For our wedding, I purposefully bought tall glass vases as centerpieces, planning to later use them for decorating our home(s) for years to come. Fast forward, and now I’m looking around at them and wondering how to change up the look they’ve had ever since. Several have homemade candles in them and so I want them to remain clear, but for a few I wanted to find a way to add some color and/or texture.
Since this one was sitting in our dining room beside a stained glass lamp, I figured I’d give it a go and make the vase look like stained glass. I’d done this before to the glass cabinet doors in our pantry, and I hoped it would work on a vase. Spoiler – it works great! You could do this on any glass vase, no matter the shape, too, so I’m sure there are many, many cool looks you could create using this method.
BEFORE: Plain glass vase.
Supplies:
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Step 1: Clean the glass. My vase was very dusty and had smudges from little fingers, so I first cleaned the inside and outside of the vase really well. The last thing you want is gunk stuck on as you’re painting!
Cleaned and ready!
Step 2: Paint the colors. I had absolutely zero plan for what I was painting, and I ended up going pretty abstract but also making flowery shapes. You could copy a pattern and colors you like, or you could plan out shapes first. There are all kinds of cool stained glass pictures you can find online to replicate!
I used a normal crafting brush, a little lid for squirting out the paint, and the glass paint itself. If you want the colors to be really strong, you might want to let it dry and do another coat, or do it pretty thick as you go. I only painted on one quick coat, and I let it be stronger in some places and more transparent in others.
Painting the colors.
Don’t worry if you think your painting doesn’t look too great at first. Once you put the liquid leading on, it really pops! I also didn’t worry too much about having straight or smooth edges, since I would be going over everything with outlines.
I let this dry a few hours just to be safe (and because I got busy doing other things), but it dries pretty quickly.
Paint on.
Step 3: Apply liquid leading as outlines. If you’ve never worked with this stuff, it’s a bit like puffy paint that ends up looking like the lead on stained glass. It has a sticky consistency that dries pretty quickly, and it leaves a painting with a cool 3D effect.
I was worried at first that this would run down the vase or drip as I went, so at first I turned my vase on its side and applied it that way. But once I had to do the other side, I stood the vase up again and had no problem applying it that way. It does take a second to get used to how much you squeeze out as you go, but it’s pretty easy.
After a while, the spout may get clogged and make it harder to get any out smoothly, so just take a second and clear the tip from time to time.
Outlining with liquid lead.
I outlined between my different colors and also added some lines between the shapes where I could see different brushstrokes.
The liquid leading does look a bit grey as it comes out, but it dries nice and dark – black like lead.
Liquid lead drying.
See how beautiful that is with light coming through?!
That is it! I set the vase in place and let it dry. I’m really happy with how this turned out, and of course now I’m eyeing the rest of the vases and wondering how many more I should do. 😉
This week, I felt like I’d been a bad mom lately and so decided to spend time with my girls coloring Easter eggs. We started the good-old way with baking soda, food coloring, and vinegar. But after poking and draining about six eggs to color the shells, I’d kind of had enough of that and tried to think of a way to decorate the bagful of plastic eggs we had lying around.
Fun way, but…too much 😆
I’ve wanted to hydro-dip…something (anything really) for a while, and it seemed like painting Easter eggs this way might be kinda cool. So, after a quick trip to Michael’s yesterday, we had all the spray paint colors we could think of and were ready to go.
Is this a particularly kid-friendly art project? Not really. LOL. But my girls were surprisingly helpful and did a great job – the key to my success lies entirely in the plastic gloves I made them wear.
BEFORE: Normal plastic Easter eggs.
Step 1: Spray on a base layer. In order for hydro dipping to really work, I’m told you need a base layer of paint for the spray paint to stick to. So, I took my bag of plastic eggs and popped them apart so they’d sit flat. Then I took a plain white spray paint and sprayed all over the eggs to get a good coat on. I went with white because I figured that would help them look the most “realistic” as eggs when finished.
Supplies:
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Plastic easter eggs
Spray paints
Gloves
Cup or other container
Base coat on.
Step 2: Prep for painting. Once the base coat was dry (I gave mine about 4 hours), I snapped all the eggs back together and took them in a basket out to my deck. This seemed like the best place to do this at the time simply because I wanted good ventilation while working with the girls.
Eggs ready to go!
It’s important to have everything ready to go because the paint will dry pretty quickly in the water, so you want your eggs right there when you start. I made sure to shake up all of my spray paint cans really well too. Because I wanted to dry the eggs inside (it was a windy day), I lay a silicone baking sheet and a few paper towels on the kitchen counter to be ready. And perhaps most importantly, we made sure we had gloves in place.
