By: Holli Long – See more of Holli’s crafts on her blog, Every Day’s a Holli Day.
When Plaid asked me to rescue a Gallery Glass project that had been stored incorrectly and damaged, I said, “Sure, send it to me and I’ll see what I can do”. When I received it in the mail, I realized that it had been further damaged by the packing material in shipping.
Gallery Glass is one of those products that will stay beautiful, it seems, forever! But it must be stored correctly, wrapped softly in a shiny Mylar-type material and kept away from other Gallery Glass. As you can see in the picture above, this poor sun catcher was stored a little too closely to a project that was decorated with cherries and the two projects became one.
The simple way to fix a slight blemish to a Gallery Glass project is to just cut the damaged area away from the Liquid Leading and refill with paint. This project, however, needed more than just a simple fix, but I decided it would be a great way to show just how easy it is.
Here, I’m using the Gallery Glass Tool Kit cutting tool to carefully cut the window color away from the lead lines used on the project.
It’s very easy, then, to pull the window color from the project surface. Be it plastic, like this project, or glass, if you did a window or vase, for example, the dry color peels away very easily after being released from its bond with the Liquid Lead.
This is what you end up with. It’s good to be very careful not to cut away too much Liquid Lead when you’re cutting away the color but it happens sometimes, and you can always go back in with your leading, if you want, and thicken up the lines. I like to add my colors first, and then, if necessary, I add more of the black lead lines.
Then you just repaint. I wasn’t sure which colors the original designer used to make this project, so I used Ruby Red and the new Autumn color as a contrast.
I added an extra layer of the Crystal Clear window color to the open spaces in the design here. I used the “infinity” method, which is the way I add Crystal Clear to make it look like bubbly glass when it dries. I just paint a figure 8 on its side, over and over again until I fill in those blank areas in a design. A special thank you to Multiplication Rock for teaching me that a figure 8 on its side is the symbol for infinity!
I needed to add the missing Liquid Lead lines here, so, to save myself time, I added them after applying the color.
And, when I finished and was ready to ship this baby back to Georgia, to my friends at Plaid, I used a Stencil Decor stencil blank to wrap it carefully for shipping.
Gallery Glass is a beautiful way to decorate for holidays or seasons. It can be easily stored with your seasonal decorations, if it is packed away with a little extra care. No bubble wrap or tissue paper should touch a dry Gallery Glass project. And, by all means, don’t store them where they can touch. With just a little care, a beautiful project made with Gallery Glass can last you for years to come.
