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.
Supplies:
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- Plain glass vase
- Glass paint
- Liquid leading
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 😉
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