Art in Worship: Acrylic Crosses

Recently, I was donated now unused COVID screens from an office. They are 5mm clear acrylic sheets and are pretty much unscathed from a couple of year’s of use. I returned the favour by making the company a lot of custom engraved acrylic coasters, and started looking round for more things to do with the acrylic. Working with an inspiration pic sent to me, I came up with this project for four different ‘stained glass’ acrylic crosses:

Four 'stained glass' acrylic crosses
Continue reading

Christmas Card 2023 – a ‘stained glass’ tag

Scrolling through my photos on my phone, I came across some I’d taken of the cards I made for Christmas (now last year). As they’ve all been sent, received and recycled, I can share them here. Featuring a ‘stained glass’ design, the tag is removable and designed to be kept and used year-to-year. Making notes follow…

Removable handcrafted 'stained glass' tag Christmas card
Continue reading

Altered Art: ‘Stained’ Glass

stained glass effectI’ve been playing around with some 15cm square mounted glass plates I had lying around the studio. I found some 3mm self-adhesive lead strip and used a template to stick it down. Rather than soldering the joins, I overlapped them and made sure they were well burnished. Then it was a matter of using some alcohol inks on the reverse of the glass to give the colour/’stained’ glass effect. I used isopropanol/rubbing alcohol to remove the alcohol ink from areas I didn’t want it.

Top tip: when cleaning fingerprints off with alcohol, remember not to wipe the reverse of the glass or some of your stain will rub off too…

The contemporary cross panel is available to purchase here.

Arts in Worship: Prayer Tiles

As regular readers may remember, I’m going to be artist-in-residence at this year’s inaugural Bishop’s School of Prayer, 9th-13th May at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire. There are three full days, the afternoons of which will feature workshops led by the day’s teachers, myself and the musician-in-residence. I’ve been prepping some potential workshop projects, and here are a couple of experiments that have made the grade:

There are still spaces available for the course, with both residential spaces and day passes. I do hope you will join Bishop Martyn and the other teachers and leaders for what is essentially a three-day conference on prayer.

Continue reading

Altered Art: Etched Brush Pots

Happy New Year! I have a new year intention (I don’t do resolutions, too much pressure) to have a studio clear out and tidy up. As a first step, I decided to replace my water pots for use in classes. Inexpensive Ikea smoked glasses caught my eye – stable and weighty, perfect! Of course, I couldn’t just leave them unadorned…

A little work on some typography, vinyl cutting on my Silhouette and a generous dollop of Armor Etch and my etched brush pots are complete. One features a caution symbol and ‘contains paint’, specifically targeted at one of my studio guests who can mistake her glass of water for the painty water pot. Another has the steps required for cleaning a brush. The third has all the words I could find in the thesaurus connected with cleaning a brush. And the fourth has phrases playing around with the whole brush pot concept, such as ‘clean brush, cloudy water’ and ‘colours in suspense’.

Bearing this in mind, tidying the studio is going to take forever if at each point I have an idea I then implement, making a mess in the process…

Continue reading

Altered Art: Tealight Holders Part II

I previously posted an advert for October’s workshop in The Studio featuring an altered MDF tealight holders Now, it’s that time of year when the church Christmas Fayre is just ten days away. I still have a box full of holders left over. So, over the last couple of days I’ve been sponging acrylics, metallics and glass paints over MDF and acetate and waiting for spray gloss varnish to stop being tacky. I’m now making bespoke packaging for each of these individual gifts:

img_3197 img_3204 img_3201 Continue reading

Glass Etching with Armour Etch

IMG_6347_w

I have learnt three things on this little project:

  1. Etching glass with Armour Etch through a vinyl stencil that I cut on my Silhouette Cameo is quick, simple and delightfully effective. This inexpensive Ikea glass is now carrying the branding that I use for my studio.
  2. Photographing glass, like mirrors, is incredibly tricky! I spent roughly 15 minutes etching the glass, and then the next hour learning how to take the photograph! I ended up lighting it from beneath with a small LED push-light with a sheet of paper between it and the glass to dim it slightly. All of this was in a blackout tent, with a small amount of light from above, and poking my phone through a small slit in the tent. The first attempts had so much reflection of both the lighting and the surroundings, the etching wasn’t visible.
  3. Cleaning the glass digitally was so much more effective than in real life. I’d done my best using alcohol and non-shedding cloths, but the pesky dust specks really showed up despite my best efforts. The Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop really came to the fore to remove them. Though not perfect, I think as a bit of amateur product photography I can get away with it 😉

All that’s left to do is the rest of my glasses!

Continue reading

Martha Stewart Craft Paints on Ceramic/Glass

I had an ‘interesting’ day yesterday at the fantastic Coleman’s Craft Warehouse Big Demo Day. I was billed to do a make and take with the Martha Stewart Craft Paints on Ceramics, but there was an unexpected influx of young children which resulted in me being asked to lead a children’s party next week! (I declined!)

That said, I’d done plenty of preparation for the make and take and here are pics of my samples. The plates are technique samplers and the text is written with a porcelain marker. All of the samples were baked, and are dishwasher safe – I actually tested this claim before I agreed to promote the paints, and I can absolutely say it does what it says it will do! The paints are more adherent than most acrylics I’ve used, and though water based, the box says not to mix with water – I presume this messes about with the resin technology that makes them multi-surface. You can thin the colour with the glaze product that is in the same range of products, which is how I managed to get the wood grain effect on one of the mugs using a brush. I would recommend applying the paint with a sponge onto non-porous surfaces and you can use a heat gun to make a layer workable, although it is not as stable as if left for an hour or so to dry between coats. The frosted glass effect paint is also applied with a sponge and is one of the most user-friendly frostings I’ve ever come across.

The paint itself is a creamy consistency, dabs on well and has good opacity. It comes in four varieties – a Satin Finish which seems more matte to me, a pearlescent – which is striking, a glitter – which is more of a coloured glitter translucent glaze, and a high gloss. The colour range available is comprehensive and there are various special effect bottles that I haven’t had the opportunity to play with.

I’m particularly impressed with the range of accompanying accessories, including the fine applicator tip that attaches to the bottle (see the high gloss black outlining) and the sponge dabber tips that do the same. Ms Stewart has also included an empty bottle in the pack which is for rinsing out the caps when done with clean water. Clean up is easy – as long as you do it while the paint is still damp. The paint by its nature sticks firmly and to any surface. I found that the stencils retained paint even after cleaning quickly after use, but any dried paint didn’t shift with subsequent applications.

To be honest, I’d probably use other acrylics for painting porous surfaces, but I’d certainly recommend these craft paints for any non-porous surface.

Glass Painting on Mirror

This is my first attempt at applying lead strip to glass and then painting to give the stained glass effect. The design was freestyle trial and error. The mirror is 20x20cm (8x8in) square. Of course, photographing a mirror without appearing in it turns out to be quite tricky – I think I will have another go in better light. In the meantime, I’m sure you get the idea! I’d love to have some feedback on this – what do you think? And if you’d be so kind as to complete the poll too (no obligation to purchase btw)? Continue reading