a holiday project: thinking of february

January 27, 2015

a holiday project: thinking of february

February will be here in under a week... and we all know what February brings.

Thoughts of flowers, hearts, glitter, shades of pink and of course, red.

It all started with Zulily... have you heard of this Seattle company? If not, you should definitely check them out... Each day they have new items for sale for a limited time and this vase was up a couple of weeks ago. Now you may remember by slight obsession with all things milk glass... I have a couple of vases exactly like this one only in white. So when it came up for $6 or $7 dollars I was thinking it would be an obvious choice to add to my collection.

Unfortunately, I procrastinated a bit and it was sold out. Then I stopped by my favorite thrift store to find this! For just $.49 no less! I didn't have any craft paint on hand but I did have some red chalk paint... and Pinterest.

You've probably seen the different methods of painting a vase or a jar... inside or outside. I chose to follow the inside paint method since I wanted the outside of the vase to be shiny AND I liked the look of the glass over the paint rather than a chalk like finish. Since I don't plan to use this for flowers, I do own around 90 white vases, I was ok with the inside being painted.

I went over many methods of painting the inside of a glass vessel. The method that worked the best for me was to add the paint, a few drops of water to thin it, and to swirl it all around to cover. I added the plastic wrap for this stage just to be safe... red paint isn't the easiest of colors to clean up.

Then I removed the plastic wrap and let the vase sit on it's side, turning it frequently for the next couple of hours. After that I went back and forth between inverting the vase and leaving it upright to keep any wet paint moving. This plastic, disposable plate left from the holidays worked great since I could clean off any paint that dripped/ran out.

After it dried completely I noticed I need to use a brush and go around the inside of the top but other than that, it turned out pretty fantastic! The color is just right for a Valentine's Day arrangement.

And see what I mean about plenty of milk glass vases to use for actual flowers?

Next up will be a couple of more in shades of pink... I'll stick with the chalk paint and add a bit of white to come up with a few shades of pink... just like these sweet carnations. A favorite winter flower... they last so long!