Marabu Painter Pens on Fused Glass

I got a request for a clear spoon rest with red accents. I couldn’t just fuse red glass to it. Glass fusers know that any two pieces of glass that are fused together need to be compatible. My first thought was to glue some small red glass pieces to the bottle. But because of the shape of the spoon rest, there were very few flat areas to which I could glue something. Paints seemed to be the best way to go.

I have experimented with paints before. You can read about it here . For me, the paints that come in the squeeze type bottles were hard to work with. Just as I was mulling this over I got an advertisement from Slumpy’s. They were having a great sale and one of the items on sale was Marabu Painter Pens. I had not heard of them before and decided to give it a try. I ordered 6 different colors. A few of the pens that I received had some problems. On one the tip was off. On another the tip wouldn’t prime with the paint. I sent them back and Slumpy’s quickly replaced them.

With pens in hand I stared at my blank glass canvas. I seemed to have the glass artist’s equivalent of writer’s block. I couldn’t think of what design to draw on the spoon rest. An additional challenge was that these pens are used after the piece is slumped. That means painting on a surface that isn’t flat. For days I tried to come up with something that would look good. I tried swirls and squiggles, lines and dots, and in the end, I decided to keep it simple. My favorite is the dots; the customer’s favorite was the Bon Appetit one.

So now for the bad news…

The directions say the paint is, “dishwasher-safe at a maximum 122°F after 3 days.” However, the recommended temperature for dishwashers is between 120°F and 150°F. So I would hand wash only.

There are also conflicting directions. The directions online say – the drying time of 3 days can be reduced to 30 minutes at 100°C (212°F) in the oven. But the paint pens themselves say a temperature of 170°C (328°F) for 30 minutes in an ordinary oven. Putting a slumped wine bottle in a cold oven and heating to 328°F will result in a cracked bottle. I, of course, suspected this but to be sure I had to prove it! From now on I will heat slowly to 212°F in the kiln.

You can find the pens here: http://www.slumpys.com/Search?keyword=marabu