Lesson 7: Applying Paint and Etching Cream to Glass
Working with Outliners
Until you are really accustomed to working on glass, the outliner may be your best friend. If you prefer to puddle your paint rather than brush it, the outliner is a necessity. It goes on thick, and leaves a raised line, which acts as a dam for the puddle-and-flowed on paint. You simply need to be certain not to leave any breaks between the lines, or that same paint will flow out of your shape and onto the glass outside of the design.
But even with paint that can be sponged or brushed on, the outliners are versatile. Use them to trace the outlines of your stencil and then you can remove the stencil from your glass and simply paint in the blanks spaces. Use them to create a stained glass effect, outlining each small element in black, copper or gold as though it were leading. Even when brushing, this slightly raised outline is handy to help keep you from going out of the lines.
Best of all, the outliners allow you to add fine detail to a piece - very tiny lines and dots that you may find difficult to brush on. Or you can create detailed line drawings with them - something difficult to do with brush-on paint. You can even use them to fill in very small areas entirely, giving those areas a raised surface that will add some dimension to your finished product.
Outliners are usually in tubes like oil paint comes in. There is a tip with an end that you snip off, through which the paint flows, and a cap that fits over this tip to keep the paint from drying out. You can either place the tip right on the glass and draw, as with a pen, or hold it slightly above the surface to lay the outline down as you might when decorating a cake. Some paints come in jars or large tubes, and you need to buy small squeeze bottles and tips and fill them with paint yourself. Be careful when selecting or snipping tips - the smaller the hole the narrower your outline. You can always make a hole bigger, but it's impossible to make one smaller.
You will need to practice until you feel comfortable with these. They have a tendency to leave small blobs in the middle of a line until you get a good feel for them.
When you get really good at it, you'll find that you can go back over an already painted outline after you've painted the insides. Unless you use black, any paint that even touches your outline will show, and so you will almost inevitably need to do this to touch things up. This is another good reason to keep colored outlines relatively fine to start with.
With air-dried paints, you can cheat here and use a felt tip pen that is permanent on glass to cover those little slips. But with oven-cured paint, the felt tip is likely to come right off at the first washing.
If you do make a blob where you didn't want it, you can wipe it off immediately provided it won't disturb an already painted area. Or let it dry and later shave off the unwanted portions with a craft knife. This is the advantage of oven-cured paint. If you bake before you outline, you can wipe off mistakes without causing any problem. (Of course, this means it could be several days before your product is finished, but it will be finished beautifully and with little stress.)
With air-dried paints you may want to allow layers of paint to dry a day or two, and then with some care you can wipe up outlining areas.
One reason I love the outliner is that I can use it to hide ragged edges in my painting. If the paint leaks a wee bit under my stencil, or my brush wobbles, I can clean some of it with either a damp cotton swab dipped in water or rubbing alcohol, or lift it with a craft knife. Or, I can take my outlines and create a finished edge around my entire design, hiding all those tiny flaws. This won't work with every design - but for many it's a real lifesaver. If you have outliners in the colors of your basecoat you can cheat and use a fine line to create a perfect edge every time.
