It flows on like nail polish, clear and glossy, smells faintly of fruit (esters?), has water cleanup, and–here’s the important thing–it goes on clear and it dries clear. The little bottles of acrylic craft paint that you get at Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby (such as FolkArt ® or Apple Barrel ® go on opaque, and dry opaque, thus rendering your suncatcher useless.
The only place I’ve found the authentic clear suncatcher paint is in those exorbitantly expensive suncatcher kits, in the teeny-weeny Barbie-doll-sized pots, and since I’m in charge of church crafts for 60 kids for the coming year, I need this paint in at least 2 oz. bottles; I can’t afford to buy even a $1 Dollar Tree suncatcher kit for each kid every time we wanna paint suncatchers.
…if the Dollar Tree happened to have 60 sacred-themed (or at least “general”) suncatcher kits fall off the truck, which they never do. It’s always Shrek, or Disney.
So, what IS that stuff? I need some.
ETA: I’m assuming that it’s acrylic paint because it’s water-soluble, and it’s non-toxic, and it’s (relatively) cheap. I’m not aware of any other kind of paint currently available at the mass-market Dollar Tree that fills all those requirements.
A while back, OK maybe 10 years, you could buy “stained glass” kits at some craft stores as well as repalcement supplies. I had a squeeze bottle of “lead caning” that dried raised up. This allowed you to follow a patern and lay out your design. After it dried, you used the paints to flow in between the raised areas with the colors of your choice.
A quick Google for “stained glass paint” returned this site near the top: Stained Glass Paint
It looks like the stuff I had.
Edited to add that they also have pattern books. Perhaps you could do the “liquid lead” part in advance and the kids could add the colors.
Gallery Glass is the brand name I believe - that’s the brand my husband uses on his various projects anyway. It’s available at Michael’s. And Hobby Lobby might have it too.
Update: Thank you. That was indeed The Right Stuff, “Glass paint”, and it was indeed “Gallery Glass” brand. It goes on opaque but dries to a nice clear stained glass look.
So, thanks to you, this year, 60 kids get to paint suncatchers.
These are $5.95 per dozen, and these are cute, and these are even cheaper. They have a lot more designs that are religious. The paint isn’t too expensive either, and there are tons of different sizes and colors.
The wife and I buy from them occasionally for art and craft projects, and they will certainly send you seems like hundreds of catalogs throughout the year!
Cool, thanks for the links. I’ve got an Oriental Trading catalog upstairs somewhere in the bathroom reading pile, but I didn’t know they sold separate suncatcher paint.
I’ve got an Oriental Trading catalog upstairs somewhere in the bathroom reading pile, but I didn’t know they sold separate suncatcher paint.