February's craft: Glass painting

The giveaway is now closed - thanks to all who took part!

I love painting glass - it's easy, relatively quick and always gives such rewarding results.

These heart nightlight holders are the ones I painted up for the recent 'sisters valentines swap'. Very simple to do - just some free hand hearts drawn on with outliner paste and filled in with red glass paint.

If you fancy giving this craft a go then have a look at my mini glass painting tutorial.

Sharing the love

Even though I love the idea of the craft swaps that happen on so many of the wonderful blogs I follow I've never had the courage to put myself forward to join in. However, when my sister suggested that we do a few craft swaps between just the 3 of us I decided it would be the perfect way to make 2012 the craftiest year yet.

We decided to have our first swap in February to give us a bit of time to think about what we wanted to do and hopefully be able to make a couple of pretty things. February = valentines so hearts seemed to be a good theme for us to focus on.

For the packages I sent out to my sisters I managed to make them each a simple card, a fan bookmark, a painted nightlight holder and a batch of slightly undercooked heart shaped biscuits. I also included a pack of 'love in a mist' seeds in case they felt like being green fingered this year...

I also had a bit of craft fun with my lovely husband's gifts - hopefully he'll enjoy his lego chocolates (I just melted some chocolate into this fantastic lego man ice cube tray). For his card I used the free template off minieco which I had a bit of a struggle cutting correctly - but I'm very happy with how it looks.

Now I'm off to open up the packages my sisters have sent - I can't wait to see what they got around to making :-)

Mini tutorial: Glass painting

I thought it might be nice to try and do some quick tutorials for a few of the different crafts that I dabble in - who knows, it may encourage some of you to have a go at something new and perhaps find a new craft that you love :-)

So for my first Mini tutorial I've been busy with a little glass painting as I think this is a great craft to get into; the materials are relatively cheap and you can get some lovely results quickly with only a little practice.

1. Firstly you will need to gather your materials together:

- Glass paints in as many colours as you want (I recommend starting with a basic set of red, yellow & blue in paints that you can mix)
- Outliner paste (you can get a range of different colours - as a beginner black or lead effect is the most forgiving of mistakes)
- White spirit and the relevant solvent for the glass paint you are using
- Very fine paint brush
- Kitchen roll
- Item for painting

Most good craft shops will stock glass paints and outliner paste and you can also purchase them online (I've bought them from the UK based Lainesworld successfully before). You can either get paint that you just leave to dry or paint that becomes dishwasher safe after you've baked your finished item in the oven. I've only used the more common non-baking paint as most of my projects are for more decorative items that don't need much regular washing, if I was to paint glassware then I would probably consider it.

To start out with I would recommend seeing if you can find a sheet of acetate to practice painting on. You can put a sheet of white paper underneath it to make it easier to see what you are doing and because it is a nice flat surface you'll find the glass paint stays put nicely. After a bit of practice on acetate try painting up some jars from your recycling, if you can find jars with any flat faces (some of the posher jams come in cube like jars and are perfect for starting with) then be sure to have a go with these.

2. Prepare your glass for painting:

Remove any labels that may be there if you are recycling old jars by giving them a good soak in hot water before pealing them off. Using the white spirit give the glass a good wipe all over to remove any remaining glue traces as well as to get rid of any finger prints or other marks. Place your glass somewhere that it is secure (where it won't roll around) and be sure that you have good lighting so that you can easily see if you have applied enough paint.

3. Draw out your design:

While holding the outliner paste in a position that is comfortable for you (I hold the tube like a pen) squeeze very gently until the paste starts to come out of the nib and then bring it down to the glass. Try to hold the nib slightly away from the glass as you can smudge it easily with the nib as it comes out of the tube. The technique is a little like icing cakes and it can take a good bit of practice to get a nice finish with the paste. You want to end up with a neat raised line of paste around the edges of your design as the glass paint needs to stay within your outline.

