Handpainted Glass Candle Bowl

Andre Allen of Miami Beach, Fla., didn't know a thing about arts and crafts when he was growing up in Connecticut. His artistic interests were focused on music until a few years ago when he saw a man hand-painting glass platters at a local street fair. Before long he was experimenting with a number of "trial and error" painting techniques and soon created this handpainted glass candle bowl.

Materials:

glass candle bowl
glass cleaner
acrylic paint: moss green, dark red, white, yellow, metallic brown
sponge roller
rubber tipped brush
varnish
circular sponge daubers in 3 sizes: small, medium and large
household sponge
scissors
paper towels
paper plate

Steps:

1. Clean the glass bowl with glass cleaner and paper towels.

2. Squeeze green, red and white acrylic paints onto a paper plate.

4. Before the paint dries, use a clean sponge roller to roll all the colors together (figure B). Do this quickly.

5. Use a rubber tipped brush to draw designs through the sponged paint (letters, words or figures). The tool actually removes the paint from the glass, which creates the design (figure C). Let the paint dry completely.

6. Pick out a main color (yellow) that will be seen as the focal color from the outside of the bowl. Paint over the sponged designs on the inside of the bowl (figure D). Keep applying paint until you can no longer see through the bowl (figure E). Let it dry for a day.

7. Paint over the yellow with a metallic brown paint on the inside of the bowl. The inside of the bowl will be metallic brown and the outside will show the sponged designs with a yellow background (figure F).

8. For the final step, apply vanish to seal the piece.

E-mail: dresondesign@earthlink.net

Website: home.earthlink.net/~dresondesign