My name is Bob and I’ve been a glass painter for over 25 years.
I started glass painting whilst working at Rainbow Glass (later to become Alan and Barrys Crafts) where I was taught by Alan Gear, co-author of The Complete Guide to Glass Painting, Fast Glass, Glass Painters motif library etc. In the early days we sold a lot of finished glass painting items which meant long days in the studio producing enough stock for Craft Shows around the country. Weekends were spent at these shows where often I would demonstrate glass painting on the the stand.
Later on Rainbow Glass started selling their own branded glass paints (created in conjunction with HMG in Manchester), outliners and other glass painting items. They went on to sell on Ideal World shopping channel and later, on Create and Craft, a channel they help to set up and presented on. During this time I travel to the craft materials shows around the UK selling and demonstrating the paints.
In 2000, whist still working at Rainbow Glass, I started the glasspainting.co.uk website. It has gone through a few changes over the years. We tried both a gallery and forum, both of which had issues with spam and bot attacks 🙁 . Now-a-days we rely on our Facebook groups for the discussion and sharing of images.
Since leaving Rainbow Glass (Alan and Barrys Crafts) I have continued to run the website, demonstrate and run glass painting workshops around the UK. Most of the pieces I do now are demonstration pieces for the techniques and projects on this site. I do still however do the odd piece of commission work.
We hope you enjoy this site. The idea is to cove as much as possible about glass painting. I also recommend visiting our Glass Painting Group on Facebook. There are lots of fantastic glass painters out there and it’s great to see people sharing ideas and techniques.
If you have any question please don’t hesitate to contact me.