If you make any mistakes while drawing out your design then you can easily wipe away the paste with a little kitchen roll dipped in white spirit. However, if that is tricky to do then you can also leave the paste to dry hard and then carefully cut and peal away the area with a sharp pen knife.

4. Painting the glass:

Leave the outline to dry for a couple of hours before beginning to paint - or use a hairdryer to harden the paste if you have less time. You can tell the paste is hard by giving it a gentle nudge with your finger nail to see if you leave a dent.

When painting with glass paints you want to fill the area that you have outlined with the paint in an even way. If you paint it to thinly then it will look streaky and the colours won't be as bright as they should be. If you paint it to thickly then the paint will drip over the edges of the outliner and go everywhere.

Start by carefully loading up your brush with paint and then dab a blob of paint into the centre of the area that you are trying to fill. Use the paint brush to push the paint into each of the edges and when the paint starts to be too thin get another brush load from the pot. If you are painting a curved edge then you will need to keep the item moving so the paint doesn't all drip to one side. Blow gently on your work as you go to help it dry quicker and once one area is dry enough that the paint no longer moves about you can start on the next area. Some people find using a hair dryer on a low setting to help speed this drying also helps.

Once you've painted all of your design then let the item dry for at least 4 hours before touching any of the painted areas, remembering to occasionally turn or move the item so that the paint doesn't get any drips forming while it dries.

Now sit back and admire your handiwork and be sure to show it off to anyone you can!

If you want to read more about glass painting then I highly recommend you finding a copy of "The glass painting book" by Jane Dunsterville (ISBN: 978-0715304280) - it's a great place to start and has all sorts of practical advice and tips in.

A late Ho ho ho!

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers! Due to all the annual Christmas madness I've been very late in writing my roughly weekly posts which is a shame as I have lots of craftiness to share with you.

Now that Christmas is done for another year I can show you some of the things I had been busy working on but had to keep secret. First off are my Christmas cards of which I managed to make about 25 this year (not enough for everyone but it's a start). With a quick embossing lesson from my sister in law I was happy to find that embossing is a lovely and quick way to make some very attractive cards.

The trees on my cards are simply two stamped trees which have had the embossing powder sprinkled over them and then heated with a handy heating tool (a bit like a mini hair dryer) which gives a slightly raised surface and a bit of added shimmer from the glitter in the powder. The middle tree is a simple triangle crocheted from green thread and glued on with a star and trunk added in afterwards with green pen.

To go in my cards I made a batch of crochet star Christmas tree decorations - over 30 of them in fact, and these little lovely stars almost killed me. Though simple to make with a basic granny style hexagon as the centre and 5 triangles coming out from each side to make the points they each took about 1 and a half hours to make up, just weaving in the loose ends afterwards gave me callouses on my poor fingers! Once finished these stars had a quick soak in some white glue and water mix and left flat to dry so that they became nice and stiff.

Next I painted up a large batch of scented candles that I had bought at a very reasonable price from Ikea and with their apple and cinnamon scent were very Christmasy. Stupidly though I wrapped them all up before thinking to take a photo of them so all I can show you is a pile of some of them all nicely wrapped and waiting to be given away...

I still have one candle that I kept back for myself so if I get around to it I'll give it a quick once over with my glass paints to give you an idea of how lovely they looked.

Lastly I managed to find the time to make up some more of these great crochet slippers for some of the people who had admired the pair that I made for myself recently. The pattern is simple and you end up with a very comfy slipper that seems to fit well (at least it fits me and the other lucky three recipients that got the slippers pictured).

Phew! What a lot of crafting - I'm very glad that I did it but I really wished I had started much earlier as there was so much more that I wanted to make that I just didn't have the time to do. So in the spirit of making a start on some of next Christmas' crafting I've already taken down all our Christmas cards and cut them up for gift tags to go on next years presents. I'm also thinking I'll start to trying to make presents this very month so if you have any great ideas for Christmasy makes then let me know!