Tuesday, December 4, 2012

How to Make a Faux Hand Blown Glass Ornament


I hate buying new materials for crafts.  Not only is it expensive, but my house is gets filled with clutter of items that I only use once or twice.  I wanted to paint my glass ornaments, but did not want to buy specialty glass paint for them.  From my previous water marble tutorials, here and here,  I know that nail polish works great on these ornaments.  The best nail polishes to use are the more translucent colors, and from my experimenting, the cheaper the polish the better it works (probably because it isn't as pigmented and lets more light shine through).

To make these faux hand blown glass ornaments, I just used nail polish and painted small to medium sized circles all around in a random pattern.  You don't really have to be neat, it gives it more of the hand blown glass look if your circles aren't perfect.

For the blue ornament I used Wet n Wild 415 A (this nail polish is at least 10 years old) and Revlon's Nail Art French Mix.  For the red ornament I used Elizabeth Arden glitter polish (this is also at least 10 years old, didn't Elizabeth Arden go out of business years ago?) and  Essie's Bone Chilling White (which is pretty translucent for Essie, I was highly disappointed when I used it on my nails, it takes at least 4 coats to get it opaque).


Use any nail polish, the more translucent the better.


Randomly paint on circle shapes of various sizes.  If you are putting colors on top of each other
 wait for one color to dry before applying another.

For the red ornament I did big splotches of white first and then small spots of red.
As always the best thing about working with nail polish is that if you do not like your design, just use nail polish remover and wipe it off.

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