Voila, Painted Bottles

I completed the bottle painting project last week and am fairly pleased with the results. The finished vases look much better than I expected, but are they functional as vases?

If you didn't see my original post about this project, I've been wanting some blue glass vases to display on my mantle, but I didn't want to spend a lot. A Martha Stewart craft project provided the perfect solution and inspiration. Here's how it went down.

The good:

• It's an easy, fun project, perfect for impatient people like myself.
• It's cheap and semi-green. You can reuse old paint, bottles, etc. Or buy bottles cheap at a thrift store. My entire cost for the project was $7, for four bottles of craft paint, which I used to tint some latex and white craft paint I already had, and $3 for six bottles purchased at thrift stores. I made a lot more bottles than shown here.

The bad:

• I wondered how well the latex and acrylic painted bottles would hold up with water and today I found out the answer, they don't. The paint started streaking and separating right away. So unless you want to fork over bigger bucks for real glass enamel, which might hold up better, plan to use these bottles as non-functional decor only.

This week I also ran across another easy craft project along these lines, food-colored bottles, for those who want to try something different.