How to make hand painted wine glasses

About 2 years ago right around Christmas I was looking for an inexpensive, but really cool gift idea for my friends and family. I was drooling looking at things on Etsy (another of my favorite inspiration websites... I really don't know how people functioned before Etsy and Pinterest) and I saw really cute hand painted wine glasses.... and then I saw the $35 each price tag. I thought to myself "I can do that".

Let me be clear I am in no way shape or form an artist. I can't draw or paint or even make a straight line without some guidance, but I am really good at copying things and tracing. I played around with different paints and methods and I finally got it down to a science. That Christmas I made SO MANY and everyone loved them.

 

Here are some of the glasses I gave as gifts. The one at the end was for my sister's bridal shower.

These make great gifts and they're really sturdy, you can put them in the dishwasher and use them as much as you want, I haven't had mine chip any paint off yet.

I saw some really cute glasses on Etsy that I wanted to make as an engagement gift for friends of mine and the design is really simple, so I wanted to share my tried and true method of hand painting wine glasses.

What you'll need:
-Glasses
-Alcohol (to clean the outside)
-Paintbrushes (I use really cheap ones from Joanns, nothing fancy)
-Enamel Paint (I use Folk Art Enamel the value pack is awesome it comes with I think 32 colors)
http://www.amazon.com/One-Stroke-4211-Paint-Enamels/dp/B001BPQV1K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379891838&sr=8-1&keywords=folk+art+enamel
-Paper
-Sharpie or black pen
-clear cassarole dish (for tracing)
-Flashlight (I actually use my LED flashlight on my phone, it works better I think)
-Computer
-Printer

Step 1: Figure out what you want to put on your glass and find a picture or font that you want to use. I always go to Google Image and look for _________ clipart because this is something you're going to need to trace, don't pick anything too complicated. Print out your pictures/font at the size that you want (you may need to play around with sizing a bit)

Step 2: Put a flashlight under an upside down clear cassarole dish and turn it on. Put your printed photo on top of the dish and a blank piece of paper on top. Trace away. (You might be thinking that you should skip this step and just tape the picture to the inside, but trust me...some things don't look that good when you trace them, which means it won't look good when you trace/paint them either...better to find out before you start painting on things).

As you can see I tried multiple drawings for the lips...Grizley Adams told me that the original looked like someone's nasty chapped lips, so I tried a couple of different ways

Step 3: Cut out your traced photos (the smaller they are the easier they are to shape to the inside of the glass) and tape them on the inside of the glass.

Step 4: Clean the outside of the glass with some alcohol. You want to make sure it sticks. Then take a SUPER TINY paint brush and trace the outside of the drawing.

Really small brush!

Step 5: Once you have it traced fill it in with all the colors you want. You WILL need to do several layers of paint. Don't try to just glob it on there, it will get chunky and nasty and look gross. The enamel dries pretty quickly so you can do the next coat about 10-15 minutes after the first. That being said go from top to bottom and left to right so that you don't smear anything.

After I taped the Mr over the mustache I decided I didn't like the font, so I changed it.

Step 6: Keep painting layers, a good rule of thumb is hold the glass up to the light, if it shows all kinds of light coming through you need more layers.

Finished product!

If you mess up its really not a big deal! Its paint on glass so its pretty easy (at least for about 10-15 minutes) to scrape anything you don't like off with your fingernail and wipe off with a little bit of alcohol. Voila! All better. I put a period after the MR and centered it at first and once I got it on there I decided I didn't like it so I scraped it off and started over again.  No harm no foul.

Oops

That's it! Let it dry for about an hour and then bake it in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. That will seal the paint and you're good to wash it (there will be tons of fingerprints all over it when you're done so it'll need a good wash).

Start simple and don't freak out if you make a mistake, its easily fixable! I like to listen to audio books while I work, it keeps me occupied.

Good Luck and Happy painting!