Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

A couple of weeks ago I made some St. Patrick's Day Necklaces using some new cabochons and bezels /blanks that I had ordered on Amazon. They worked alright to make necklaces with printed paper, but now I wanted to see how they worked with alcohol ink. I got out my alcohol inks and a craft mat . I also got out a small paint brush, some rubbing alcohol, and a can of air . I started out by dripping some purple ink onto a gem/cabochon and used a can of air to spread it around the gem. I added some sailboat blue to finish covering the gem with a base of colors. Then I slowly added other colors through a combination of dripping and painting. I would drip some ink on the mat and then load the paintbrush with some ink to dot it onto the gem. I repeated this process with pretty much the same mix of colors on another gem, but with bigger blobs of color and then I tried a monochromatic black , gray , and silver gem . I set these aside for a while t...

Happy Spring! This week I've been dragging out the Easter decoration and it reminded me of all of the great Easter crafts that have been on the blog. Check them out: Easter Craft Collection .

This post is a tale of two projects--neither of which went according to plan. But, after last week's shamrock sun catchers , I was in the mood for another St. Patrick's day craft. I decided to try to make some bottle cap pins. I thought it might work out well to print the thumbnail art on photo paper for a crisper image. So I shrunk a bunch of clipart I found through google searches down to one inch sizes and fit them onto a 4 x 6 sheet of photo paper. I printed it out on my ink jet printer and left the sheet to dry for a day before working on the rest of the project.  Next I took my bottle caps from various sodas and adult beverages and spray painted them green both inside and out. Then I punched the art out with a circle punch and selected the ones that looked the best and glued them into the bottoms of the bottle caps with some paper glue. I let that all dry over night before adding my glazes. I used some glossy accents and diamond glaze to fi...

Earlier this week I shared a project where I tied using alcohol ink inside laminating pouches to make some cute star sun catchers. Well, since it worked so well and it's that time of the year, I decided to make some four leaf clover/shamrock sun catchers. So just like last time, I opened up my laminating pouch and started inking one side of the inside of the pouch. I took out all of my different shades of green alcohol ink  and started with some of the lighter colors first. I used a can of air to spread them out a bit and dry the ink faster. The slightly textured surface of the laminating pouch kept the ink from moving too much, but it still works. I added my darker colors to fill in the pouch. I even tried dripping a little bit of rubbing alcohol on with a nearly empty pipette to bring in a bit more texture, but the effect was pretty minimal. I let the ink dry for about 10 minutes and then folded it closed and ran it through my old laminator. It...

A couple of weeks ago, I tried making sun catchers with laminating pouches and tissue paper. The project worked pretty well, and I wondered if I could use ink on those laminating pouches--they are plastic after all, which usually inks well. So I got out my alcohol inks , a craft mat to protect my table, a can of air , and my laminating pouches . I opened up my laminating pouch, and I chose a rainbow of ink colors. I wanted something bright and fun. I started with some sailboat blue drops that I spread out with the canned air.  I kept dropping ink onto the surface of the laminating pouch and blowing it around to spread it out and dry it. The surface of the laminating pouches is textured to keep items from slipping around too much in the pouch, so the textured surface absorbed the ink a bit, but it still worked pretty well. I did get a bit of ink on the opened side of the pouch and a bit along the edges, but I wasn't too worried about it being perfe...

A while back I picked up some small white bowls from Big Lots ( these look similar ) with a nice satin finish. I already inked one bowl using the flame method , but I still have a few bowls left, so I decided to give one the plastic wrap treatment. I got out my craft mat and some alcohol inks . Then I cleaned my bowl with rubbing alcohol on a paper towel and removed the sale sticker from the bottom. I tore a piece of plastic wrap off the roll that was large enough to cover my bowl, and I set it down on my craft mat, being sure not to smooth it out. Then I dripped ink on the plastic wrap until I liked the combination of colors and the plastic was mostly full of color. Then I placed my bowl in the center of the plastic wrap and carefully applied the plastic wrap to the sides without smoothing it out too much (so it keeps the wrinkled pattern). Then I flipped it over to dry. I ended up using 7 colors on the bowl. I wanted something bright and fun so I we...