Glass Painting Class 3 Dec 2016

Saturday 19^th November marked our first Glass Painting lesson. The small group of students were taught to draw on drinking glasses and jars with black liner paste first, using different methods of transferring their designs before the liner paste was quick-dried using a hairdryer. 

The glasses were painted as soon as the liner paste had dried. A special transparent glass paint was provided for the students. At Outreach, our liner paste and glass paint has been tested with hot water and both will remain permanently on the glass, regardless of how many times the glass objects are washed with water and detergent. No scrubbing with a hard pad or wire, though!

After their first pieces were completed, the students were encouraged to try drawing freehand directly on to their extra glass pieces with the black lining paste and some of the results were rather impressive.

It really was quite as easy as it sounded. Once the students had got a bit of practice in hand, they were confident enough to draw not just freehand but without even having to refer to any sort of picture at all.

Glass-painting classes are suitable for kids aged 10 and above and will be ongoing at Outreach throughout the school holidays.

If you're interested to join us, p;ease don't hesitate to call or email us for a lesson.

Saturday Art & Craft Classes

Just to remind everyone with kids, our regular Art & Craft classes will be on as usual during this year-end school holiday! Here are some of the things we're teaching at -

Tadika Methodist Kids 17 Nov 2016

This Thursday was a busy one for the Society with 30 children from the Tadika Methodist coming over for the Seed Safari.

The cute little children split up into two groups when they arrived. One group followed our President, Dr. Liew Kon Wui for the nature walk, to learn all about how different plants make and send out their seeds to make new plants.

The kids collected plant and seed specimens to use when they returned to our Outreach office where they were given a short talk and given the chance to examine more kinds of seeds.

They were particularly fascinated by local plant like the annatto (the lipstick plant) which looked so much like rambutans, buah lokam which look so much like pink cherries, our local figs (sadly inedible) and some of the other plants and vegetables which grow in the Outreach garden. 

The other group stayed back at first, to learn to make seed collages with different kinds of seeds. The children were all very small, from 4 to 6 years old only, but they were serious about producing the best they could. That didn't stop them from having fun, however, and some very nice collages were produced for them to take home at 11 o'clock.

Glass Painting Classes

Come and learn Glass Painting with us this festive season and make your own beautiful glass lamps, wineglasses and jars! 

Have you ever looked at a Tiffany lamp or a picture of stained glass windows and wondered if you could do it yourself? Well, now you can!

At our Glass Painting class, we teach you how to draw on glass with liner paste and then how to paint on glass with transparent paint. You'll learn how to apply the liner to to make faux stained glass outlines before applying the special paint. We also teach you how to avoid common mistakes and the best way to display your finished piece.

You can bring along a glass item of your own (like a whiskey glass, a highball glass, a glass sugar jar or a glass rice bowl but not bigger than that as the liner takes  some time to dry properly before the paint can be applied to your piece) OR you can purchase a suitable glass item at our Outreach Office where we are holding the class.

Due to space constraints, classes are limited to a maximum of 7 participants only.

The first class will be on Saturday 26 November 2016 from 1.30pm to 3.00pm.

Charges are as follow -

Members – RM15.00 (bring your own glass) / RM20.00 (using our glass)

Non-members - RM18.00 (bring your own glass) / RM24.00 (using our glass)

Note – prices above are applicable for one glass item per person only.

Festive Season Glass Painting!

With the festive season fast approaching, our next project is Glass Painting! While we’re preparing festive gift items for our Garden Shop, we’re also looking into classes for those interested to learn so keep checking back or look for us at Facebook (botanika@gmail.com) for more updates.

There are actually two kinds of glass painting – transparent and opaque. Here’s a little bit about how we do transparent glass painting for those who are thinking of joining us. (Opaque glass painting will be covered in a separate post later.)

First of all, you need a clean glass – bowls, goblets, jars or glasses are all fine. You can use cut glass, too if you like. Wash your glass thoroughly to remove oil and dust. Wipe it clean with a dry cloth and set it aside for at least 10 minutes to make sure it’s thoroughly dry.

Then you can start outlining your design with a special black liner paste. This creates black outlines which give a stained glass effect like those in the picture, when done.

 Leave your outlined glass aside for a day or so to make sure the paste is completely dry when you are done outlining.

Now you can start filling in the outlines with transparent glass paint.

For more about transparent glass painting, our contact details are - 

Our First T-shirt Painting Lesson!

We had two sessions of t-shirt painting today in spite of the drizzle and some of our class members produced some really lovely art on their t-shirts.

Here's the start of a wisteria by our class member. As part of today's lesson, they also learned about mixing paint to get the shades they wanted. When you're working with commercial dyes and paints, blue and green doesn't always get you purple - at least not the shade you'd expect.

Part of the lesson was also about getting the painting medium to the right consistency to achieve a suitable Chinese watercolour effect on t-shirts and the kind of modified brushstrokes to get those particular effects.

Another member wanted to try painting on a dark coloured t-shirt instead. That meant a separate lesson using different media. The dyes we normally use for white or very light coloured t-shirts won't work on dark coloured t-shirts so it was exciting for the others to see what would happen. 

Judging from the chrysanthemum on the right, it was quite successful, don't you think?

A bonus was the dry-brush effect the student created when painting with a very different medium from our usual t-shirt paints.

Join us next week from 1.30pm to 3.00pm for another exciting and interesting session of t-shirt painting!

Paint Bags and T-shirts!

Learn how to paint on cotton Bags & T-shirts with waterproof silkscreen printing dyes on Saturday 22 October 2016! Your t-shirts and bags can be washed and re-washed many times without fear of the colours being washed out. 

Join us at our Outreach Office and learn to make some beautiful festive gifts that you'll be proud to give to your loved ones and which they'll love wearing or using. And just in time for the coming festive seasons, too!

Day/Time : Saturday 1.00pm to 2.30pm

Maximum No. of Participants : Maximum 6 persons

Price per person : RM15.00 (Members) / RM20.00 (Non-Members)

The following Terms and Conditions apply -

1. Participants must bring one WHITE or light-coloured T-shirt of their own.

2. Participants who wish to paint bags instead may bring their own white or light-coloured bag.

Note : Bags should be made of cotton or cotton-canvas.

3. Participants who wish to purchase our bags or T-shirts may do so at the following prices -

    White T-shirt : RM15.00 (Members) / RM18.00 (Non-members)

    Large Bag : RM15.00 (Members) / RM18.00 (Non-members)

    Small Bag : RM12.00 (Members) / RM15.00 (Non-members)

We'll provide the brushes and dyes for every lesson where you'll learn one-stroke painting to paint directly with the printing dyes. In four lessons we'll teach you all the basics for painting four different flowers and leaves.

And...if you're not confident about doing that by yourself, we'll provide a simple template with every lesson and teach you how to transfer the black and white drawing to your own T-shirts!

Lesson 1 : Madagascar Periwinkle

Lesson 2 : Japanese Rose

Lesson 3 : Helliconia

Lesson 4 : Blue Pea Flower (Bunga Telang)