Cup and gloves ready!
Step 3: Hydro dip! I used a solo cup because I figured the eggs didn’t need a lot of room to dunk them, but you could use a spare Tupperware container or an old whipped cream container or something else entirely. Really, it just has to be a container that’s deep enough to submerge the egg.
I filled my cup a little over 3/4 full of water, then took it to the deck. My girls stood ready with an egg each, and then I began spraying the paint into the cup. I made sure to spray in the center of the cup each time, and I held the can about 6 inches above the cup as I sprayed so it didn’t shoot everywhere. It only took little bursts at a time to get enough paint into the cup to cover the surface.
We found that we really liked the metallic spray paints, and the blue and purple covered the surface really well. I alternated my combinations of colors, and really there was no bad way to go.
Paint ready.
Each time, when I had enough paint to cover the surface, the girls would slowly lower a plastic egg down through the paint. Sometimes we’d have to turn the egg over and do the other side again, but this was no problem because the paint on the egg adheres REALLY fast, so it doesn’t drip or anything. For a few eggs, we also found that setting them to float on the surface and then just rolling them also pulled the paint to cover the eggs, though this took a little longer.
Dipping an egg.
We did about 30 eggs in 45 minutes, so it went pretty quickly. I never had to refill the water, and I never bothered cleaning the cup because the paint you don’t use moves to the edges anyway. The girls had a lot of fun dunking the eggs, shaking off the water, and then running them inside to sit and dry. Our gloves got messy, and I was worried about the paint pulling off the eggs as we set them down, but that turned out to not be an issue because of how fast the paint sets.
I will say that my eggs had little holes at the tops and bottoms, so that helped to drain any water that got inside. Once they were all on the paper towel to dry, I did give them a few hours before using them to decorate.
Eggs drying.
Now we have cool eggs that I can use again next year too! And they were so easy, I’m sure we’ll make more again. 🙂
Here’s my last DIY project for the year on the last day of 2023!
Once the charm of Christmas is over, I remember how much I dislike the early darkness of winter. (I can practically hear you people making jokes about my name, but trust me – I’ve heard it all. 😆) In my younger/single days, I often left up white Christmas lights all winter to make my living spaces more cozy despite the cold, dark nights. Now, I live with a husband and 2 small children who can’t remember to turn off a room’s “big lights” for anything. So, cozier light is harder to come by these days.
BUT, my girls do enjoy candlelight, and flameless, LED votive candles are a great, safe way to add touches of coziness scattered about where my family is least likely to leave on the house lights. Plus, I get the extra fun of figuring out cool holders for the candles…
Enter my second use for the pop bottles from my last project. I used the top halves of pop bottles to make Christmas bells, and now I found a use for the bottom halves – candle holders!
BEFORE: Empty pop bottles.
Supplies:
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Step 1: Cut bottles in half. If you haven’t done my last project with the top parts of the bottles, then take new pop bottles, wash them, and cut them to whatever heights you like. I’d already cut mine a little lower than halfway down, so those were the sizes that I had to work with. But you could make them as tall as you like, or even cut them at an angle so that the “backs” of your candle holders will be tall with shorter “fronts” to show more light. Really, you can cut them any size or design you like!
To cut the bottles, I found it worked best to stab a knife in to make hole, then use scissors to cut around the bottle. Again, I made mine in as straight a line as I could…especially since I didn’t think of the angled idea until way after. LOL.
Cut bottoms of cleaned bottles.
Step 2: Rim with hot glue. As you’ll see in the following options, there are a few ways I made candle holders. But for each option, I started by rimming the tops of the cut bottles with hot glue. This adds some texture, keeps the cut tops from being jagged or sharp, and makes a “melted glass” looking edge.
Hot glued rims.
And now you pick how to finish!
Option 1: Paint the rims. For a few of the bottles that had flat bottoms, I simply used a paint marker and colored over the cooled/hardened hot glue. I used a metallic gold paint pen, and I like how shiny and pretty this made the rims, leaving the rest of the candle holder clear to see the brightest light.
Glue painted gold.
I filled the base of the bottle/candle holder with a bit of coarse sea salt, partly to look pretty and partly to help the base be heavier. Setting a flameless votive candle in the center, these were done! You could fill your bottoms with different things for these candle holders, since this option leaves the insides most visible. I might change things up and replace the salt with pebbles at some point. Or beads. There are lots of options!
Option 2: Glue the sides and roll in salt. For other bottles with flat bottoms (these were SmartWater bottles), I spread hot glue on small sections at a time and then rolled that side over a plate covered with coarse sea salt. This used a lot of hot glue sticks, but honestly these surprised me in the end and were my favorite.
