How to Frost Glass

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Whether you want to upcycle a Mason jar to look like sea glass or alter a window so that it no longer offers a picture-perfect view directly into your bathtub, frosted glass is a beautiful way to make glass opaque while maintaining translucency. 

 Frosted glass is easy to DIY, and there are a ton of different methods to do it. The easiest method, and the one that I'm going to show you here, is as simple as adding a couple of coats of spray paint to a squeaky clean glass surface. Here are my two vintage Coca-Cola bottles before being frosted. One I've left clear, and the other I've already spray painted a color that turned out to be WAY brighter than I wanted. It would be nice if the flower vases didn't outshine the flowers! 

 This is for sure a project for making sure that your spray painting technique is on point--it's very important to hold the spray paint 10-12" from the object you're painting, and to coat it with light, overlapping sprays. Here's the clear glass bottle after one coat of frosted glass spray paint: 

 You don't have to wait any specific time before you can recoat the object, but it takes about ten minutes for the full frosted glass effect to show up, so don't get too impatient. Here's my bottle after two coats of frosted glass spray paint: 

 As you've gathered, you can use this frosted glass spray paint even on a surface that isn't already clear, but the result won't look like frosted glass. Here's my red bottle after two coats of frosted glass spray paint: 

 I do really like how the frosted glass paint mutes the shine and saturation of this painted surface--it's definitely not a look I'd want for everything, but it's a nice look for a vase for spring flowers.