$1 Glass, Anime Characters and a TikTok Tutorial: How Carolina Propper Got Into Glass Painting

Carolina Propper's introduction to glass painting cost her $1 and a scroll through TikTok.

She stumbled onto a video showing how it worked, decided it didn't look very hard and bought the glass insert from a picture frame at the dollar store. What followed was a hobby that combines her love of anime with a calming, hands-on creative practice — and produces gifts she can give to family and friends. Propper, an X-Team Wizard who ensures X-Teamers have the best possible experience in the community, shares how she got started, what materials she uses and how the process actually works for someone who has never picked up a paintbrush for this purpose before.

In this story, Propper walks through what drew her to glass painting, the minimal gear needed to start and the step-by-step technique she has developed — with a candid acknowledgment that she is still learning as she goes.

Why Glass, and Why It Works

The appeal of glass painting, Propper says, starts with how low the barrier is. It's an easy hobby to adopt. It doesn't require much equipment. And the finished pieces are functional: decoration items she can display at home or give as gifts.

She has always found coloring — with pencils, watercolors or any other medium — genuinely soothing. Doing it on glass adds something the traditional canvas doesn't: a physical object with a kind of luminosity when held up to the light. "Coloring of any kind has always been really soothing to me," she says, "but now that I do it on glass I get some amazing decoration pieces out of it that I can gift to family and friends."

Her subject matter is mostly anime characters, which she says makes color matching easier. She has also used the medium for personal projects — including a piece made for her boyfriend that used 2 glass panels with "I love you" written on the one in the back, the 2 panels attached with liquid glass to add depth. Those are their characters from GTA V RP, a video game they play together.

The 4 Things You Actually Need

Propper's materials list is intentionally minimal:

• Glass. She uses the glass that comes with picture frames, available for $1 at the dollar store. Plexiglass works too, though it scratches easily and needs careful handling.
• An oil-based marker. She cites Edding and Sharpie as the most recommended options.
• Acrylic colors. A full set isn't necessary — mixing covers a lot of ground. At minimum, she recommends the 4 primary colors plus black and white.
• Brushes. Small ones for detail work, larger ones for broader areas.

Depending on the project, she also keeps on hand a sponge or paper towel, a cup of water for brush cleaning, toothpicks or cocktail sticks, cotton swabs, rubbing alcohol and a precision knife or box cutter for correcting small mistakes.

Ideas can come from anywhere — a Google image search, an anime series, a video game, a landscape, a portrait. Her advice for beginners: don't wait to feel ready. Practice makes the technique. If the first attempt doesn't match what you had in mind, that's expected.

The Technique, Layer by Layer

The process Propper follows is more methodical than it might appear. She describes it in stages.

First, she places her reference image beneath the glass and secures it with masking tape so it doesn't shift while she traces. She then traces the design with her oil-based marker — using the right brush size for both thick and fine lines. Mistakes are easy to correct: a cotton swab with a little rubbing alcohol handles most of them, and a precision knife can scratch off small errors.

After letting the traced lines dry, she starts color matching — mixing the colors she has to get the colors she needs. Then comes the painting itself, which she approaches in layers. Small details and lighter colors go first. Larger areas come after. Each layer must dry before the next is applied. Holding the glass up to the light regularly reveals any spots she has missed. "It is a game of patience, young Padawan! Let your layers dry," she says.

Once everything has dried, some painters finish by covering the back with a dark color to clean up the look from behind. Propper describes this as optional.

She's candid that glass painting isn't categorically different from regular painting — the only real distinction is that the canvas is glass. That, in her view, is also the point: "That's the beauty of art, you can use whatever tools you want or have available to you and let your mind wander and create."

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