Rolled in sea salt.
Once the salt was stuck all over (some gaps are fine), I took these candle holders down to my workshop and used a clear gloss spray to coat them. This helped hold the salt in place and also added a crystal-like shine to the salt.
With these dry, I took them back upstairs and again poured some sea salt into the base of each candle holder. (You can’t really see what’s inside these options, so the salt was fine just for adding weight.) Setting a flameless votive candle in the center, these were done too!
Option 3: Make a cork base. The bigger, 2-liter bottles had bottoms that were very obviously pop bottles, so I wanted to hide these bottoms a little better. One way I did this was by using wine corks left over from another project. First, I took a knife and cut them in half, lengthwise. Next, I used hot glue and spread it on each cut cork’s flat side, then pressed the cork against the bottom of the bottle. I did this all the way around the 2-liter base, using 17 halves of corks.
Adding cork base.
Because I only had enough corks left to do a smaller bottle, I did one of those the same way. (I guess we need to drink more wine 😆) But I like having a little variety between the sizes with the same style option, so these 2 together look nice. Once all the corks were on, I again poured in sea salt to add weight to the base. This especially helped on the 2-liter-sized candle holder, since the opening was bigger and you can really see what’s inside. I put more salt in this one than I had in the smaller candle holders, and it looked nice against the cork.
I ended up using my gold paint pen on the top, glued parts of these candle holders as well, just because I liked how that looked better than leaving them plain.
Painting the top of my cork candle holders.
Option 4: Faux moss wrap. On another 2-liter bottom, I went around the top again with a thin bit of glue, then quickly dipped the top in salt. This rimmed the top with texture and a bit of sparkle. I didn’t need to spray these tops with gloss since there wasn’t much salt on there.
Next, I spread hot glue over small sections and pressed on faux moss to cover the bottle’s bottom. I decided to go all over with the moss, leaving only the top exposed where the salt/hot glue showed. This ended up looking woodsy and wintery, and it really looks better in person than in my pictures. I used green moss, but you could do this in different colored mosses too!
Adding faux moss.
Again, I added some salt to the base for weight, then placed in a candle.
Option 5: Cover in petals. I’ve had these white flower petals for forever and finally had a use for them! Starting at the top of a 2-liter bottom, I put a dab of hot glue on the bottom of a petal and stuck it on so that the majority of the petal stuck up above the edge of the bottle. I continued to do this with petals all the way around the top, overlapping them a bit and gluing them down onto each other if they stuck out too much.
Adding petals.
Once the top layer was on, I went around with a lower row of petals. Then I did another lower layer. Finally, I heavily glued on petals around the bottom.
Petals done!
This petal-covered candle holder already looked pretty, and once I got a votive candle inside… 😍 This one ended up being my second favorite. …I may need to scrounge up more petals and do more!
That was it! I like the variety I ended up with. They looked cool without candlelight inside, and I’m SO glad this plan worked out and they look even cooler with candlelight shining through! 😆
AFTER: A variety of candle holders!
(Left to right) Options 3, 2, and 4.
(Left to right) Options 1, 2, 5, and 3.
Candle holders in action…
I’m sure there are many other things you could stick on the outside of these candle holders too! Beads, sequins, wood sticks – what else can you think of?
One IMPORTANT note: The hot glue might deform the plastic bottles a little bit if too hot. Since I was covering the bottles anyway, this wasn’t much of a problem. But it’s a good reminder that you MUST use flameless votive candles, because real fire will absolutely melt these and be a serious hazard.
I found flickering, LED votive candles on Amazon, and you can buy packs of them for pretty cheap…so I’m certainly making even more candle holders in the future. 😜
At the risk of spoiling Christmas gifts, here’s how I took plain bowls and decorated them. This was a pretty easy and fun way to make gifts for people, so here’s a Christmas gift idea if you’re looking!
BEFORE: Plain serving bowl.
I first heard that you could decorate these bowls using markers, but I experimented and didn’t really like the stroke marks that markers created. Instead, I used acrylic paint pens, and these worked much better to get brighter, sharper color and smoother, more “liquidy” strokes. What works best might depend on what kind of bowl you use – wood, ceramic, etc. – but these were made from bamboo fiber materials, and acrylic paint pens worked best for me to get the results I wanted. 🤷♀️I really like these bowls because they’re eco friendly, the lid stays put and doubles as a cutting board, and they come with two serving utensils, so you’re giving someone a nice set rather than just a plain bowl, too.
