Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

The last time I made a run to Dollar Tree, they had these wooden plaques in their craft section. They seem to be a veneer applied to mdf instead of a solid piece of wood, but the surface of the plaque was super smooth, so I figured they'd be excellent for crafting. Since the surface was so smooth, my first thought was, "Can I ink that?" So, can I use alcohol ink like a stain or wood dye? And, if so, can I use some traditional application methods with the raw wood? Let's find out! I covered my table with a silicone mat and got out my alcohol ink collection. I decided to try one of my thinner inks as a stain. So I grabbed the Pixiss ink in grape, since purple is my favorite color. I squeezed some into a little container and thinned it even further with some rubbing alcohol . It was probably about a 50/50 mix (1 part of each). Then I used a foam dauber (a foam paint brush would work well too), and rubbed the paint on the plaque and then used a paper towel to wipe it of...

After the last couple weeks' projects testing out T-Rex Alcohol Ink , I decided I needed to try out the plastic wrap method with these inks to see if it worked as well as the Ranger and Pinata Inks .  I grabbed a plate from Dollar Tree and all of the shades of green from the T-Rex Alcohol Ink Sets and spread out a piece of plastic wrap on a craft mat . I dripped ink from several shades of green ink onto the plastic wrap and then added a couple of drips of rubbing alcohol to a couple dark spots to help them spread out. Once the plastic wrap was completely covered, I set the glass plate on top of the plastic wrap. After the plate was wrapped up in the plastic, I let it dry for a couple of days before I peeled the plastic off. I usually let it dry for 24 hours before I remove the plastic, but this time, the ink looked a little tacky on the day after I wrapped it up, so I let it set for another day. That seems to be a trend with the T-Rex Ink (that it takes longer to dry). I had to ...

I had so much fun printing the articulated t-rex and dragon , that I went looking for more articulated prints and came across this pretty butterfly design . I immediately knew that I wanted to print it in white and try to decorate it with alcohol ink. We have an Ender 3 v. 2 printer which works great for small prints like this butterfly. I followed the recommended settings and set it to .2 resolution and 15% infil in the slicer. The design post also recommends rectilinear or lines type infil. For those of you new to printing, that just means that the layers are printed in lines across the design instead of a specific pattern. I prepped our print bed with a little bit of hairspray to help with adhesion to the print bed. I printed it with white PLA  so I could easily decorate it with alcohol ink. The print ended up taking about 3 hours and came out great. I liked the first butterfly so well that I ended up making a second one with the same settings. After I had two printed butterfl...

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...