Glass Painting Film and Pearlised Paints.

Glass Painting with Alan Gear from Rainbow Glass. How to use clear glass painting film and Pearlised solvent based glass Paints. It can be quite difficult to find clear glass painting film since Rainbow Glass stopped doing it but self-adhesive acetate works just as well with most glass paints.

The Pearlised Glass Paints were sold by Rainbow Glass (Alan and Barrys Crafts) but are available however the same product is some by Fred Aldous. Unfortunately they only supply the pearlized glass paint in white. You can however mix this with any of the colours to make the coloured pearls. You should do this is a spare bottle where you can close it afterwards and save any unused paint. 50 / 50 with the pearl and the transparent colour seems to give the best effect. In fact when using the white pearl I tend to mix it with 50% clear transparent paint.

The thin adhesive glass painting film is remarkably useful. It’s a shame it is so difficult to get hold of now.  We have tried many various types of adhesive acetate with varied results. Some tend to wrinkle up with the solvent paints but are fine with the water-based ones. On some we found the adhesion wasn’t strong enough and the weight of the paint would pull it back off  the window or whatever else we has put it on. The answers, as with many of these things, it to experiment. Try out different films with different paints. If you find a good one it should be really useful for windows, vases and other surfaces where you can’t work flat.

If you find a really good film maybe you’d like to let us know! We can then pass the information on to the other glass painters reading the site. (Same applies is you find anywhere else which supplies pearlized glass paints).