Kraft Korner - Cracked Glass Art

Whoever said that breaking a glass was inauspicious probably had not heard of glass paints and the myriad ways to convert broken glass into beautiful objects of art. The first time I used glass paints was to help my sis when she wanted to do a wall hanging many years ago. I had helped only because she had asked me to and my part was restricted to tracing out a geometric pattern on paper and breaking the bubbles on the paint with a pin head. I was neither fascinated with the job nor with the paints or medium. But after being bitten by the craft bug and especially after seeing Suman's painted bottle, I was itching to try out some glass painting. But I could not lay hands on a piece of glass which I could use to test-run. Desperate with waiting for a test piece, I was even prepared to sacrificing the plainness of a couple of window panes for my trial runs :-)


Thankfully, someone at home accidently cracked a glass tumbler soon enough and I jumped at the opportunity to salvage my test piece. The glass had a couple of thin fracture lines running throughout the body and was chipped at one place (which you can notice even now in the pic). I drew a cracked pattern throughout the glass with permanent marker to camouflage the fracture lines and painted it with black acrylic paint to give an outline. Then I've used acrylic pearl metallic paints of various colours to fill in. I have used just one coat of paint with a dry brush so that the surface remains translucent. I re-coated the black outline and let it dry. Here's the finished product. Try locating the fracture lines... I bet you can't :)
 

Acrylic paints do not make utensils safe enough to serve food/beverages and the glass was chipped anyway. So I did not want to put it to such use. And due to the fractures, it would not withstand usual handling until I coat it with clear paints. I plan to do that soon and till then, here it stands on our dining table, holding tissues!