When thinking about how to celebrate my birthday this year, and knowing I couldn’t top last year’s 25th birthday party at Chickfila, I thought I’d go down the crafty route.  Birthdays at Michael’s were $50 a head (wtf?!), so I checked out Wine n Design’s December calendar and found the perfect option: painting a set of 4 wine glasses.

A group of 10 of my Cofc friends got our glasses (either stemmed or stemless), opened our bottles of wine to drink, ate some Chickfila nuggets and cheese, looked at some Pintrest ideas and got painting!  The Wine and Design employees were there to brainstorm ideas and help us with execution as needed.

Half of us liked this “confetti / dots” idea.  Use 1 or multiple colors of paint and make several dots toward the bottom of the glass.  As you get higher, gradually spread them out until they “disappear.”

I did my dots much smaller than everyone else and it also took me much longer (I only finished 2 glasses that night, and ended up redoing 1).  Luckily I found the paint I was using at Michael’s and was able to finish the glasses at home.

Tips for painting wine glasses:

• Use enamel paint, not acrylic
• Don’t paint the bottom or lip of the glass (or else it will crack when it’s baked)
• Let the paint sit for 4 days, then bake the glasses at 325 for 30 minutes.  This helps seal the paint in.
• If you mess up, just use some rubbing alcohol to wipe the glass clean and start over!
• Glasses can be washed in the dishwasher
• Come up with an idea of what you want to paint before hand or else you’ll spend lots of time on Pintrest..

It was a fun and different way to celebrate my birthday and now we’ll appreciate the beautiful glasses when we drink out of them!  Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and treats this past week!!