Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Thought I'd squeak one more holiday craft post in before the end of the year. In November I cut a bunch of vinyl decals and ended up making Thanksgiving tiles and a Hogwarts Crest tile , but I had one leftover decal from that cutting session. So I weeded my vinyl decal (pealed up all the excess vinyl) and set it aside and got out my alcohol inks , a craft ma t, some canned air , and a 6 x 6 inch white ceramic tile. In between other inking projects, I made several attempts and creating a winter night sky with my alcohol inks. All of them failed miserably. Most of the time on these craft tutorial websites, they don't share the mistakes, but I thought I'd show you a bit of my process. After each spectacular failure, I sprayed it down with rubbing alcohol and wiped it off with a paper towel. After some initial irritation, I decided I shouldn't use any blacks or grays so the black decal would show up. I also nixed the northern lights and sunset att...

Merry Christmas! To celebrate, I thought I'd share a link to all of my Christmas Ornament Tutorials . From Sarah Jane's Craft Blog to all of you. Happy Holidays!

If you follow the blog, you may remember a few weeks ago I posted about buying a stash of these wood ornament blanks on Amazon. I started by spray painting those and then using plastic wrap and alcohol ink to decorate them. While I was preparing those with spray paint, I made a bunch of extras. I spray painted some silver and even sealed a few with acrylic sealer so they would still be wood colored. I laid them out in cardboard boxes and sprayed one side and let it dry and then flipped them over and painted the other. The acrylic sealed ones I sprayed just one side on because I wasn't sure that the sealer would be enough to allow me to ink the wood. I didn't even get a picture of them because they were an experiment (that and it's the holiday season and everything is a bit rushed). I started out with the white sprayed ornaments. I laid out a craft mat (actually two because the canned air sprays ink everywhere if you're not careful) and dug out my ca...

Last year I made some ornaments by spraying paint into some plastic ball ornaments . In previous years I decorated ornaments (both glass and plastic ball ornaments) with alcohol ink. This year, I combined the two methods and made alcohol ink and spray paint ornaments. It wasn't exactly what I had set out to do, but they turned out neat in spite of my plans. I started out by spraying some paint into a few ball ornaments. I was going to try to get solid coverage and then ink the outside of the ornaments, but I was having a hard time getting good coverage with my initial spray of paint. I sprayed into the openings, swirled the paint around, and then tipped the ornaments over to dry. They only got about half coverage (even less on the ones I painted with white paint). I could have continued to add layers of paint and let it dry until I got a good solid coverage, but I thought the partial coverage was kind of interesting, so I decided to ink the inside with the partial pa...

I love making Christmas Ornaments . I have more than I need, but, I just can't help myself. So, when I was at the hardware store and saw these tiles, I knew I had to get them to make ornaments. They sell these "arabesque tiles" in sheets that are roughly 1 square foot. The sheet includes 18 tiles attached to a mesh backing. I opened the package and peeled the tiles from the backing, so I could work with them individually. Then I got out my alcohol  inks , a craft mat , and a can of air. I knew I wanted to use the metallic inks (Ranger calls theirs  mixatives ) to give them a nice shimmer and shine. It felt like a festive choice. I decided since I was adding the bling with metallics, that I'd stick with similar color shades as a base. So my first one was red. I chose a few shades of red and dripped them on the tile and blew them with the canned air. I layered lighter and darker shades of red and gold ink until the tile was compl...

A few weeks ago, Amazon had a lightning deal for a bag of 100 wooden ornament blanks . I knew I could do all sorts of fun stuff with them, so I snapped them up. I'm sure I'll be crafting cool ornaments with them for years to come, but here's my first project. I decided to paint a bunch of them so that I could ink them. I laid them in a layer on the bottom of a box and sprayed them with white spray paint. I had to do two layers on each side, and they still weren't quite 100% covered, but since I was going to be inking them, the most important part was that the ink wouldn't soak into the wood. I opted for my current favorite application method--plastic wrap. I have done several   projects with  this method . It's really easy and works great on white surfaces, especially ones that are just a bit porous so the ink can sink in just a bit, so I thought it'd be a perfect fit for the painted ornaments. I laid out a piece of plastic cling wra...