DIY Painted Glasses

My very first craft project in my new apartment! I am so pleased with myself. :)

I am Pinterest crazy. I love Pinterest. I love the things I find on Pinterest. And when I first saw DIY painted glasses on Pinterest, I knew I had to make some. I went crazy pinning DIY painted glasses so that I could figure out exactly what I wanted them to look like and how exactly to go about it.

This was my inspiration photo. I love the thick random dots at the bottom that slowly fade out. (The pin doesn't actually lead to a link so I can't give you a source, but the description said they used the back of the paintbrush.)

When Jon and I first moved into our apartment we had no cups. One day I went to the Dollar Tree (where everything is seriously only ONE DOLLAR. I seriously spent about 2 minutes looking for price tags because I couldn't believe it was only a dollar for some of those things.) and they had an entire aisle full of glasses. So I bought four plain tall glasses.

I wasn't thinking about this project when I bought them, but when I was looking back at some of my old pins, I realized how perfect they were! AND they're real glass! At first I realized how cheap they were ($1 each) and thought that there's no way that they aren't plastic. But then I picked one up and started tapping my nail against it--definitely glass. YAY! (Because these have to go in the oven to bake on the paint.)

Here was my project area! We don't receive a newspaper, but I am an avid plastic bag collector. Don't ask why, I've just always kept all of my plastic grocery bags. But they worked for covering the table! Can't get any paint on my brand new beautiful blue table!

Regular acrylic paint will work, but I found gloss acrylic paint at Michael's that's meant just for painting on glass.

And then I bought some paintbrushes. At first I decided to use the bottoms of the paintbrush for perfect dots because they were all so flat and round.

(When you're painting, don't make the same mistake I did and smear your finger all through the paint as you're turning the glass.)

I figured out that putting my hand inside of the glass and turning it like that helped keeping my hand out of the way of the paint.

Now I wouldn't be me if I didn't mess up at least once or twice and absolutely hate what I had started. Luckily it was easy for me to go to the sink and scrub the paint off with my sponge and dish soap. At first I wanted to have multi-colored dots all over the glass like the inspiration photo. In the end, I decided I hated it. Then, I hated how the end of the paintbrush made the dots look.

Finally, this is what I ended up coming up with. I do love them. :) Not sure how Jon will feel drinking out of a rainbow cup, but I adore rainbows and colors, so I am very happy with them! I ended up using the actual paintbrush because it was much faster and made different sized dots without having to switch paintbrushes. And made more dots at one time before having to put more paint on the brush.

The moment of truth! This was actually the first time I've used the stove in the apartment, and I was really scared I was going to break the glasses or something was going to go wrong. But I opened the stove and here they were, standing there all perfectly colorful and undamaged!

I'm very happy with how they turned out. Now let's see you jazz up some of your plain old glasses!

The entire project took me about 2 1/2 hours. An entire hour was spent messing up glasses, though. Once I finally figured out what I wanted, it was an hour and a half. Cooking time included.

Supplies Needed:

• Glasses (however many you want to paint)
• Acrylic paints
• Paintbrushes
• Oven
• Cookie tray
• Newspapers or plastic bags to cover your table
• Paper towels to dry off brush and cup of water to wash out the brush when you switch paints

Directions:

• Set up your painting station. Cover with newspaper or plastic bags because we all know how depressing it would be to spill paint all over your table or floor or whatever you're using. 
• Start painting. I first started using the end of the paintbrush for more round dots, but in the end decided that I liked how the brush end looked better. Keep your hand inside of the glass to keep from messing up the paint and rotate it using that hand or the rim of the glass.  I started with the pink at the very bottom of the glass. I did each color on all four glasses before moving to the next color. At first I did a lot of really tight dots together and then fewer spread out dots towards the end of the rainbow.
• Once you're finished painting and the glasses are exactly how you wanted, place them on a cookie sheet in the oven. Then preheat your oven to 325 degrees F. Make sure the oven is off when you put the glasses in. Severe change in temperature will cause them to crack and all of your hard work will have gone down the drain. Let the glasses sit in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes has passed, turn off the oven. Let the glasses cool in the oven. I turned the oven off right before I went to work and took the glasses out the oven when I got home about three hours later. Perfect! :)
• Glasses are not going to be dishwasher safe anymore unless you want to lose paint off the glasses. Be gentle handwashing. We haven't used ours so I'm not sure exactly how durable the paint is, but after being baked on it should be good to go.
• Enjoy your brand new painted glasses!

It ended up being extremely cheap for me, too.

4 glasses from Dollar Tree: $4

Paint and paintbrushes from Michael's: $5.68 (plus I used a 20% off coupon from the smartphone app)

Total: Less than $10 for colorful completely remade glasses. Imagine having to buy a set like this. Not. Cheap.

Now check out your kitchen and get to painting some glasses!