Paint Your Own Holiday Hanging Ornaments: Introduction to Glass Painting

1. Welcome: hi, everyone. And welcome to the class Dale the paintings and glass ornaments and using transparent glass paint on a raised out liner to create beautiful designs. Glass paints a transparent medium so the light can travel through the colors, and this gives whatever glass object you're painting a lovely effect when the light catches the colors hanging ornaments of great decorations for the holidays. They look lovely on the Christmas tree, hanging up by a wall or window. They're also good for gift giving. Under a fun project to paint will be working with four glass paints today, and I'll be walking through the entire process of painting one of these ornaments and introducing you to glass paints. I'll discuss the supplies. Your need. Then the process of sketching out the design are. Look at preparing the ornament for painting on, then moving on to using the raised out liner to create lines and then mixing and using the glass paints toe out the colors. I'll go through any tips and techniques along the way on also talk about how to fix any mistake. Your project for this class is the pain, your own glass ornament or any other object you wish on post a picture of your project to the student gallery. There you can get feedback and ask any questions you may have. This glass is suitable for beginners as well as more experience to creatives wanting to explore glass painting. You can take the techniques taught in this class and apply them to many of your own projects. I hope youll enjoy coming along today and exploring glass painting. Now let's get started. 2. Supplies: the supplies to this class are fairly straightforward, and you can always substitute the brand of paint and use whatever you confined locally to you to start where if you're need a glass object pain, any glass object will work well for this class. I'm using a holiday ornament you can often find thes with holiday decorations, either online or in home decor stores. Sometimes you can only find glass ornaments that have sequins or ribbons inside them. If this is the case, you can simply pull out the top. Do this carefully as the wire can sometimes spring back onto your fingers. Once the top is out, you can remove the contents and set them aside for other projects. Sequence and ribbons are always useful for card making, for example, and then once you have an empty ornament, you can put the top back in again, and you have your clear glass ornament paint. You can also paint glass bottles, glass jars to your light holders. Plant is anything you'd like to decorate. As for the paints, I would always recommend it using glass paints as opposed to acrylics or any other type of paint. Just because glass paints are designed to give that lovely, transparent look. When you hold your glass, object to the light. It's beautiful to see the light coming through the paint and reflecting the colors to get that effect. It's best to use glass paints. The glass paints I use are the victory l 1 60 by PB Oh, these are water based and come and lots of different colors, and they're quite widely available as well. When buying paints, it's important to compare. Keep in mind that the paints are much darker in the bottles than they are painted. You'll need four colors for the project. Today you can pick any four colors you like. I personally like contrast in colors for the ornaments as they look lovely in the Christmas tree, when there are lots of different contrast in colors. So I'll be using sun, yellow, Bengal, pink, crimson and turquoise. You could use pinks, blues and purples or greens blue and brown. Or if you have a color themed holiday decorations, you could paint your ornaments to match what you have. Already, PDO also makes several auxiliaries to the glass paint range on. I'm going to be using the glossy medium today. You can use this to lighten the colors without making them more fluid. I find that the colors are a bit too dark for me straight out of the bottle, so I used the glossy, medium toe light in them. There is a white available in the paints range, but I find that mixing in the white tends to make the paint less transparent. So I prefer using the glossy medium for this, another auxiliary that is useful to have a look at. If you plan to doing a lot of glass, painting is the thinner. The PDO paints have a fairly thick consistency, and this is really good when you're painting an ornament or a glass jar or anything where gravity is going to pull the paint down. But if you were painting on something flat, you may find that your paint isn't spreading very well or isn't flowing as well as you'd like. And that's when you having the thinner might be useful, because you could mix it into your paints to make them more diluted. And they will also tone, lighting the colors a little bit as well. I'm not going to be using the thinner today, but it is something you could look into. If you plan to doing a lot of glass painting, I'm just going to be using four colors on the glossy medium. I lost to be using a relief out liner again by P. B. O. But several brands make these. This is a thick paint in a tube that has a fine nip, and you can draw the tube as you would a pen drawing with the outline. ER does take a bit of practice to achieve smooth lines, but the lines dry raised so you can get a stained glass window effect on your projects on the race lines. Act as a barrier, so when you're painting, they will prevent your your colors from mixing in together on the ornaments. If you don't like the look of the outline, er, you can always go ahead and use the paints of out it. You just need to make sure that one color is completely dry before painting another color next to it. PDO outline has come in several different colors, and I'll be using the poll today. We'll also need rubbing alcohol to clean the glass. Small detail, paintbrushes, kitchen towel water for washing your brushes, a toothpick, a pin and cotton buds. Also handy. To have on hand, you'll need four little containers to mix the paints in or a palette finally, a sketchbook or paper and pencil to draw out your design. The class also comes with a PdF list of supplies. If you'd like to have a print out, you can access this. Pdf on the Your Project Page. Now that all the supplies have been gathered, let's move on to sketching a designed paint. 