I got it in my head that I wanted to do mosaic patterns around the bowls, and this was probably more time consuming than if I’d drawn/painted normal pictures or shapes. But I think the end result looks pretty cool, and it looks a little fancier than just drawing straight flowers on a bowl (something I’d done first to 2 other bowls).
So here’s how I made “mosaic” art on these decorate bowls!
Supplies:
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Step 1: Sketch the plan. In order to be sure my design would be evenly spaced between top and bottom as well as matching up as I worked around the bowl, I took a pencil and outlined my basic plan. This was way easier once I flipped the bowl upside-down, and that’s how I worked with the bowls from then on. Just remember the bowl is upside-down if you’re drawing pictures and want them to look right once the bowl is flipped back over. 😜
Sketching my plan.
Step 2: Outline. Once my pattern was sketched in pencil, I took a black acrylic paint pen and carefully traced my pencil outline. Then, once sure of my boundaries, I began making my little lines all over to create the “mosaic” look of my design. This is what took time, but it was easy and fun to cross and zigzag and divide my lines to make cool mosaic patterns.
Adding black outlines.
Step 3: (Optional) Fill in mosaic around your main pattern. I gave my black a little while to dry to make sure I didn’t accidentally wipe it as I painted my next step on the bowl. It was also at this time that I carefully scratched a black line and found that it did scrape off a bit, but I’d already planned for this (more later). Just be sure, as you’re adding color, to not drag your hand or scratch over your design – it might smear or scrape off.
Anyway, while the black dried, I stared at the bowl a while and decided I wanted to completely cover it in a mosaic look. But I didn’t want to add more black lines for fear it would just look like I left those blank. So, I took a gold acrylic paint pen (it came in my same acrylic paint pen set) and went to work making lines and patterns all around my main design. I also outlined along the black sections to make them stand out.
Adding gold mosaic lines.
I was careful not to cross onto the black outlines, but wherever I goofed I could easily paint back over the gold with black to fix my slob spots.
Step 4: Add color. Satisfied now with my overall mosaic base, it was time to add color. I decided to use red, orange, yellow, and a light peach – again, all from that same paint pen set, so there are lots of color options! Completely at random, I started filling in the mosaic little squares and rectangles with one color at a time, working my way all around the bowl. I started from darkest to lightest, but I don’t think it really matters how you choose to apply the color.
Adding color.
I noticed that, if I accidentally went over the black outline with the lighter colors, this would lighten the black a little bit. But, it wasn’t super-noticeable and seemed to darken again as it dried. If any slobs were too bad, I painted back over them with black. (My 5-year-old told me I did a pretty good job of staying in the lines, which is nice to hear from such an accomplished artist.)
Color done! Needed some black touch-ups.
Step 5: Spray on sealer/gloss. In order to give the paint as much time as I could to set and dry, I left the bowl overnight on a high shelf where nothing (ahem, the cat) would touch it.
The next morning, I carefully lifted the bowl and carried it to my better-ventilated craft room to spray on some high-gloss, clear sealer. I used a spare paint can on top of my turntable, then rested the upside-down bowl on top. This way, I could spray from the top of the bowl to the bottom evenly while turning the bowl slowly all the way around.
I did a very light first coat to make sure it didn’t run my paint or leave drip trails.
Ready to apply the sealer.
After the first coat dried (about an hour), I touched it to be sure and also found it was now much more difficult to scrape off any of the paint design. To be sure, though, I gave the bowl another good coat of my gloss spray, again making sure to cover the whole upside-down bowl.
That was it! This wasn’t a particularly difficult craft project, but you can make any design of your choosing to cover these bowls. And with the protective gloss on, they’re sure to stay pretty for a while. I wouldn’t submerge the bowls in water or soap or anything – certainly not a dishwasher – but these bowls would work great as serving bowls for nut mixes (especially with the serving utensils), rolls, popcorn balls, or anything that can be easily wiped out of the bowls after use.
AFTER: Decorative “mosaic” bowl.
Now to make 4 more before Christmas! Wish me luck! (And follow me on Instagram to see how they turn out…which I’ll post after Christmas, so I don’t spoil the rest of my gifts. 😆)
To say our girls love art is a huge understatement. To say they make a mess is an even bigger understatement. I’d initially planned to make their art space in our basement, but I don’t want to kick them out of our kitchen/living room (where all the action is). It’s their house too, after all.
Despite many promises to pick up their scrap paper and put caps on their markers, our kitchen island daily looked like the picture below. It was both a constant mess AND the girls couldn’t find anything. So how was I to fix this?? (And to be honest, I took this picture on a good day. 😆)
