DIY Totoro Wineglass Pen Holder

Hey guys! Have you missed me? It’s been about a month since I’ve last posted, but I’m finally back! I hope you guys had a great holiday season and a happy new year! I find it kind of hard writing another blog post after taking such a long break, so please forgive me if this blog post is not up to par with my previous posts. Anyways, let’s jump into the new year with an easy DIY project! We’re going to be making a トトロ(Totoro) pen holder out of a wine glass! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Totoro, he is a character from a popular Japanese animation titled, 「となりのトトロ」(Tonari no Totoro/My Neighbor Totoro).

As you can see from the above photo, we will only need a few items for this project. You can upcycle some old wine glasses from home or find some cheap ones at a thrift shop or Dollar Store. I suggest you use a wine glass with a shorter stem, so that the bowl sits closer to the surface of your desk and will have a lesser chance of tipping over. I would say that the paint primer and gloss can be optional; however, I highly recommend that you use both if you can. I will go into more detail about primer and gloss later on in this post.

STEP 1: Prep Wine Glasses

 This step is optional and you can skip this if you choose. I decided to cover the rim of the wine glass because, personally, I feel that leaving the rim clear makes the wine glass look better. Also, the reason why I stuffed some toilet paper inside the wine glass is because I don’t want the spray on primer to get inside the wine glass, so you can also skip that if you’re not going to be using any type of spray on products or you don’t care.

STEP 2: Priming & Painting

Here, I used a Krylon primer in the color grey. After applying the paint primer onto the glass, you should wait at least one hour for it to dry (or follow the instructions on the back or your can if you aren't using Krylon). Also, do your brain a favor and make sure you coat the object in a well-ventilated area or outside to avoid inhaling the toxic fumes from the spray (or wear a mask).
Tip: If you're using spray on primer like I am (or any type of spray on product), don't hold the can so close to the object you're spraying because the paint primer will come out looking really streaky and it will start to drip (won't have an even coat).

Make sure to coat the wine glasses evenly. I first sprayed the top of the wine glass bowl and the foot and waited for that coat to dry before flipping the wine glasses upside-down to coat the bottom of the wine glass bowl.

 As I had mentioned earlier, you don’t have to use paint primer if you don’t want to, but I highly suggest you use primer on slippery surfaces like glass because it helps improve the adhesion of paint to the glass as mentioned here by Krylon. It also helps to create the ideal surface texture that allows for your paint to go on more smoothly. As you can see from my picture, if you just apply your paint directly to the surface of slippery glass, your paint job may come out looking a bit “streaky,” as opposed to if you had applied primer to help create a smoother paint job.

Before you start painting your wine glass, I think it’s best to sketch out your ideas ahead of time. It really helps to sketch it out because it’s a good way to see how your mental visualization of your design may look when you paint it onto your glass, so I messily sketched out some ideas I had on a piece of scratch paper.

After painting on your base color, if you’re not too good at painting free-handed like I am, I suggest that you lightly sketch out your design onto the wine glass so you can have guidelines to follow as you paint. Leave out the smaller details.

Finish off by sketching on the remaining details and paint them onto the glass. For the smaller details, I like to cheat and use permanent markers. I used a silver Sharpie to draw on the little boomerang/upside-down V shapes on Totoro’s belly, and I used a black Sharpie to draw on his whiskers and his little nose. For the pupils, I dipped the end of my paint brush in black paint and used it like a dotting tool to create the perfect circular pupils.

 STEP 3: Finishing Wine Glasses

Earlier, just like the primer, I had mentioned that the gloss is optional. You can, of course, leave your wine glass as it is, and just start using it after you finish painting it, but gloss really helps to protect the paint. I find that when I leave the wine glass as it is without the gloss, the paint catches dust and gets scratched really easily because the paint makes the surfaces of the glass rougher. The gloss creates a smoother surface that makes the wine glasses much easier to clean and keeps the paint from getting damaged.

Once you are done, you can start using your new pen holder!

These are a couple of other wine glasses that I painted.

You can also do this project with other types of containers, jars, pots, etc. When painting Totoro on the surface of any type of container, I prefer to stick to containers that resemble his original shape, which is big and round. Other things you can do with the wine glasses are that you could go for a more minimalistic look and just place piece of lacey ribbon on the inside of the wine glass as pictured above and call it a day.

There are so many simple ways in which you can decorate your wine glasses to turn them into pen holders. Your options are endless! This goes for any other containers you have lying around your house. You could decorate them and reuse them for something else, which really helps recycle old items around the house. Maybe you guys could pick some items you have at home that you want to repurpose and leave them in the comments below and I'll pick some to think of ways to repurpose them.

Before I go, I'd like to update you guys on a few things regarding the frequency in which I upload to this blog.  I'm going to be starting school next Monday (1/27/14) and I will most likely be posting infrequently, but I've decided to try to post at least once or twice a month or try to post more often but have shorter posts. What do you guys think?

Anyways, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and I’m probably going to be the last one to say this to you, but Happy New Year! :)

Until next time!

Art by Me