3. Sketching a Design: we'll start by sketching out the design. This step is optional. If you'd prefer to dive straight in and paint completely free hand, then you can skip this lesson. But I always like to have a sketch to work from. I start by drawing out a couple of circles. One is going to represent the ornament as if you're looking from it. Top down on the other circles, going to represent the ornament from the side view. You control the circles FREEHAND or use a circular object as a template. The design I'm going to be doing today is basically a series of radiating shapes. I start in the center off the first circle and draw a smaller circle. This represents the metal top part of the ornament, and then I start drawing radiating shapes all the way around. A bit like flower petals are. Once I have one round of shapes, I start another and I keep going. Until I reached the edge of the circle. I light change the size on the form of the shape. Does that work my ray around the ornaments and I like to overlap them in different ways. This is a fairly simple process, and I keep most of my shapes around it. But you could make yours more angular or straight edged if you preferred. Once the first circle is filled in, I start by drawing a same design on the side view. These sketches help me to have an idea of what I'll be painting on. Drawing the design out once helps you to get a feel and to practice a bit before moving on to the glass. Once I'm happy with the design, I like to place in the colors as well, just to see how they look together. And this helps to make the painting process much smoother later on, as I won't have to keep stopping to think about where to place the colors, I will have mixed paints ready, so I don't and I don't want them to dry before I finished using them. So any preparation work I can do ahead of time helps to make the painting process much more relaxing. I like to alternate the colors in rounds are follow my design, place each color in a row and then swapped another. I tried to make sure the same colors are not touching anywhere on also that the colors are evenly spread. I don't want anyone color to stand out too much. Once I'm finished, it's now time to read or the design onto the glass. 4. Prep: When setting up for painting, the glass surface will need a little bit of prep. You'll want to wash the glass and then dry it and then take a little rubbing alcohol on the kitchen towel on Dwight, the surface of the ornament. You'll want to make sure the surface is as free off dirt and oils as possible. Even our fingers have natural oils on them, and you want to take as much of those off the surface is possible. Cleaning the surface like this will help the paint to stick properly. I like to keep the rubbing alcohol toe one side, as in painting, as I often touch the ornament as I'm holding it, Andi, I have have to re wipe an area that I've been holding before painting it. Another tip here is to take the metal top off the ornament before you start painting, as I mentioned previously before taking these things in and out, the wire can swing and bend a bit, so you want to be careful. Depending on the size of the ornament and your fingers, you may be able to place the ornament directly onto one of your fingers. This could make painting much easier, and it keeps your fingers from touching the glass surface. You'll see me holding the ornament on my fingers like this later on once and painting. You can also help the ornament by the little bit of the top as well. On that will keep your hands off the main body. It's also a good idea to have a rest for the ornament. These round ornaments don't stand up very well on their own, so I like to have this roll of masking tape handy because it holds the ornament upright very well, and that way I can have it standing upwards and leave it to dry. So it's a good idea to find something that you can rest your ornament on whilst you're painting or when you need to leave it to dry. Keeping the rubbing alcohol toe. One side is also useful for cleaning mistakes. If at any point you make a mistake with the paint, you can wipe it off with water if it's wet, but with rubbing alcohol, it will come off the glass, even if it's thoroughly dry. And that means that you can fix any mistakes and start over again 5. Outline: I'm going to start out by taking the cap off the outline a tube and piercing a small hole in the foil and then putting the cat back on again. I try not to make the whole too big as this helps to keep the lines smaller. Later on, when I'm drawing, I push a little on the tube to get the paint flowing and scribbled a little off onto the kitchen towel to test the flow. Sometimes their air bubbles, or if you haven't outlining, you haven't used in a while. There may be dried paint, so this is important just to test a little bit of the paint and scribble it off