Alcohol Ink Easter Sun Catchers


Last spring, I had an idea to try using alcohol ink on the inside of a laminating pouch and then laminating it. It worked, and ever since, I've been making sun catchers for every holiday using the technique. Later I discovered I could cut the film on my Silhouette, which opened up even more possibilities. So now it was Easter's turn to get some fun sun catchers.


I laid out a few pouches of laminating film and got out a craft mat, some canned air, some rubbing alcohol, and of course, my inks.


I opened the laminating pouch and dripped one color at a time (a few drops scattered over the film) and then blew the ink with canned air to spread it out and dry it. I repeated the process with a ton of colors until I had a rainbow-y filled sheet of laminating plastic.


To break up the pattern a bit, I used a pipette with a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol that I squeezed over the inked circles to create tiny bubbles/circles all over the sheet. Then I set the sheet aside to dry (open).


I repeated the process with a couple more sheets of laminating film, just in case. For this one I lined up my rainbow of colors when I had filled up the sheet.


After I was done inking up a few sheets, I turned on my laminator. I let the sheets dry while the machine warmed up. It's very important that the ink is completely dry or the laminator will squish around the ink and, even more importantly, won't get a good seal when laminating.


I ran each sheet through the machine twice for good measure.


They turned out perfectly! I now have 3 rainbow sheets of plastic.


One of them was most certainly going to be used to make Easter sun catchers, so I made a design. My laminator pouches are 9 X 11.5 inches. So I set the sheet size to custom and round some bunnies that would hang straight and an egg shape. I added little circles to the top of each so that they could be hung up and squeezed as many of them into the page as I could. Then I set the cut settings to "Sticker Paper, Clear" (which is outlined in the box in red).


Then I stuck my colorful laminating film to a cutting mat and loaded it into my old Silhouette and let it cut.


I watched it cut out the shapes without any issues and peeled the excess off as soon as it came out of the machine.


They worked perfect! The bonus with these cut outs is that I get a fun stencil when I'm done, though I've yet to use one. :)


I hung these right up on the window--such a fun splash of color! So, what shapes should I cut out next? What should I use my other two sheets of colorful plastic to make?

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 23, 2021 at 8:05 AM

    Hi! How long would you say it took to for the ink to dry before laminating?
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sarah JaneOctober 24, 2021 at 10:26 PM

      If you go light on the ink, it will dry very quickly. But if you use quite a bit of ink, it takes a while. I let them dry for about an hour before running them through the laminator--if they are dry to the touch, they should be good to go.

      Delete

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