DIY Painted Vases

A few months ago I was looking on Pinterest and found a tutorial for some cool painted vases and decided to try it out.  I bought a few vases from the Dollar Tree and some paint from Walmart and got to work. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and it cost just over $7 for five vases. I've written my own brief, simple version of the tutorial below.

1. Paint for glass (I used Folkart Enamels Paint in Aqua)- $1.19

2. Clear vase- $1

3. Paint Brush

(You may want to also apply a surface conditioner to the inside of the vase before you paint it. I didn't and my vases still look great)

1. Wash the vase and allow to dry.

2. Pour some paint into the vase and use a paintbrush to spread it around the inside of the vase.  Keep adding more paint  until the inside of the vase is covered.

 3. Once you've covered the inside of the vase with a layer of paint, allow the vase to dry.

4. Apply one or two more layers of paint, until the vase is a solid color with no transparent areas. Let dry overnight

I painted three vases this color and put them on a bookshelf in our living room. They add a nice splash of color to the room!

I decided to try something different for a couple of the vases. I wanted one vase to hold my wedding bouquet and another to hold one of my bridesmaid's bouquets. I used a light blue paint because that was one of my wedding colors. In order to be able to see some of the ribbon the bouquets were wrapped in, I decided to have a transparent section on each of the vases. To achieve this, I put tape on the inside of the vase and then painted the vase. This technique didn't work as well as I had hoped. When I tried to remove the tape, there was not a very clean line where the paint ended. To make the vases look better, I used a black marker to define the area where the paint ended. 

 I'm not completely happy with the result, but at least they are unique!

Here's the link to the original tutorial:  http://www.sugarandcharmblog.com/2011/01/easy-and-beautiful-enamel-painted-vases.html