onto the paper towel. Then, holding the ornament firmly in one hand, I start drawing the design. I make the first round of shapes around the top opening of the ornament. You don't need to apply much pressure to the outline a tube, and you want to let the paint flow out as you guide the outline around the ornament. The exact amount of pressure is something you get a feel for whilst using the outline it, but you don't need to apply much pressure at all. I just keep going around the ornament, following my design as much as possible. But the sketch is just a guideline, and if you need to make adjustments and feel free to do so, is your drawing. I often have to adapt my designs a bit and add more rows. If if necessary, I try to take my time during this step and focus on getting the lines as smooth as possible . If you find your lines of shaky, you can try resting both your hands on the table to study everything. Last. Your painting going slowly also helps, but the outline er will be thicker in places and others I'm dragging. The outline are quite close to the service of the glass to make a fin line, and at times I'm resting. It's slightly on the glass surface. You can hold the outline a little bit higher and get a thicker race relief on Do you can experiment a little bit to see The difference is you can get, However, if you drag the nozzle off the tube directly flat on the glass surface, you'll end up with a very faint line, and it won't be raised enough to contain the paint later on on DSO. That's not what I'm going for today because I need the line to hold the paint, so I'm resting. The outline is slightly on a surface at an angle. As I draw, arresting the of the name of the outline is slightly on. The surface will help to keep your lines steady as well, but you just want to hold it, vote at an angle so that enough paint comes out so that you get a raised line as your drawing, so not directly flat on the surface but raised up a little bit. And this will create that race line, and the line will contain the paint and stop the colors from merging together later on. Once the first half is done, you can set the ornament down to dry before turning it upside down to paint the second half . Or you could carefully put the ornament onto your finger and continue. I always leave mine too dry as the outline A is really easy to smear the outline. It takes a while to dry, so you need to make sure that you're not smudging anything whilst you work around you can always wipe away any mistakes if you make them with a little bit of water in a cotton bud. But the outline I can get messy and I have had several times where I've just had to wash everything off and start all over again. However, I do try not to worry too much about getting the lines perfect. The outline is the most difficult part of the painting process, and it's easy to get into a mess, so I like to take my time. Once the design is finished, you'll want to set it aside and leave it to dry, preferably overnight. You really want to make sure the outline is 100% dry before you continue with the painting . If I'm creating a set of ornaments for gifts and such, I like to work in batches. So I'll paint all the outlines one day and then everything dry and then work on the painting in another session on. This is very time effective for batch working 6. Painting: so now to begin painting. This is the most relaxing part of the pro project. Once the outlining is done, the rest is simply color blocking. To start, I need to mix the glossy medium into some of my chosen colors to make them a little bit lighter. You want to avoid shaking the bottles of paint, as this can called cause bubbles. So I just tipped the bottles upside down. Hold it there for a moment, then flip it back up again on I'll do this a couple of times to make sure the paint is or mixed in sight. I place a little bit off the first color into my palate. I clean my brush, and then I dropped in some of the glossy medium to light in the paint. It's important to bear in mind whilst you're mixing the colors that they will look lighter on the glass and they do in the palate. If you've made it to light, you can always add more color to the mix, and if it's not light enough, you can add the glossy medium. And if you wanted to mix your own colors, you can mix the different paints together as well. I don't have a precise formula for the paint. I just keep mixing until I have the color that I want. And if you find that your paint is too thick, you can add the thinner. But keep in mind that the paint flows really well across the glass on the gravity will pull the paint down, so I really don't find the thinner necessary when painting bottles or jars or ornaments. But if you were painting something on a flat surface, then you may want to consider thinning your paints a little bit. If you have another glass object handy, you could easily use that to test out the paint colors before putting them on to your ornament on. You can always wipe them off your glass. Object afterwards with a little bit of rubbing alcohol so you don't have to worry about ruining anything. But I do like to have another glass object to hand on. Just test out my mixed colors just to make sure that they're not to light or they're not too dark. This is really useful to not only see the true colors of what you're mixing, but you can also check to see how fluid your painters once you've added some glossy medium to your paint and you're happy with the colors you can now start painting. I'm going to start with the first round and picking up some color with my paintbrush. Andi, I'm going to drop it along the