the Painted Vase - Part I

While wandering around Walmart looking for a new lampshade (for a post coming soon!), I stumbled upon craft paint. While I enjoy DIY projects, I'm not so much of a craft person (if that even makes sense?). I couldn't tear myself away from the beautiful colours and for just $3 bucks for a tube of craft paint I thought what have I got to lose? So I picked up some craft paint, found a $2 vase at Walmart and had me a new project.

And for another beauty shot...

Here's how it all went down...

The vase can be big or small. In fact, it doesn't have to be a vase at all. It can be an old milk jug, mason jar, or even a clear plate (that you can later hang for decoration). As for craft paint, I used Martha Stewart's Satin Paint - it sells for about $3 a tube. As for the paint brush, while I show a foam brush in the picture above, I later changed to an acrylic paint brush (nothing fancy, just a cheap one) and that worked much better. I found the foam brush to be too streaky and the acrylic brush to be just generally easier to paint with. 

Step #1: Clean out inside of vase with warm soapy water and dry with a lint free cloth or paper towel. 

If you want to go the extra step, Martha Stewart recommends rubbing down the surface with rubbing alcohol and letting it dry for 15 minutes. I later read as well wiping the surface with white vinegar is even better than washing with soapy water. Depending on your soap, it could leave residue therefore making it harder for the paint to adhere to the surface.

Step #2: Squeeze a blob of paint in the bottom of the vase and start to spread the paint around with paint brush. 

Step #3: Once the full inside area is covered with paint, let dry for about 1 hour. 

This is what my vase looked like after its first coat. 

NOTE: The first coat will be very streaky so don't worry! 

In between coats give your paint brush a little rinse under the tap with some warm water to keep it clean.

Step #4: Repeat steps 2 & 3 until you can no longer see through the vase and have a solid coat applied. It took me about 4 coats to get to this point.

So I was all done...or so I thought. Until I noticed a little note on Martha's label..."cure for 21 days". What the?! What does cure for 21 days mean?! After some research I found out that means that you have to leave the paint alone for 21 whole days until you do anything to it (ie fill the vase with water). Geez...the label should have read, "Acrylic Craft Paint: Let us test your patience". Anyhow, I thought, hey, what can a little water do? Apparently a lot. Almost immediately it started to bubble. Oopsies. 

It was a surprisingly easy fix. I just peeled back the bubbles and applied another coat of paint and we were back in action! However, lesson learned. I'm going to give it 21 days to 'cure' and see how it holds up to water.

The options are endless with this versatile craft paint! How about customizing some thrift store mugs? Have a wedding coming up? Try painting all the vases to really enhance the colour scheme of your wedding. Summertime always calls for bright colours! Pick up bright orange or yellow colour and try painting an outdoor vase.

Stay tuned for Part II to this post. I'm going to try yet another vase painting experiment, but I will first prime my vase with a surface conditioner. It claims to help the paint adhere to glass surfaces...I'm curious if it will make any difference?! Also, I'm going to try out a different paint that you can bake so the 'curing for 21 days' can be eliminated. Yay for impatience! haha. Stay tuned.

Bye for now,

Emily Grace