Hand Painted Wine Glasses and Appetizer Plates

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Hello Houseologie friends! I’m Carrie from Kenarry: Ideas for the Home where we share recipes, crafts, DIY projects and kid activities to help you make your house into a home you love. Today I’m sharing one of my favorite craft projects — how to create your own hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates.

Hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates are easy to make and fun for entertaining at parties or to give as gifts to friends or loved ones. You can buy hand painted stemware and plates on Etsy for upwards of $20 each, but when you DIY you end up with a high quality gift at a relatively low cost. I actually created the set I’m sharing today for a fundraising auction to support women and children in my community. Because I already had the gloss enamel paints, it only cost me about $10 plus a few hours of my time to make the entire set.

How to Make Hand Painted Wine Glasses and Appetizer Plates

Creating hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates is so much fun and surprisingly easy to do. I first learned how to do it when friends surprised me with a craft party for my birthday last year. As with any craft, the hardest part is figuring out what your design should be. I wanted this set of hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates to be fun and whimsical in a relatively neutral color scheme to make them appealing to a wide audience, so they’d raise more money at our event. Although you can put absolutely anything you want on hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates, I’ve included free printable templates if you want yours to look just like the set I made.

What You Need

Wine glasses
Clear appetizer plates
Red, black and silver gloss enamel craft paints
Paint palette or small containers (Tip: an old egg carton would work great as a paint palette.)
Small paint brushes
Painter’s tape
Scissors
Access to a computer and printer
Oven, optional

Instructions

1. Create and print the design for your wine glasses and appetizer plates. If you want your wine glasses to say “cheers”, “fill ‘er up”, “sit & relax” and “feeling wine-y” like you see in the photos, you can download the Free Printable Template (284 KB PDF) and save to your computer for your own personal use only. You can also use a free online graphic program like PicMonkey to create your own words and designs for your hand painted wine glasses. Once you’ve printed your design, cut the templates apart with scissors. You can see that the forward, readable text templates are for the wine glasses and the templates with the backwards text are for the appetizer plates.

2. Affix the design to the wine glasses and appetizer plates. Use painter’s tape to hold your design in place on the inside of the wine glass. You’re going to be painting on the outside of the wine glass, essentially tracing your design with paint.

To make the appetizer plates food safe, you’re going to actually be painting on the bottom of the plate rather than the top. To make your text appear correctly once you’re done, you use painter’s tape to attach the backwards text template to the top of the appetizer plates.

Then when you flip the plate upside down, you’ll see the backwards design through the glass so you can trace it with paint in the next step.

3. Trace your design with paint. To make burgundy paint for the text on these hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates, I poured red gloss enamel paint into a small container and then added a few drops of black gloss enamel paint and mixed until I got the shade of burgundy I was going for.

Using a small paint brush, carefully trace over your design on the bottom of the appetizer plates. The design is taped to the front so you’re not directly painting on the paper.

Do the same thing to paint on the outside of the wine glasses. You may need to allow your text to dry and then repeat with another layer or two of gloss enamel paint to get the coverage you want.

4. Paint other embellishments. Use the silver gloss enamel paint to embellish your hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates. I just did a swirly line by sight, but you can make any pattern you’d like.

You can also paint the stem of the wine glasses if you want. On the wine glasses be careful not to get the paint too close to the rim of the glass. You don’t want your mouth to come into contact with the paint when you’re enjoying wine in these glasses later.

5. Allow your hand painted wine glasses to dry. You may need to use a few coats of paint to get the desired coverage you want on the wine glasses and plates. Be sure to allow enough time for your hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates to dry between coats. You can also use a blow dryer to speed up the drying process.

6. Cure the paint on the hand painted wine glasses. The final step in the process is to cure or harden the paint on the hand painted wine glasses. There are two methods for doing this:

Method 1: Air Dry. Let the hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates air dry for 21 days.
Method 2: Bake in the Oven. Put the hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates on a cookie sheet and place on a low rack in the oven. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates for 30 minutes. Turn the oven off and allow the hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates to cool naturally with the oven before removing them. IMPORTANT: YOU MUST PUT THE HAND PAINTED WINE GLASSES AND APPETIZER PLATES IN THE OVEN BEFORE YOU TURN IT ON TO PREVENT THE GLASSES FROM BREAKING.

Once the paint has cured on the hand painted wine glasses, they are top-rack dishwasher safe.

You can now enjoy your new hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates! You can also put them in a basket as a gift for a friend or raffle off at a fundraiser like I did. Suggestions for a gift basket include colorful napkins, a scented candle, gourmet chocolates, a bottle of wine and other delicious goodies.

Thank you so much for allowing us to share this DIY tutorial with you for hand painted wine glasses and appetizer plates. Whether you’re cooking, crafting or creating for your family, we’d love for you to come see us on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram to get more inspiring ideas for your home. You may especially enjoy these popular posts from our blog, Kenarry: Ideas for the Home:

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