Painting used glass (fun for grown-ups and kids)

I don't know whether it's all the glass honey jars I've been cleaning and recycling lately, or if it's because I realized I could buy a little set of glass paints at the craft store for only £2, but I recently became obsessed with the idea of painting some of our old glass items to reuse for other functions around the house.

A trip to the craft store put me out only about £10 (for two sets of the paint pots as well as gold and dark blue glass-paint markers). I'd saved myself a wine bottle and three glass honey jars on which to experiment and looked around Pinterest for some glass-painting ideas. I'd also set aside three glass salad dressing bottles on which my four-year-old could attempt his own glass-painting experiments. In the afternoons, we've been sitting down with the paints and markers to see what we could do.


DECORATIVE WINE BOTTLE
On the wine bottle, I used the gold marker to draw a series of squares and rectangles (and to color in some segments as well). After the marker dried, I painted the rectangles various colors (it took a few coats of paint since I wanted the colors darker). After the paints dried, I went back over the gold lines and gold-colored rectangles again to finish off the stained-glass look.













FUN FOR KIDS
Meanwhile, painting from his side of the table, my four-year-old continuously declared glass painting to be the most fun thing he'd ever done. He's not always into painting, but I think the novelty of it as well as me joining him with my own glass-painting projects really excited him. His finished products could be used as fun vases--although he has preferred instead to use them as homes for a small plastic green alien.






TOOTHBRUSH/TOOTHPASTE HOLDERS
For my final project, I used the honey pots to make containers for all of the toothbrushes and toothpastes often scattered on top of the bathroom shelf. To help make sure that the look of two of them would be consistent with each other, I first drew what I wanted on a piece of paper, then put the paper inside the jar, so I could trace it onto the glass and ensure relative conformity. On the third honey pot, I tried out a random flower design before lightly painting the whole jar blue.




























While I've satiated the glass-painting urge for now, there are so many more fun experiments that my son or I could have tried. The paints could work as well for an even simpler project, like painting baby food jars all one color (maybe dark blue or red?) for a series of votives. With the minimal cost involved, I do think it would be worth trying again.