Instructions. Procure a fine, clear, French plate glass, size required, to receive the picture, and make it perfectly clean with alcohol. Select the picture you may desire from the list of fine steel engravings contained in magazines, etc. Go over the face with a damp sponge, in order to remove the dust or spots that may have accumulated upon it, and smoothing it out. Apply to the face of the print, with a brush, a paste made from amylum, a teaspoonful, and nitrate strontium, ⅛ ounce—sometimes albumen is used. Now go over the glass in the same way, evenly and smoothly. When this is done, lay the picture, face down, upon the glass, and press with dry cloth until every part of the picture has adhered to the glass, and all the air bubbles pressed out. Lay away the glass for a few hours, until perfectly dry, when you wet the paper and commence rubbing it off; if it works well without any further wetting, continue the process until every vestige of paper has been removed, and nothing left upon the glass but the outlines of your engraving. Oil it now with castor oil three parts, oil of lavender one: if too thick, add turpentine. It is now complete, and by holding it to the light it will present a beautiful, steel-like engraving transparency.
You can add a border if you like, by pasting around the margin a tinted paper; or to give them still a better finish, back them up with a pane of ornamental ground glass, and place in a transparency metal frame, with rings to hang them by, which can be found at any art store.
THE
Crystal, or Oriental Painting.
INSTRUCTION.
Lay the glass over the pattern or copy you wish to paint from, such as flowers, birds, wreaths, etc., then with a fine pencil brush, or a common writing pen, trace all the outlines of your pattern as well as possible on the glass, using for that purpose black paint made from lampblack and copal varnish; if too thick, add a little turpentine. When this is done, paint all the glass outside the picture, or that part not occupied by your drawing, with the black paint, same as used in making the outlines, only a trifle thicker. This will give your picture a neat background; other colors can be used, but this gives the best body, and is the most appropriate, contrasting well with the other colors to be used in the picture.
Let it lay until well dried, so the black will not unite with the colors you are about to use. Now, with the glass still remaining over the copy, you may commence applying the paints, if the tracing lines are dry. If you are painting a red rose, use carmine and flake white, Prussian blue, and chrome yellow for the leaf, etc., using a small camel-hair brush. Continue in this way until you have used all the colors which appear in your copy or picture underneath, which remains there to guide you, and the pen lines upon the glass to separate the colors. When the first color is perfectly dry, apply the second, and so on until you have completed all the work which the copy demands, using your own judgment in the matter, applying them as they appear in the picture you are working from.