Glass & Nail Polish

At the end of January I ran a clay lesson with a group of second graders from Apple Valley Elementary. I did this lesson last year, too. I didn't take pictures while I was running the lesson, but the woman running the event said she'd send some and I'll post them once I get them.

the original glass necklace

At the end of the event one of the volunteers asked me about my necklace and then told me how it was made. Like most of my jewelry, the necklace was a gift from my mom. I never thought much about how it was made, I just assumed it was cast glass.

the pendant, front and back

According to the woman, it is just a piece of clear glass with nail polish painted on the back. And, looking more closely at the piece, I can see that she's probably correct.

some of our pendants

Naturally this became the family art project for the weekend. We bought some clear glass "stones" (the kind used for filling vases at weddings) and collected the various nail polishes we had in the house. We set up the project on an old cutting board in the room with the bad carpet and started painting. My daughter and I each painted about five glass pieces before we ran out of energy and color options. (Next time we might need more than just glitter and pink polish.)

cardboard attached to the back shows through the glass front (and some of the polish)

We quickly realized that we could replicate a paperweight's decoration on a small scale by attaching a sticker or a picture facing the glass. The stickers worked particularly well and were pretty simple to attach with a bit of clear polish on the face and more polish over the sticky back.

my daughter's necklace and a sticker pendant

Then we used some memory wire and beads we already had to make a round necklace without a clasp. My daughter's bead choices on the necklace were more adventurous than mine.

my necklace and a painted pendant

I tried to copy the twisting metal bail that attaches the original glass piece to the necklace but I didn't have an appropriate gauge of metal and I kept snapping off the end. I decided to create a looser loop to attach to most of the glass pieces. The loosely looped bail also slides onto the necklace easily.

another painted pendant

I'm not sure I'm going to go into production with these, but it was a fun, easy project for a winter afternoon. And fun and easy is about all I have time for this winter.

three painted pendants and two with attachments: the top one had cardboard behind nail polish, the sunburst is a sticker with pink polish behind