Hi everyone! I want to offer you a tutorial on decorating a glass plate in the technique of a reverse decoupage. I won’t open up something new, but perhaps my experience would help someone to avoid mistakes which a came across

So, you need:

- transparent glass plate;

- doily;

- spirit or vodka for degreasing;

- dot contour for glass;

- acrylic paints;

- slow retarder;

- paper napkins;

- acrylic lacquer;

- 2 step crackle (I used 1 step Maimeri crackle 753 + gum-arabic);

- imitation gold leaf;

- crackle powder coating;

- wooden paste coating.

Wash and degrease the plate. Apply the doily to the back of the plate and fix it with a double sided scotch.

Take the dot contour for glass (I used Majestic Gold acrylic contour paste) and draw the outlines you need on the right side.

Put the doily aside and see what has come out.

Mix red and black paints on the palette and add slow retarder. Crumple a paper napkin.

Take a sponge and apply the paint to the edges of the plate.

At the same time, take the crumpled napkin and pop it against the plate pressing hard.

See what you have from the right side.

You see that I overstepped the contour. It’s ok! Take a magic stick, or a toothpick, and easily scrape all extra paint.

Cover the plate spraying acrylic lacquer.

After drying, start covering the surface with crackle. My favourite 2 step crackle always turn out well, this is a crackle with gum-arabic. This time I used Maimeri 753 for step 1. Apply it and wait for about 30 minutes. The white colour of the liquid becomes transparent.

Then pour out some gum-arabic and properly rub it with your palm against the surface until your hand stops to slide. I prefer powdered gum-arabic (economical variant) which I mix with water up to the necessary consistency. Here’s a regularity: the thicker the solution of gum-arabic is, the grosser the crackles are. I wanted to have crackles of a medium size and dissolved the powder 1:1 (1 tablespoon of powder + 1 tablespoon of water). Extra solution should be kept in the fridge.

Crackles may appear right before your eyes giving funny noise

Cracks appear directly into the eyes, making funny sounds as if something clicks

When the crackles take the size you need, rub them with Purpurina powder.

Powder stitches well to the first layer (step 1), and gum-arabic can be easily washed away. Do it under a spurt of water with your hand. Gum-arabic should be removed totally, otherwise it would coagulate when covered with water-based lacquer. When you remove this jelly, leave the plate in a clean room, without dust, until it gets dry.

After that, cover the plate with lacquer.

Print a picture you like on a piece of rice paper.

I have got a laser printer and don’t need extra processing. So, glue the paper and plate with PVA abundantly and carefully remove all bubbles with your fingers trying to save glue under the paper. When doing so, paper stitches to the surface well and has no shining spots.

That’s what you have.

Dry all properly and cover the paper with acrylic paint first, and then with white paint to make the drawing brighter.

Start gold leafing. For that, use imitation gold leaves. To stick the leaves, special mordant glue is used. Unfortunately, mine was over, and I successfully applied step 1 Meimari 753.

Wait for a minute until the formulation is transparent. Cover it with imitation gold leaves and smooth them with a brush. Keep all extra pieces of «gold», put them in a jar, you may need them in future.

I applied glue with a brush, and this was my mistake. When I cover anything with crackle, I usually smooth all with my wet finger to remove the traces; here I was lazy because an idea came to my mind that imitation gold leaves can do without it. But they couldn’t! These traces showed up!

And the lines got visible even from the right side

Perhaps, the lines produce some interesting effect, but I wanted something different! And my nature is so that I can’t calm down until I get what I want. So I took another plate and repeated all the steps I;ve done before. I smoothed the stripes with my fingers and applied the leaves.

And here’s the result

But that’s not all! One should decorate the back side. For that, take the acrylic covering and apply it to the plate, painting elaborate patterns with your fingers.

Dry, rub a little bit and cover with acrylic paint.

Slightly apply golden paint with a dry brush.

And cover with lacquer.

And varnish.

Enjoy the result

Thank you for attention! Good luck and inspiration!