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Showing posts from November, 2018

Game Night Stamped Alcohol Ink and Vinyl Decal Coasters

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A couple of weeks ago, I tested how different alcohol ink blenders/extenders worked in comparison to 91% rubbing alcohol. I started with a simple splatter tile test. I decided the next thing I should test would be how they behave when stamping the ink. So I set up 3 4-inch ceramic tiles to test. The first one used 91% rubbing alcohol , the second used Ranger (Tim Holtz) brand Blending Solution , and the third used Pinata (by Jacquard) Extender . The dark dot of ink on each tile is a control (what the ink looks like without any thinner). Then I tested a single dot of ink with the thinners and stamped them until the ink started to run out/dry up. As you can see--the Pinata Extender allowed for the most stamps, with the rubbing alcohol coming in second, and the Ranger Blending solution coming in third. All three thinners thinned the ink. The rubbing alcohol and the Blending solution created some white overly thinned areas, and the Extender seemed to blend with the ink the bes

Decoupaged Thanksgiving Plaque

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This project started out as a fail, but I managed to save it in the end. I had bought a wooden plaque from Walmart to try out a printable iron on product for wood. It sounded like a really cool idea, but I didn't get it to work on my first try--so a post about that will have to wait until I figure the stuff out. The first thing I did was measure my wooden plaque. The surface measured about 6 1/4 inches in diameter. I found an image of a fall wreath (a free printable of a watercolor wreath) from the website Place of My Taste  that I used to create my design. I inserted the image into Word and adjusted the color so the background was white. Then I found a font that looked like a brush script and put the words "Give Thanks" in the middle. I adjusted the size of the whole thing to be about 6 1/4 inches so that it would be the right size when I printed it out. For the iron on version, I mirrored the text, but since that failed, I returned the text back to n

Alcohol Ink Splatter Tiles: Testing Rubbing Alcohol, Blending Solution, and Extender

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I'm pretty thrifty, so even though I've been pretty obsessed with alcohol inks for the last few years, I've been too cheap to buy the blenders and extenders that the ink companies sell. I use rubbing alcohol to thin my ink and clean up after my projects. It's worked well, but I've always wondered if the specially created thinners would work better. So I broke down and bought Ranger's Blending Solution and Pinata's Extender to compare with my usual 91% rubbing alcohol (70% works pretty similarly if that's all you have at home. I tried that out in another post .). So I laid out three ceramic tiles (all bought at the same time from the local hardware store) and decided to compare how each of these thinners worked. I used Pinata's Baja Blue and Ranger's Sailboat Blue as a basis of comparison. The Pinata ink is in the lower portion of the tile (and has dried) while the Ranger ink is in the upper portion of the tile and has just had th

Thanksgiving Candles

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I'm addicted to Dollar Tree Altar Candles. They are those plain white jar candles that you can pick up in a variety of places, but at Dollar Tree, they are only a dollar (duh :)). So I've decorated them in just about every way I can think of ( click here to see my other altar candle projects ); however, I didn't have a set of candles for Thanksgiving. I needed some to replace my Halloween candles  since I was putting away all the jack-o-lanterns in favor of the generic fall and Thanksgiving stuff. I found some cute napkins at Dollar Tree when I bought my last batch of candles. They had pumpkins at the bottom and a bunch of fall/Thanksgiving words printed above. I thought the long napkins would be just the right size for the altar candles (and they were). So I grabbed two candles, the napkins, a jar of mod podge , a foam paint brush, and a paper plate. I opened up the napkins and noticed that the second layer was loose, so I peeled the napkin apart. Someti

Quick Craft: Electric Toothbrush Monograms

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I've been using vinyl cut on my Silhouette for the last few projects on the blog, this one is just a quick little bonus. Hubby and I got some electric toothbrushes--but the same toothbrush. They do come with a little tiny colored ring to tell them apart, but I thought I could do better. So I opened up the Silhouette Studio and typed in our initials and adjusted them for size and shape until I liked what I saw. I figured that if I was cutting out initials, I might as well fill the whole few inches of vinyl straight across the 12 inch width, so I threw a couple other designs on there that would be appropriate in blue (I'm sure they'll come up in some post later on) and cut it all out. Cutting on vinyl is pretty easy once you have it set up. I used the recommended settings from the program and let it go. Once my designs were cut out, I cut the strip of vinyl off the roll. There wasn't too much room on the toothbrush handles, so I kept it simple w