Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

After sharing the  washer jewelry projects  collection last week, I had an idea I had to try. I've inked on spray paint a few times before, but I've never started washer necklaces on spray paint. I figured it would make the ink pop and provide a contrast if I let it peek through the ink. Since this was a bit of an experiment, I went through my stash of washers and picked out some dinged ones, and then I used a piece of sandpaper to scuff them up to get the spray paint to stick better. I used an all-purpose spray paint and gave them a couple of quick coats and let it dry overnight. The next day, I put down a silicone craft mat and grabbed my inks. I also got out my rubbing alcohol, a couple of paintbrushes, and a hand bulb blower . Since this was a new way to ink washers, I started inking without taking pictures. I covered the whole washer in purple ink and then came back with more ink and rubbing alcohol to get the ink to move around and create patterns. Unfortunately, the...

Over the years I've spray painted many tins to keep them out of the recycling bin. This past week, the weather here was amazing (for early March), so I decided to spray paint another tin that was destined for the trash heap. I had just finished a tin of Harney and Sons tea and decided to spray it in shades of teal. I grabbed a cardboard box and went out onto the deck to with my spray paint. I sprayed the first coats with the tin open. Spraying most of the tin in the middle shade of teal and then coming back with the lighter and darker shades at the top and bottom. I allowed each side to dry and then rotated the tin and sprayed another coat. With dry times and tin rotation, this first coat took an entire afternoon. I let the whole thing dry overnight and then went over the first coat with a piece of sandpaper to knock down any bumps from the first application (if the spray paint is new--you probably won't have anything to sand off, but my spray paint is old and sometimes ...

I'm working my way through an old box of stuff I bought from the dollar store, and I found this plain glass plate. I think I bought it at the same time as when I used flamed ink to decorate a plate almost 2 years ago, so it was definitely time for me to use it for some kind of project. I decided it I would ink it, but this time, I would use only Pinata inks (and I would spray paint it). The Pinata brand inks are a bit more saturated in color than most alcohol inks, so I figured they would work well on glass. Transparent surfaces, like clear glass plates, can sometimes be hard to achieve vibrant inking results. The colors can sometimes appear so translucent that they don't even show up. So I got out all my Pinata ink colors, a craft mat , some rubbing alcohol , a pipette , and a can of air . I started out with some magenta and blue. I dripped a few drops around the plate and then used the canned air to spread them out. The Pinata inks don't spread much without being thinn...

The interior handle on our patio door broke last week. We found an almost exact match to the old handle online, but when it arrived, the exterior handle was quite a bit different from the old one on our door. However, the old one looked like this (photo above), so my husband put the new handle on the door and took the old one off. I put the broken handle straight in the trash, but after I saw how the new exterior handle fit the door, I saved the old one. In addition to the handle leaving a hole that would need to be patched from torrential rains and freezing temps, it also sat a quarter of an inch off the door. It was hard to get a picture of this, but the new handle had posts that didn't fit into the existing holes, so without drilling larger holes (which may not solve the problem) or cutting off the posts (which would solve the problem, but would be a pain), we'd have a gap and a hole. And even if we did get it sitting on the door properly, there's still a hole above the...

After a having some trouble with last week's tin , this project was super simple. I had an empty Harney and Sons tea tin , so I decided to give it some color! The original printed label on this tin was pretty light, so spray painting it white was a breeze. I gave it one good coat on all sides and let it dry. I got out a craft mat and a roll of plastic wrap. I laid out the plastic wrap flat while keeping some wrinkles and covered it in drops of alcohol ink. Once the plastic wrap was covered in ink, I placed my tin on the plastic wrap and wrapped it around the tin. After the tin was covered in the plastic wrap and ink, I left it to dry. It usually takes 12-24 hours to dry enough to peel the plastic wrap off without the ink smearing. You can leave the plastic wrap to dry indefinitely if the surface you are inking is slightly porous (like paint). I ended up letting this one "dry" for almost a week before I pulled the plastic wrap off. But You can see the colors are darker an...