Glass Painting

Transform Plain Glassware into Unique Home Décor

See the glass carafe and wine glass in the photo. That's my first glass painting project using the Delta Air-Dry PermEnamel Transparent Glass Paint Set I told you about in a Safe Easy Way to Create Stained Glass.

I didn't use the faux leading in this project. Next time perhaps.

All Delta PermEnamel Paints are dishwasher safe and oven safe to 350 degrees.

The colors of these transparent paints are quite pale but can be layered for more depth.

The paint tacks up quickly. Paint in sections to minimize brush strokes; first up and down, up and down. Then move to the next section blending the join first. Blend at the edge and move on - up and down, up and down.

A second coat applied horizontally - back and forth, back and forth - serves both to deepen the color and to obscure brush strokes.

The paints clean up easily with water, but can't be thinned with water. Colors can be mixed with each other. For example, I mixed green and yellow to get the apple green for the body of the carafe.

I can't swear the transparent paints are UV-resistant, but I've used the opaque colors to Repair Talavera Pots that have been in direct sun for over four years now.

Painted Glass Materials

• Clear glass carafe or vase
• 3 or 4 wide rubber bands that will fit tightly around the glass carafe
• Delta Air-Dry PermEnamel Transparent Glass Paint Set
• Fine point permanent metallic gold marker such as Prismacolor Premier or Pilot (for doodling and outlining)
• Fine felt tip permanent metallic gold marker such as DecoColor (for filling in larger areas)

Pinting the Glassware

Paint the bottom of the carafe and the top of the glass stopper blue. Let dry. Add a second coat for more intense color as I did if desired.

Position a rubber band to delineate the bottleneck. Use horizontal strokes of red for the first coat. Let dry. Use vertical brush strokes for the second coat. Let dry.

Tip: Paint up to, but not on, the rubber band. When you remove the rubber band, it could pull away some of the paint from the glass.

Before moving the rubber band, use the fine tip gold marker to paint a line at the bottom of the red section. Thicken the line to your taste.

Tip: Most fine line metallic markers work by pumping a tip against the surface like a plunger. This is a bit tricky on a curved glass surface. I found it easier to fill in larger gold areas with a felt tip permanent gold marker. The gold is not as intense, but when used just for filling in, the difference is imperceptible.

Line the top rim of the bottle in gold. This is easy to do freehand.

Paint gold dots symmetrically around the red band.

When the gold marker paint has dried, carefully lift the rubber band and move it down to mark off the top for a blue stripe.

Stretch a second rubber band in place below the first. My blue stripe is about 3/8 inches wide. Yours will depend on the size of your carafe.

(Notice there is a clear stripe of glass between the red bottleneck and the blue stripe and between the blue stripe and the green. Also there is a clear stripe below the green section.)

Paint the blue stripe. Let dry. Paint gold lines at the top and bottom of the stripe.

Use the fine point gold marker to draw a squiggly line on the blue stripe all around the bottle. I chose to do a simple looping line. It reminded me of practicing the cursive lower case "e" in grade school.

Carefully move the rubber bands.

Reposition the rubber bands for the green section and paint as for the red bottleneck - first horizontally, then vertically. The apple green I used was made by mixing green and yellow 1:1.

Use the rubber bands as guides to draw gold lines at the top and bottom of the green section as before. Carefully remove the bands.

Paint gold curlicues symmetrically around the green band using the fine point marker.

If your carafe has a stopper, paint it using the same technique. Mine is red where the stopper fits into the carafe. The stripes on my stopper (moving up from the red) are clear, green, clear, blue, clear, green, clear. Each stripe is delineated in gold.

Finally, I added gold dots around the blue stripe of the stopper.