Glass Vases.

image from Martha Stewart Weddings

We really want to emulate this table arrangement from Martha Stewart Weddings (spring 2008) but we weren't able to find any cheap, black, glass vases. One of my colleagues from Freedom suggested searching at Gone Bazaar (a knick-knack store) and getting something there.

They didn't have any black glass, but they had a plain vase that was roughly the same size/shape we wanted, so we bought one and I painted it the other day.

What we used:

Black opaque glass paint 50 ml, $2 from Art Attack (this was enough for 2 vases)

Vase, $5.95 from Gone Bazaar

Step one: Clean out the inside of the vase. Martha recommends doing this with rubbing alcohol, I used a, eerrrr, paper towel... Rubbing alcohol will get rid of grease and dirt, though. If you're doing this, probably best to go with the rubbing alcohol.

Step two: Pour copious amounts of black glass paint into the vase. I was worried about losing excess paint, but I figured that in the end I could just drip it all back into the pot - which is what I ended up doing. I kept adding more paint into the vase; it made it easier to do the next step.

Step three: Twist and swirl the jar around until every part of the inside of the vase is coated evenly. The lip of this vase was a bit tricky to get it covered without going onto the outside, but we got there eventually!

Step four: Let it dry. The glass paint pot said 3 days and it was touch dry within a couple of hours. I also turned the vase upside down every so often because I noticed the paint was slowly starting to gather at the bottom of the pot, it wasn't really noticeable but I am a perfectionist sometimes...

Voila! Black vases. Finally.