Glass Painted Lantern. Faux Stained Glass.

Glass Painted Lantern. Faux Stained Glass.

This project gives instructions on how to make a Glass Painted Lantern, or a faux stained glass lantern if you prefer.  Whilst producing a lovely finished item this is actually quite a simple project to make as you are working on flat glass.  Flat glass is a lot easier to work on than the curved variety or even upright glass.

Sourcing a Lantern.

These Lanterns or Hurricane Lamps are quite popular now-a-days. The particular one I use in this project was purchased at Aldi for a very reasonable price. I tend to look for items to glass paint whenever I’m out at the shops, candle holders, mirrors,  vases etc. In fact anything which I can glass paint. This lantern was perfect, the glass came out fairly easily and there was any decoration across it.

The Designs.

As you will see in the video I used some existing designs I had and used a graphics program on my computer to alter them to suit the lantern. The ability to do this is really useful for glass painters as it is rare that a design is exactly as you would like it.  If you can’t do this on the computer you can always change the siz odf a design using a photocopies or even by drawing it freehand yourself.  You will find  the designs we used below but again, depending on your lantern, yo may need to resize them.

Creating the Painted Glass Panels.

Most painted glass is created the same way and this piece was no exception. We placed the designs under each of the panels and traced it using a glass painting outliner ( Cern Relief ). It you haven’t done this before then I suggest you take a look at our outlining guides and practice first. It is worth taking your time and getting the outlining right. Get the outlining right and the painting should just

follow quite easily. If the outlining is “bad”, it wont matter how well you paint it. It will still look bad.  Take your time. Let is dry, cut out any poor bit, redo them and let it dry again.

The painting was done using mostly solvent based glass paints. I prefer to use these when possible as they tend to give a slightly better and more transparent finish than waterbased glass paints. The one exception was the the mottling effect which was created using Gallery Glass Crystal clear.

Summery.

I enjoyed making this Glass Painted Lantern. They are fairly easy to make and you can use virtually any design on them. Teddy Bears, Fish, Hot Air Balloons, the possibilities are endless.  I fully intend to cut a second set of panels for this lantern and make a Christmas set as well so we can change the panels over during the appropriate season!