Our crafting time was spent with her making the purses that are pictured in yesterday's post, with me stitching together a sock monkey and with the two of us together attempting a new craft! At least this was new to us!!! I have been reading a lot about glass painting and wanted to try my hand at it. I figured since I do a lot of painting on everything from furniture to gourds, this would be a cinch. Painting is painting...right? I was wrong. Painting is painting as long as you are applying the paint to something absorbent. Applying paint to slippery glass is a different story all together! First of all, you clean the glass with alcohol to remove any oils and dust that might have accumulated on the glass. Then, if you so desire, you tape off any sections that might not be intended to be painted. Simple enough job on both accounts. We cleaned our wine glasses and applied tape. One hint on this...black, electrical tape is amazing! It stretches and bends with the curves of the glass unlike masking tape! (Sorry, Mark! I promise to replace your electrical tape!) Anyway, once the tape is in place..you paint. Fun! I wondered why in the world the bottles of paint had these little pointy dispensers on top. Being accustomed to thick acrylic paints, I pondered how I was supposed to get any paint out of the bottle! I needn't have worried about that! The paint is about as thick as water! It poured out of the wee hole and onto the glass! Well..as you know, wine glasses are curved! Flowy, watery paint and rounded curves do not play well together! The thin paint started dribbling around the glass! It went over the tape and into the sections meant for other colors! It flowed down the stem of the glass that was intended to be left clear! It seeped under the tape and even inside the glass! I had paint everywhere! Elizabeth looked at my gorgeous wine glass/candle holder with envy! "Gee, Mom! That looks gr.....What happened?" I stared at my oozing wine glass. Yep, it was strange! The paint was one icky mess! To top things off, I had chosen a color called "Hibiscus". This was supposed to be red! My wine glass held a strong resemblance to some container that at one time held left-over ravioli! Not the home-made type ravioli..that yucky canned stuff! The stuff that stains everything it touches a weird sort of salmon pink/orange/red. You know..the stuff that no matter how many times you wash your favorite left-over storage container it always stays slimy orange. Yep..my votive holder held a strong resemblance to a wine glass that was used to refrigerate left-over ravioli. Another point about this glass paint..it takes forever to dry! All the while it is drying, it is pooling in rivulets around any tiny bumps in the glass! Soon my ravioli-orange glass was dripping glass paint onto the table and floor! Bright idea!....Stick the slippery mess of a craft piece into a warm oven! There the paint would dry quicker! Hmmmm...never do that. Enough said on that matter!
All the while that I was trying to corral my oozing paint, Darling Daughter was whisking out gorgeous votive holders one after another! I ogled the glasses and then glared at my futile attempt..what was I doing wrong?? After about an hour in the warm oven, the paint had finally dried enough to become orange sludge. I toted my glass back into the living room where Elizabeth now was on her fourth glass! (She had even gone to take a shower between number two and number three glasses!) Pathetic Orange was plunked down on the table next to her beauties. The orange sludge was now oozing slowly and looked more like some molten lava that had spilled over onto my wine glass! She broke out into a fit of giggles! "What is that?" had to be the thought that was going through her head at this point but she was far too sweet to ever question the artistic ability of her mother. I looked at her and said "Fix it!" And...she did. She added some stripes over top of my ravioli smears and made the thing at least appear to be something more than a dirty dish that was left sit on the table for a week while some college-aged son went home on vacation. (That was an actual experience from back when Son was in college!) Anyway, she made the candle holder respectable! I was happy...then I noticed her secret! Darling Daughter was not even using the expensive glass paints that I had gotten from the craft store! After seeing the trouble that I was having with the runny paint, she painted all of hers with NAIL POLISH!!!! The gorgeous creations were all done with old nail polishes from her days in junior high school! The blues, greens and purples...the glitters, opalescents and sparkles...the slicks and shinies were all NAIL POLISH!!! She calmly looked at me and said "This goes on easier and there are a lot more colors. It also dries in like fifteen seconds!" Hmmmph! I see nothing wrong with Hibiscus-Ravioli colored votive holders! Especially when she did damage control at three in the morning!!!
All the while that I was trying to corral my oozing paint, Darling Daughter was whisking out gorgeous votive holders one after another! I ogled the glasses and then glared at my futile attempt..what was I doing wrong?? After about an hour in the warm oven, the paint had finally dried enough to become orange sludge. I toted my glass back into the living room where Elizabeth now was on her fourth glass! (She had even gone to take a shower between number two and number three glasses!) Pathetic Orange was plunked down on the table next to her beauties. The orange sludge was now oozing slowly and looked more like some molten lava that had spilled over onto my wine glass! She broke out into a fit of giggles! "What is that?" had to be the thought that was going through her head at this point but she was far too sweet to ever question the artistic ability of her mother. I looked at her and said "Fix it!" And...she did. She added some stripes over top of my ravioli smears and made the thing at least appear to be something more than a dirty dish that was left sit on the table for a week while some college-aged son went home on vacation. (That was an actual experience from back when Son was in college!) Anyway, she made the candle holder respectable! I was happy...then I noticed her secret! Darling Daughter was not even using the expensive glass paints that I had gotten from the craft store! After seeing the trouble that I was having with the runny paint, she painted all of hers with NAIL POLISH!!!! The gorgeous creations were all done with old nail polishes from her days in junior high school! The blues, greens and purples...the glitters, opalescents and sparkles...the slicks and shinies were all NAIL POLISH!!! She calmly looked at me and said "This goes on easier and there are a lot more colors. It also dries in like fifteen seconds!" Hmmmph! I see nothing wrong with Hibiscus-Ravioli colored votive holders! Especially when she did damage control at three in the morning!!!
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