Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

A couple weeks ago I tested out some new (to me) alcohol inks: Unicone Arts Alcohol Ink . My opinion of the inks was a bit mixed . The inks were beautiful colors, but a bit thin and really inconsistent in vibrancy/opacity (how strong the colors are). So, I wanted to try them out using some different methods to see how well they really work. I've done a lot of plastic wrap alcohol inking over the last few years, but when I first started to try  applying alcohol ink with plastic wrap , I had a few sort of successful attempts at applying it with the  plastic wrap and peeling it off while still wet or tacky . Since then, I've mastered the art of letting it dry (it can be a real challenge of patience some days). Dollar Tree Altar Candles were one of the projects I tried inking with plastic wrap with mixed success, so I thought I'd try it again.  This time, I spray painted the candle jars with a light coat of white spray paint. I taped off the top of the candle jar, and I spra...

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...

I love Dollar Tree's white glass altar candles. They are the largest and cheapest jar candles you can get just about anywhere...and I have shown them my love in several different projects over the years ( altar candle projects ). I have accumulated a nice sized stash of washi tape  (decorative paper tape--it's masking tape with designs on it) that I have picked up at various sales and discount stores, and it occurred to me that washi tape and my favorite dollar store candles were a match made in heaven. I went through my stash and decided that I had plenty of black and white tape and that it would look cute stacked with all of the various patterns. So I dug out all of the black and white tape rolls--eliminated a couple because didn't look sticky enough or had a little bit too much off-white in them and then started sticking it to the candle jars. The great part about washi tape (on glass at least) is that if you don't like it, you can just peel it off. ...

Earlier this year I got on a bit of a galaxy spray paint kick. I sprayed composition notebooks and chipboard boxes and some dollar store altar candles . The process was pretty simple--spray it black and then swipe stripes of other galaxy-ish and nebula-ish colors over the top. I was really satisfied with the way they turned out (hence the three different projects). But for some reason the candles always looked a bit flat to me. So I decided to add some stars. I started out with my spray painted altar candles. I grabbed some tiny paint brushes and some craft paint and a paper plate. As I was assembling my supplies, I decided to go searching for nail-heads that would make good star-like dots. I raided my stash of hardware supplies and tested out a round bamboo toothpick, several nails, and my two tiny paintbrushes. I ended up really liking the first few that I tested. The toothpick and a finishing nail made nice tiny little dots. The more you tapped the paint on the ...

Last week I turned some old composition notebooks into pretty galaxy (nebula/space) notebooks . In the past I have covered the plain white glass altar candles from dollar tree in tissue paper and mod podge and napkins and glitter and even alcohol ink , so I thought, what the heck, why not give them the space treatment. I started by taking the sticky label off of the candles. The fastest way I have figure out for doing this is to run the hot water in your kitchen sink until it's good and hot, run it over the label until it's good and saturated and warm (probably about 30 seconds), and then use a plastic dish scraper and scrape the label of. If any sticker residue is leftover, use goo gone to remove it. Then I dried off my candles and put them in a cardboard box outside to start spraying. I filled the top of each candle with a napkin to keep the spray paint from getting inside the candle. Then I started spraying a black and blue base coat. I sprayed a thi...

After this week's project where I punched butterflies out of tissue paper for a candle holder, I had leftover butterflies. They're fragile, so they are hard to store and keep for later, so I thought I'd use a few of them to jazz up this old project  (pictured above). The colors matched the pattern on the tissue paper perfectly. I painted a thin layer of mod podge onto the candles and placed my butterflies on carefully. Then I waited a minute or two and painted a thin layer of glue over the top. It took maybe 10 minutes to add the butterflies, so it was a great way to use up a few before tossing the leftovers. The butterfly additions are pretty subtle. The lime green ones disappear almost entirely, but it's nice to add another layer of dimension to an old project to freshen it up.

This fall I tried a new technique with alcohol ink that I had been wanting to try: plastic wrap. The first project I used this technique on was a decorative wine bottle from the dollar store. For that project, I struggled with the plastic wrap not being large enough to cover the whole bottle, so when I decided to do it again, I picked a project that I could easily wrap a piece of plastic all the way around. I also thought I'd be more adventurous with my color choices (last time I chose colors all in the same color family). So this time I chose to make some rainbow colored altar candles .  I put down my craft mat and chose a selection of rainbow colored alcohol inks in bright shades. Then I scraped the labels off of the altar candles (and used some goo gone to remove any leftover stickiness). Then I tore off a sheet of plastic cling wrap and put it down on my craft mat. I randomly dripped my colors onto the plastic wrap. I noticed that the green was mixing wi...