Workshops
Workshops and craft taster sessions are a great way of discovering new materials and techniques for art & crafts. We love putting them on as we feel we learn just as much from those that attend as we teach!
Project Factory Christmas Baubles Glass Painting
Inspired by some of the bauble creations at the October workshop, I led a Christmas Baubles Glass Painting Workshop for Project Factory in November. Again I was blown away by the creativity and the ‘have-a-go’ attitude of everyone that came.
Project Factory provided a selection of attractive clear glass baubles for participants to paint with Thorndown Peelable Glass Paint.
A variety of techniques were employed to create a fantastic selection of designs, some of which wouldn’t look out of place in the Christmas department at Liberty’s.
SPLATTERING
One of the easiest and most satisfying ways to create a decorative effect is by splattering paint onto a glass or plastic item.
A cardboard box was used to hang baubles from and provide a safe area to collect splats in. It can take some practice to get the technique right, getting the flick of the wrist and the distance of brush to object right. A smaller brush will produce smaller splats whereas a larger brush will hold more paint on the head and make larger splats, blobs and swirling lines of paint. You can also hold the brush near to the object and flick the head of the brush with your fingers to flick the paint off.
It’s an easy method to use to create quite elegant baubles. Use a single colour or combine two or more colours for pretty contrasts.
SPOTS
Another really easy design idea is to paint on spots. It’s as easy as choosing a colour, dipping your brush into the paint and spotting the paint on to the object. Beautifully simple!
SNOWFLAKES
On small curved objects it can be really hard to use stencils as it’s difficult to get a tight seal so paint bleeds easily under the stencil. For snowflakes some ladies just created their own really easily using a flat headed art brush and painting in a dash line method in a star design. These hand painted snowflakes were again really simple and easy to do but very pretty.
FANCY FEATHERING
One of my favourite creations were the baubles made by one lady who just experimented and came up with an elegant feathered design. The bottom of the bauble had feathered snow drifts in Swan White with a feathered midnight sky painted by mixing Bat Black in with Bandit Blue. She then hand painted trees on and dotted snow falling from the sky.
FROSTING
Another lady created her own frosted glass technique by painting on the Peelable Glass Paint then continuing to work it by painting and brushing over the paint again and again. This method takes some of the paint off but leaves a thin coating on that has already dried to the glass looking like frosted glass. On one bauble she then painted on a star using a stencil over the top of the dried frosted coating.
BESPOKE
The imagination is a wonderful thing and can create endlessly amazing pieces. One lady re-created the world on her bauble and another hand painted a holly leaf on hers. On the far right design a snow-drift was painted on the bottom of the bauble with blue glacial edging added.
This final bauble was created by a very talented lady who was inspired by an episode from her childhood. She hand painted a pair of bullfinches, advent candles, and a very cheeky squirrel! Her creation was utterly beautiful and the entire workshop was very inspiring to see what can be created with a bit of Peelable Glass Paint.
Project Factory Glass Painting Workshop
In October I worked with Project Factory (a community initiative company in Wells) to deliver a Glass Painting Workshop as part of their series of craft taster sessions.
A wonderful group took part and after an introduction and briefing on techniques and application methods for Peelable Glass Paint, they got stuck into creating and re-purposing old glass items.
Some already had a clear idea of what they wanted to make, with some getting inspiration for designs from Pinterest, and others looking for ideas.
Prepared with lots of stencils, pictures torn from magazines and Frogtape, those searching for ideas soon found them and before long everyone was set-up and painting. I had also set-up a ‘splatter station’ using a large cardboard box so people could create splatter art.
By the end of the session the inside of the box looked like a brilliant Jackson Pollock painting, and some very pretty pieces had been created. One lady let her splattered glass jars dry then overpainted two of them with stars using a glass paint colour she’d used in the splattering. Another lady had created a brilliant Christmas bauble decoration using festive colours from the Christmas Stencil Peelable Glass Paint Craft Pack.
Another lady painted freehand to create decorations that looked like fused glass designs.
Having purchased plastic decorations in anticipation of the workshop, a couple of ladies came along with a collection of hearts and baubles. As these shapes were curved they used stencils and traced the outline onto the plastic with a sharpie pen, then filled in the outlines with Peelable Glass Paint. They created a great Santa Christmas bauble and some pretty floral hearts.
Others initially felt they didn’t have much artistic talent but all created some really pretty pieces that they can be proud of!
One design that I’ve got to try at home is a grove of silver birches that one lady painted on her glass bottle. Using Frogtape to mark out the lines of the trees she painted them around the bottle with Swan White Peelable Glass Paint. By the time she’d painted all of them the first ones were dry enough to paint on spots of Bat Black to replicate the splits and patterns in the bark of a silver birch. Finally a spotting action was used to paint on the leaves at the top of the bottle with various shades of green.
