Good Idea Friday - Glue and Food Coloring to Make Colored Beach Glass

A fan sent me this and was wondering just how do-able it was. I've seen this around pinterest like many of you I'm sure, but I was pretty skeptical about how well it would work. 

I did a sneak peak awhile back on our facebook page and needless to say, since this is a Good Idea Friday post, it worked! 

I had a small glass candlestick holder I picked up at the dollar store to test this out on. Mixing just your basic kids glue with a drop or two of food coloring (a little bit goes a LONG way! I wanted a more softer realistic color to the glass, so less was more) and I painted it on.

Looking at it, I was still really skeptical. It looked streaked, thicker in some places, and blotchy. 

But checking back on it once it dried.. yep. turned out perfectly! 

Now a few things, this is just basic glue. Water, grease, dirt, even your nails, will damage the coating. In fact you can just peel the glue off or wash it in warm soapy water to get the glue/dye mixture off. But if you're looking for a temporary way of dressing up a table or mantle this would be fine. As far as the source, it looks like it belongs to a private G+ account that had this image shared publicly, so I won't link to that. 

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Homemade Sea or Beach Glass

"Make your own sea glass. All you need is glass in jar with sand and shake. LOVE sea glass."

Ah yes, if only it was that easy. Unfortunately it's not, and I've found a couple of blogs where people have attempted to do this who said it didn't work. Why? Well, first off just sand itself won't even work, you need to add water to it, something this pin doesn't mention. Not only that, the time it would take to do this in a professional tumbler is at least 24 hours. Can you imagine sitting around your house all day long shaking a jar of sand and water to create beach glass? 

There are ways you can make it at home if you love sea glass but don't live near a beach (or don't want to spend hours trying to find it on the beach as it is) but it calls for a rock tumbler. Simply load your tumbler with tumbling grit, water, and broken glass and let it tumble for 24-72 hours. Something you just couldn't do yourself with a jar. I mean, maybe you could reinvent this to be a daily workout, sort of a "Crafters Shake Weight," and shake the jar for an hour each day, and maybe in a month you might have beach glass, but you're best bet if you really want to DIY it is to invest in a tumbler.