Mix acrylic craft paints for the appropriate flesh tones for your subjects. For this Irish family, we mixed Delta Ceramcoat Santa Fe Rose with Ivory.
Pour a little of the mix on a styrofoam plate and use a make up sponge to pat the paint on the reverse side of the faces. This will eliminate brush strokes which are a problem when painting on glass.
Cut the make-up sponge to whatever size and shape works best for you. Do not paint into the hair area.
Apply two coats in this fashion, allowing the first coat to dry before applying the second.
Before applying the flesh tone to the baby’s face, you can add rosy cheeks if desired.
With a very small pieces of sponge, pat some Santa Fe Rose on baby’s cheeks. Allow this to dry thoroughly, and then apply the flesh color.
The same method can be used to highlight the Mom’s hair - adding whatever colors give the hair interest.
The Dad’s and baby’s hair are a little more challenging because of the parts that stick up straight.
Paint their hair the same way and then adjust as shown below.
When the paint is partially dry, push some of it back with the tip of a paintbrush handle.
This will make it look more like hair when viewed from the front side.
Paint finishing details like the baby’s hairbow with a small brush.
Let the craft paint dry completely.
Once the paint is dry, you are ready to display your plate as is, or, if you wish, you can cover the entire back of the plate by applying two coats of your chosen color in the same method as you did the faces.
The procedure is the same as for the family plate above - you just make the face bigger to take center stage.
We shaded Molly’s ears and sides of her face the same way we did the Mom’s hair above, to give a little depth to the color.
We first painted in the black nose from behind, but didn’t care for the way it looked, so we filled in the whole nose with black dimensional fabric paint.
Copy the dog’s face big enough to fill the center section of the plate, and outline with dimensional fabric paint. Let dry.
Shade the inside edge of the ears and the sides of the face with a darker brown than the main paint color. Let dry.
Paint the tongue area pink, and then apply two coats of the fur color, allowing the first coat to dry thoroughly before applying the second.
