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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Creating Colored Glass!

I live in an area where you have to take your recycling to a recycling facility; there's no garbage or recycling pickup.  So most of the time I wash the containers and remove the labels so I can reuse them for something else later.  

When I came across this project idea (here), I thought... why not give it a try, I have extra jars sitting around!

This is so very easy and takes literally only 5-10 minutes of actually "work time".  Enjoy!

I think I am going to make several more in many different colors for on top of my kitchen cabinets!

Materials:
-Mod Podge, {I don't think it matters which kind you use; I used the gloss-lustre, but even the matte has some gloss and I think it would probably turn out the same} (You can find Mod Podge at any craft store or online.)
-food coloring
-empty clean jar(s), with the labels removed
-little bit of water
-plastic cup or something else for mixing in
-straw/popsicle stick or something else for mixing with
-foil or wax paper
-ovenproof pan or dish
Process:
1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
2. Pour about 4 tbsp (just eyeball it) into the plastic cup; add the food coloring of your choice {here I used mostly blue with a little green to get that "old" teal colored glass look}.
Mix colors into the Mod Podge.  Use a lot of color if you want a darker color!
(This is what 7 drops of blue and 3 drops of green looked like; this did not turn out to be anywhere close to what I wanted!)

In the end I added about 20+ drops of blue and 10+ drops of green, this gave me the deeper jewel color I wanted!
 I wanted it a little darker so I doubled that amount. {and then ended up adding about triple that much!}
3. Add about 1-2 tbsp water just to make it a little more liquid, mix well; then mine looked like this...
 4. Pour the mixed Mod Podge into the jar.
 5. Swirl around in the jar; you can see how it coats the jar.
 6. Place the foil or wax paper in the bottom of your ovenproof dish.
 7. Swirl color around some more and pour the access back into the cup making sure that you have coated the entire inside; be sure to wipe off any drips on the outside of your jar!
 8. Turn your jar upside down on the foil.
9. Carefully place the jar in the oven for 3 minutes.  Remove from oven {in this short time the jar doesn't get hot, but please be careful!}.  

Mine looked like this when removed (the first go around)...
 10. Flip the jar over and wipe all of the access Mod Podge off of the top rim.
11. Return to the oven sitting the jar upright directly on the rack and bake for 40 minutes (this majorly speeds up the drying time).
12. Carefully remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

When I took my jars out of the oven after completing this process the first time I was very disappointed!  Sorry, I forgot to take pictures.  They were really barely colored!  I followed the directions and even used more coloring than suggested.

***So I just let the jars cool completely and added much, much more color and repeated the process (in the end I added about 20+ drops of blue and 10+ drops of green).
 This is what I got after the second time around!  Much better!
I ended up storing the extra mixed colored Mod Podge in a jar for later use!  Don't waste your materials... you could use the leftovers for more jars or even brushed on another project where you want to add a tint to a surface!  
When I do more with other colors, I'll post more pictures! 
Have fun and enjoy!

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