Glass Painted Fish Bowl Project. Step by Step.

I really enjoyed this glass painted fish bowl project. I’d like to take credit for the idea but it is based on work done by Alan Gear whilst he was at Rainbow Glass and a similar project appears in the book “The Complete Guide to Glass Painting” by Alan Gear and Barry Freestone. (I think the book is still available and I highly recommend it).

The project relies on to rather specialist materials. Glass Painting film (which isn’t easy to get hold of now-a-days) and the Pebeo Fantasy Paints. There may be other paints which give the same effects but if there are I haven’t found them yet. It’s a very similar effect to that produced by the old Rainbow Glass Peal paints which Alan Gear uses in his Koi Carp projects.

Glass Painted Fish Bowl Project. Instructions.

As long as you have the right material the projects is actually quite easy to do.

1. Place the design under your glass painting fil (Ensuring you are working on the correct side of the film.
2. Outline the design in the normal way. You can keep moving the design around as you finish individual fish ensuring you fit as many as you can on to the piece of film.
3. 3. Leave the outline to dry.
4. Tape the film down preferably on to a piece of clear perspex (Plexiglas) or even glass.
5. Paint the Koi Carp using a mixture of Pebeo’s Paints: Vitrail Transparent, Fantasy Prisme and Fantasy Moon. Like me you can look on the internet to find out which colours you should use and in which combinations.
6. Again leave the fish to fry.
7. Cut the fish out. You may or may not want to leave a bit of unpainted film on each fish at this stage as a “tab” to hold it by and to start peeling the backing from.
8. PLAN roughly where each fish is going to go. You don’t want to end up with one crowded side and one sparse. (actually you may want this but if you do then do it by design and not in error!).
9. Add you fish one by one to your bowl (or other item). Try each out in it’s space before you stat removing the backing. I find the best method is to peel off the backing off as you go pressing down with a clean soft cloth as the backing is removed.  Once you have started with a fish ensure you let it lie naturally, don’t try and force it in a direction it doesn’t want to go or you will get kinks in it.
10. If you make an error and the fish isn’t all the way down you may be able to carefully peel it back off. At worse you may lose the fish!

Materials.

And that is basically it. Your biggest difficulty may be in getting hold of the correct materials for this project. We are going to try and make some Glass Painting film available in the UK. For others there are some pointers on are “Glaass Painting Film: An Introduction” page.