Glass Painting DIY: On the Small Scale

It's amazing what I'm capable of accomplishing when I get started on a productive pattern at the beginning of the day. It's kind of like when I'm rushing around to go on a trip, I feel the need to add other chores to the list to complete even though they have nothing to do with the trip. Yes, it adds more stress to an already jam-packed day, but I get so much done! Anyway, yesterday I started on a productive rant in the morning and kept it going throughout the day. After work, I started on some freelance stuff and then slid right into this project that has been staring at me for weeks. I got these shadow boxes for free from Suzie (and the shelves too, for that matter). I wasn't sure what to do with them until I saw this photo on pinterest.com. I just loved the olive wreath painted on the cafe's glass and thought I could make it work on the glass of the shadowboxes.
After trying several materials to draw the olive branch: charcoal pencil and black eyeliner, just to name a few. Not until I found glass paint at Michael's for around $3 did I get it to work!

Honestly, I should stop trying to make things asymmetrical. It just never turns out right. I really do much better with the balance of symmetry. I drew on the branches and just added leaf brush strokes and dots until I got the desired finished product (it took a while to try to balance out the unbalanced branches).

The second frame took me a little longer to decide what I wanted to paint. I didn't want to use the flor-de-lys; Suzie sort of owns that from her time in New Orleans (makes gifts for her SUPER easy) :) I wanted to continue the French theme (shocker!). I looked at what bundles, hirondelles (birds that gave the namesake for my painting teacher's house in France), the Eiffel Tower. Then I came across the new Bed Bath and Beyond booklet and thought that I could do a pseudo-hirondelle scene with a classier twist by using a part of this family tree.

All in all, I'm very happy with the final outcome. I like how one is very intricate and the other is very simple. I love how the paint has a shadow on the back of the paper (that I bought and cut to fit from the scrapbooking section of Michael's...I just suggest something light so the paint shines). What do you think? It's a heck of a lot better than the plain frames, eh? ;)

PS. Isn't my little bar cute? Couldn't have been any easier.

Love,

Olive wreath photo courtesy of pinterest.