Here at Cousin we have so many wonderfully imaginative employees. They have created everything from beaded Christmas stockings to gorgeous embellished outfits, even a hand painted and bejeweled "art vehicle"! With all of this talent surrounding us, we have decided to showcase a few of our employee creations over the upcoming weeks here on our Blog. This week's blog article is from Dawn, a Support Member to our Graphics Arts Dept.
I love beads. I love chains. Heck, I LOVE jewelry and so this project was just TOO much fun.
I had a friend's birthday coming up soon and wanted to surprise her with a unique gift, but to be honest a lot of my friends have already received jewelry from me, so I felt I needed something new. On my journey to find a new and exciting jewelry project, a friend of mine reminded me of those embellished wine and martini glasses you see in stores like Hallmark or Bealls. I thought that this would be a great gift, but having never made one before I was off to the craft store to find some paint and inspiration.
My first stop was to find paint that would work well on glass. I asked the employee at the store about their thoughts on my project and they pointed me towards the enamel paint. I found Folk Art has a great line of enamel paints for glass that are generally all under $3 a bottle! Well with a few choice colors and some brushes I was on my way home to begin making a blinging wine glass!
The materials you will need for this project are; enamel paints (colors of your choice);brushes, rhinestone chain, super glue and of course your glass!
Start by cleaning your glass with a little bit of rubbing alcohol or Windex to make sure it is squeaky clean. Even one oily fingerprint can make a BIG difference. Let the glass dry for about ten minutes.
For the painted design on my glass I ended up doing pretty basic polka dots with the words "Party On!" written on one side. The polka dots I cheated on a little bit and made with a circular sponge brush and just dabbed the paint onto the glass with it, you could easily do the same design painting with a brush though. The words I drew onto a piece of paper first and then tested to make sure they would fit nicely on the glass. When I was happy with the size and shape of the words, I used a Sharpie to draw them onto the glass. Please don't frustrate yourself here either, be patient and wait for the paint to dry completely.
With the paint and sharpie dry, the glass is about half way done. And yes the glass looks pretty good, even in its current state, but personally I felt it just didn't "Gleam" yet. Now it was time for the fun stuff :-D With a nice red/purple rhinestone treatment it should catch every eye in the room for the birthday girl! You could use individual rhinestones but using the chain is a little trick that really speeds up the process.
I began the rhinestone work on the foot of the glass. Start by measuring and cutting enough of the rhinestone chain to make your 1st small circle around the stem. You can cut the rhinestone chain with either heavy duty shears or wire cutters; I suggest trying the scissors first. Now put the super glue directly onto the glass and then press the rhinestone chain into the glue. Repeat the same steps making bigger and bigger circles, until the entire foot of the glass is covered. Let the foot dry for at least 15 mins just to save you the headache of bumping into them and the rhinestones moving. Now flip the glass upside down and proceed with the same technique for the top of the glass stem. I found placing the last row of rhinestones on the stem facing out instead of down helped a lot with presentation. Again let these dry in place before moving on.
While creating the letters on the glass I placed it into some crumpled up paper to helphold itstill while I adhered the rhinestone chain. Lay each piece of chain onto each letter to help find the exact size you'll need. Then cut, apply glue to the glass and carefully place the rhinestone chain on. Try not to use too much glue on the letters as extra glue is more visible here than the foot.
And that's it! All in all once I had the materials together it really only took about an hour start to finish (that includes waiting for the glue to dry but NOT the paint). This project was really fun and in the end the birthday girl absolutely LOVED her gift. I hope everyone enjoys!
Dawn.