Alcohol Ink Glass Plate Backed with White Spray Paint

I'm working my way through an old box of stuff I bought from the dollar store, and I found this plain glass plate. I think I bought it at the same time as when I used flamed ink to decorate a plate almost 2 years ago, so it was definitely time for me to use it for some kind of project.

I decided it I would ink it, but this time, I would use only Pinata inks (and I would spray paint it). The Pinata brand inks are a bit more saturated in color than most alcohol inks, so I figured they would work well on glass. Transparent surfaces, like clear glass plates, can sometimes be hard to achieve vibrant inking results. The colors can sometimes appear so translucent that they don't even show up. So I got out all my Pinata ink colors, a craft mat, some rubbing alcohol, a pipette, and a can of air.

I started out with some magenta and blue. I dripped a few drops around the plate and then used the canned air to spread them out. The Pinata inks don't spread much without being thinned. Since I wanted the colors to stay really bright, I didn't thin them down with rubbing alcohol or extender.

I added the teal and blue violet colors and repeated the process.

I continued around the plate with additional colors until the plate was nearly full of ink. I used a pipette to thin out some areas where the ink got a bit too dark and used the canned air to spread that ink around. 

I ended up with a vibrant multicolored plate. I was really happy with how bright these inks turned out.

Since there was quite a bit of ink on the plate, I let it dry overnight before sealing it with some Kamar Varnish. If you want to set it on a shelf, then you can stop here. Kamar Varnish sets the ink, but isn't really a long term sealant unless the item will be away from liquids and handling.

I had had some luck with spray painting ink with white spray paint to provide a bright contrast for the ink. So, I thought I'd give that a go with the plate. We had a few days of warmer weather, so I brought a box out onto the deck and put some plastic wrap on the front side of the plate. Though, in hindsight, I should have trimmed it to the edge more carefully (it kept flipping up into the paint).

I shook my can of spray paint and then applied a thin coat. Apparently, the nozzle was clogged. It sprayed a bunch of paint globs onto the back of my plate. I wiped away the big globs with my fingertips and left it to dry. After it dried, I sprayed another coat on the plate to try to even out the surface and get a solid white background. I let that dry overnight and then took a piece of sandpaper after the roughest parts. Unfortunately, while doing so, I also scraped some of the alcohol ink off the inner rim of the plate. So I used a tiny paint brush to try to reapply the ink to the places that were scraped. I was so focused on fixing the darn thing, that I forgot to take pictures of the fixes.

After the ink touch ups dried, I sprayed those areas with a little more Kamar to make sure they wouldn't react with the spray paint, and then added another coat of white paint over the back. As you can see from the photo above, the areas where I touched up the ink bled through the next layer of paint, and I didn't quite get a sold white background on the plate. Unfortunately, it was still tacky when the wind shifted and the weather is supposed to stay below freezing for the next week or so....so I had to call it for now. I hope to add another coat or two of white spray paint to the back of the plate with long dry times in between.

Even without the white paint being completely finished, the plate turned out bright and beautiful. Once the spray paint is cured, the plate should be able to be used for dry items (since all the ink and paint is on the back of the plate) and hand washed gently. It would also be lovely on a shelf.