Pinned It & Did It: Painted Vases

After getting a couple of "are those the Pinterest vases?!" I figure that it's time to share these guys online. There were two inspiration pins for this one.

Pin. Source.

Pin. Source. Original Inspiration.

After we picked out some New Zealand bird prints to display in our family room, I decided that salmon tones should be the accent color for the room. I'm still working on getting a good balance of color in the otherwise neutral room, but these vases really help to drive it home.

With the exception of the weave vase (which has not been altered from its original state), all of these guys were clear. The two bottles were cheapos that I picked up at a thrift store and discount store for $.99 and $3 respectively. The two vases were ones I had in my cupboard that haven't gotten much use over the years.

Here's the dirt on this project: it's a partial fail. The open vases worked out pretty well, though they used more paint than I expected. I was able to use a craft brush to spread the paint around. The outside results are pretty good, though there are obvious brush strokes if you look inside.

The bottles were more difficult because my initial attempt of just using paint and surface conditioner failed. The paint was just too thick to move around, so it was taking a lot more paint than I had on hand, and I was worried that it'd never really dry. I attempted to thin the paint with water with mixed results. If you look closely, you can see that there are some really thin spots. I probably added too much water.

I also probably used the wrong paint. I wasn't able to find the exact products mentioned in the inspiration blogs, so I used super cheap (less than $1) acrylic paint, which said it could be used on glass, along with some surface conditioner. I'm hoping to paint a few more vases to add to the collection, and I think I'm going to spring for some $1.50 or $2 enamel paint to see if I can get better results on small-necked bottles. If I get to it, I'll let you know how it goes.

It seems that lots of people have these on their to-do list. I'd love to see others' results if you're willing to share!