top off the shapes. It's so useful to keep gravity in mind whilst you're painting and to start your brush stroke at the highest point of the shape so that the paint can naturally flow downwards. To fill in the rest of the section, I will move the paint around a little bit with the brush to help it spread out. You don't want to place too much paint in the sections, though, otherwise they will overrun the raised outline. I just tried to keep working round in that color. Now you can continue painting the rest off that one color in before you mix another color. This is where having a colored sketch to work from is useful. If you're working on a hot day, you may want to what one color at a time. Mix it and then fill in that one color as you won't want. Paint drying in your palate before you've used it. I've never had too much trouble with that, even in the middle of the summer, but I do like working one color at a time, so I keep going, paying attention to my sketch, filling in the rounds with the first color. Then I stopped to mix a certain color. I place a little bit off it in the palate. I add some glossy medium, and then I start painting in the rounds. You'll quickly get a feel off the ratio for the glossy medium and the paint as you keep mixing. I'm trying to apply the paint without too many brush strokes. In most cases, I'm dabbing the paint on. Instead of brushing, I like to work on one shape, dab on a little paints, then move on to the next shape and then come back to the first shape to see if it needs help spreading out anymore or to take some paint off. If I've put a little bit too much on once I removed my brush, I find that the paint spreads up pretty neatly on. It gets rid of any brushstrokes you I've made on its own one thing you may notice as you work at air bubbles, you can get rid of these by using a toothpick or a pin to pop the bubbles as you see them. I tried to get us many as I can, but they were usually a few that escape on. I don't worry too much about them. Sometimes they get rid of themselves as the paints moves out. But this is a hand painted ornament, after all, and I don't worry. After a couple of bubbles left to avoid getting too many bubbles, you don't want to shake the paintball. It'll and I also find it helpful to mix the colors with a toothpick instead of a paintbrush . This just helps to avoid getting too many bubbles into the paint before you add it to the ornament. I keep going round, filling in the different colors, doubling the paint at the highest points of the shapes and helping the paint to spread a little bit with the brush and then leaving it to even out. I tried to hold the ornament one way up whilst I'm painting. If I twisted it back and forth upside down the paint, maybe half dry in sections, and the changing gravity can cause it to run over itself. The paint will run down on its own. Andi, if I get darker patches of paint pulling, its better that they're all the same all the way around. That way it will look like I've done it on purpose and added some shading and you'll see on the ornament. There are several places where the paint has pulled in sections because it's running downwards. That's the nature of glass painting. The glass painting run down, and I dont worry if it happens. I actually quite like the effect, particularly if it happens all the way around in the same way, it does look like I've added a layer of shading to the coloring. Once all the colors have finished, I set the ornament aside to dry. It should be touched dry fairly quickly, but the paint does recommend 24 hours of drying time, so I usually leave it overnight, and that tends to work out really well. 7. Final Thoughts: one striking the ornaments of ready to use glass. Paints like these are normally feet set after painting, and this makes them a lot more durable. If you were painting an object that you wanted to wash or to use a lot, then you can follow the instructions on your paint bottles and heat. Set the paint. This normally means placing them in the other 4 40 five minutes or so. I've never heat set the glass ornaments just because they're not going to be handled a lot there for decoration only. I'm not going to Washington, but feel free to go ahead and heat. Set yours and do this extra step if you want. I've dusted and cleaned and been using some of these hand painted ornaments for years, and the paint is still perfect. But if you're worried about anything coming off, then heat setting them will make the paints permanent. Before heat setting, the paints can be removed with rubbing alcohol, so if there's a mistake you want to fix even after it's completely dry, you can go in river cotton barred and some rubbing alcohol on rub off the pain whilst painting. You can also use water to rub off the paint. And when it comes time to wash your paintbrushes, you also use water to wash them. Those are the hand painted glass ornaments with erased outline and painted with transparent glass paints. I hope you enjoyed today's class and had fun painting. The ornaments are very colorful, and the race outline gives them a bit of a stained glass effect. When the ornaments hung up. I've in the Christmas tree, on the wall or by a window. They look really lovely when the light catches and dances through the colors. They also make great gifts. And once you start glass painting, you'll find lots of ways to add color to the objects around you on there. Lots more painting techniques to explore, such as blending and layering the colors. Make sure you post a picture of your final project to the gallery. Thank you for taking this class. Andi. Have a creative day