Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Make it VS Buy it: confetti glasses


I saw these gorgeous confetti glasses on the Anthropologie website a while back and was totally smitten. I immediately imagined myself clutching this glass, sipping cocktails at a rooftop get-together, wearing a little black dress and a statement necklace. It would be late evening in July and there would be a fire pit and string lights.. Okay, I daydream a lot. Is that really so wrong?
Although I know these glasses are artfully made and designed and I think they're beautiful and perfect and all that jazz, I thought, "I can do that." So I did! Here's how.

I went to the dollar store and found glasses with simple, straight sides. I bought four at $1 each. These ones had gold rims. *Ooo DollarTree's gettin' fancy* I had a set of craft enamels I had bought from Hobby Lobby, years ago. The set was $4. Then I just dabbed the paint on! Simple as that!

I paid attention to the colors of the original glasses, and the pattern of the dots. I noticed they didn't use any dark colors except for small amounts of dark green and purple. And they used mostly bigger specks, but lots of teeny tiny ones too.

Since these enamels were old and I didn't keep the packaging, I looked up curing instructions online. The website I found told me to let my glasses dry for 24 hours. Then bake them in a preheated over for 30 minutes. After that, leave them in the oven (don't open the door) for 5 hours so they can cool gradually. After that, they should be top rack dishwasher safe. It's very important that you use enamels and not just acrylic paint. Regular paint has a hard time sticking to glass because of the non-porous surface.

The brush strokes were very much apparent in my glasses, and that's the only thing I'm unsure about with this project. Since that wasn't a part of my plan, I"m hesitant to call this project a victory. But I still like them. Not exactly what I was going for, but still pretty darn cute. ;) Upscale rooftop party, anyone?

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