Alcohol Ink Jack O'Lantern


The last time I was at Dollar Tree, I saw this metal flower pot and the first thing that popped into my head was "I could totally alcohol ink that." My husband was suspicious, but for a buck, he just shrugged his shoulders and we kept shopping. Of course I didn't need another decorative flower pot, so I had to come at this from a different angle.  With Halloween fast approaching, I decided I'd try to make a candy bowl.


I brought out all of my orange and gold alcohol inks, my craft mat, my ink stamper, and some wide painter's tape.


Using a scissors, I cut out a basic Jack O'Lantern face and stuck it onto my flower pot. Then I loaded up my applicator stamp with all four shades of orange and started stamping.


When I first applied the ink, it went on in big patches, as you can see above. It's more of a water color blotchiness.  I like a more stippled look, so I kept stamping until I covered the whole container and then came back over the ink a second time to make it a little more textured in color.  I had to load up my stamper 3 or 4 times with ink to cover the entire flower pot.  Then I put some ink along the very edge of my applicator to get along the top and bottom lips of the pot.


Then came the moment of truth.  I carefully peeled the tape back to reveal my Jack O'Lantern face.


It came out mostly clean.  It's hard to tell from the glare in this photo, but there were some blotchy spots that I cleaned up with a q-tip dipped in alcohol ink.  I then went back over the edges of the triangles with my applicator inked just along the edge again to make things look all neat and tidy.


When it was dried (just a few minutes), I took it out back and sprayed it with some clear acrylic sealer so that it wouldn't run or drip if anything alcohol based was ever spilled on it.  After a few more minutes of drying, I filled it up with candy and took some pretty shots in this beautiful fall weather we're having before I set it on my kitchen table.


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