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Showing posts from November, 2016

Milk Jug Christmas Ornaments

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So I was browsing the internet looking for some inspiration and came across a couple of projects using milk jug plastic and sharpies . I knew that if sharpies worked, so would alcohol ink . And thus continues my lifelong quest to ink everything that can be inked . So I grabbed a gallon milk jug out of the recycling bin and a scissors and box cutter. You'll need to use a box cutter or craft knife to cut the top off of the jug. After the top has been removed, you can cut the rest of the jug with a scissors. I cut out all the parts that would lay flat. I wasn't left with much. I'm sure there are other types of jugs that would give you more plastic to work with, but I used what I had in the trash. Next, I printed out a star template with 2 and 3-inch stars. Then I used a fine point sharpie and just laid the plastic on top of it to trace. It doesn't need to be perfect. Your scissors will cut a fairly straight line since the material is thick, so yo

Silhouette Cut-Outs and Mod Podge Sign

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Last week I made a cut-out on my new Silhouette cutting machine to try it out. It turned out so well that I thought I'd make a little Thanksgiving sign with it. I had originally planned to use a pine board and a brown paint wash or some stain, but when I looked in my stash of supplies, I was all out of boards. I hunted around looking for something to glue the cut-outs to, and my next best idea was stretched canvas. I bought a pack of 6 of them for like $10 at a Michael's sale and hadn't done anything with them for a couple years, so it seemed like a perfect fit. As I was digging through my supplies, I looked at my craft paints. Because my original cut-out was made on an orange leaf-type paper, I was looking for some dark chocolate brown paint. I didn't have any. Before I went into my art paints, though, I saw a pretty dark purple. I held the bottle of paint up to the paper I used, and I thought it looked good in the basement lighting. I brought the paint,

Getting Started with a Silhouette Cameo

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Let's start this post off with a bit of a disclaimer. I am a total Silhouette newbie. I've wanted a digital cutting machine for a while. But I'm cheap, so I never caved and bought one until about a month ago when the Silhouette Cameo popped up as an Amazon daily deal. That coupled with enough money in credit card rewards to get it means I totally caved. If you've never seen one of these things, there are several brands, but the big two are Silhouette and Cricut. They allow you to buy or create digital designs and then cut them out on a variety of media (paper, cardstock, thin cardboard, vinyl, thin plastic, etc...). So in this post, I'm going to write about my experience setting up and cutting my first design. So I got my machine in just a couple of days (thanks, Amazon prime ), but I wasn't able to even open it up for about a week. The fall is a very busy time in our house. So when I did finally get it open, I followed the instructions to remove th

Foil Tape Backed Alcohol Ink Glass Gems

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My most popular blog post is a project where I stamp these large 1-inch flat glass gems with alcohol ink. It was so popular that I made a second post on it after I got some new alcohol ink colors. I then tried a couple of methods to make the gems more opaque and get the colors to pop. I tried aluminum foil and spray painting the backs white . I even did a round-up post because I had done so many projects with glass gems that it seemed like a good idea to keep them all in one place. But then a reader made a comment to one of the posts about using foil tape on the back, and I thought that was such a great idea that I just had to try it out. Since the last time I made gems, I also acquired some of the Pinata alcohol inks to go along with my Ranger inks , so I was excited to try them out on the glass. I grabbed my craft mat  (parchment would work too), some inks, my applicator, some felt squares, and some clear glass gems. The last time I made a Dollar Tree run, they didn&#