Alcohol Ink and Vinyl Decal Ornaments


A while back I got some plastic ornaments on clearance after Christmas...I just picked up a couple, so they didn't match any of the other ones that I had. These two odd ball sizes never got picked in my crafting, so I decided it was time to finally do something with them.


I used my Silhouette to cut out a bunch of snowflake shapes in vinyl. For most of these designs, I just found some free clip art online and traced it with the Silhouette program, but there are tons of snowflake designs available to buy and download, so pick whatever you like. I knew I was making the designs to be just a couple of inches, so they couldn't be too complicated.


After I cut out my snowflakes with the machine, I used a scissors to cut each flake out in a square. Then I peeled off the vinyl outside of the design and used a craft knife to help me weed the tiny bits out of the design.


After it was weeded, I used some painters tape and a dish scraper to make sure the design stuck to the tape. Painters tape works about as well as transfer tape for these little designs--so no need to spend extra money if you don't need to.


I carefully peeled the tape up to release the decal from its backing and then centered it onto the ornament and used my finger nails and the dish scraper to burnish it down before peeling back the tape.


This ornament is fairly flat--just slightly rounded--so it was pretty simple to apply the decal. I smoothed from the center out and the tape wrinkled in a couple places from the curve, but the decal didn't.


I repeated the same process with another snowflake. This time I selected a slightly smaller one to put on a round ornament. I weeded the decal and put the painters tape over top and burnished it. Then I peeled it back to release the decal.


Then I stuck the decal on the ornament. This time, I was more careful about smoothing from the center and watching for wrinkles since the ornament is a sphere and my design is flat. I did end up with one little wrinkle that I couldn't smooth out (it's pretty hard to see), but for my first try on a round ornament, it worked pretty well.


To make the decals pop a bit more, I decided to ink the ornaments. I used stonewashed and denim blue alcohol ink along with some silver and pearl mixatives to create a silvery blue background for my snowflake decals.


I dripped the blues into the ornament and then used canned air to blow them around and mix them. Then I put some of the metallics in and blew them around. I repeated the process until the ornament was covered and I was happy wit the way it looked.


It's a bit hard to tell from the photos, but these turned out really pretty--very shimmery and the decal stands out really well against the blue. These look great on my Christmas tree!


Happy Holidays!

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