge at http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/ - it's always a lot of fun, and you'll find some other great bloggers along the way. It's only mid February, and there are already 708 other blogs signed up!