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In this project we make a glass painted Christmas bottle decoration. This is a great way of reusing / up-cycling old glass bottles. I managed to get this large straight sided bottle from my local pub. It’s always worth asking places like this or family/friends if they will put this type of bottle to the side for you.
The lights to get inside were purchased from Ebay. They come in different colours although I expect most glass painters will choose either bright or warm white. They can also be bought as either solar powered, like the one I am using, or battery powered.
The paint and outliner I have chosen to use is Pebeo Vitrea 160. This is because I want to put the finished piece outside (at Christmas) and these oven baked paints should stand up to bad weather better than the normal ones. If you are going to keep the finished piece indoors then there is no reason why you can’t used one of the non-bakable paints.
Glass Painted Christmas Bottle Decoration.
Materials and Equipment.
- Glass Bottle.
- Pebeo Vitrea 160 outliner. Gold and Black.
- Pebeo Vitrea 160 Transparent Paints: Paprika (I used this instead of the normal red as I had it around), Cyan Blue, Cloud White, Veil White, Sun Yellow, Black, Emerald Green.
- 20 LED Solar powered lights with bottle top.
- Paint Brush.
- Craft Knife.
- Designs (Father Christmas and Snowman).
Technique.
Outlining.
The major pieces of the design were outlined onto a spare piece of glass the, once dry, lifted off and put on the bottle. This outliner isn’t actually sold as a peelable type but as long as you move it within a day and are very careful it will work. After doing that I added all the other lines to the design, ones around the edge etc. I wanted to do small “snowflakes£ in the sky but the outliner kept on closing up. The solution to this was to put on small dots, let is partially dry and then create the hole in the middle. Once all the outlining was done it was then left to dry.
Painting.
The painting is pretty simple BUT it takes a long time. You shouldn’t paint the area next to a wet one, you should leave it to go tacky dry at least. You will also need to wait for one side to be dry before you turn the bottle round, in most cases this will mean leaving it overnight.
Finishing.
Once it had all been painted (and dried) I put small dots of outliner around both the top and the bottom of the bottle sides. After leaving it another day to dry I put it in the oven (reducing the temp and time due to having a fan oven).
The final thing was to add the lights.
Glass Painted Christmas Bottle Decoration. Summery.
I enjoyed making this, not least because I was reusing a bottle which would have been thrown away otherwise. Not only that but the first person I showed it to asked if they could pay me to make one for them as well!
(If you are thinking about making these to sell then I would strongly suggest that creating them one at a time wouldn’t be cost effective. If you have the space and are sure you could sell them then making 10 or so at once would be good. (perhaps with slightly different designs/colours). That way by time you had finished a colour on the 10th one, the first should be tacky dry and ready for it’s second!)
