Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

It seems like there are new brands of alcohol ink showing up every day. Earlier this year, I picked up a set of T-Rex inks  after hearing good things about their quality. I picked mine up on Amazon (this is not a sponsored post--I paid for the inks). I thought I'd share some of my first impressions of the inks in case you were wondering if any of these newer brands were any good or were looking to buy a beginner's set. I bought the " Starter Set ": it comes with 11 inks and a bottle of blending solution, and it retails for about $30. Which makes their price just slightly lower than Ranger inks and a bit more expensive than Pinata . T-rex currently has 3 different color sets ( Starter Set ,  Warm Earth Tones and Cool Earth Tones ) (compared to Pinata's 2 and about 33 colors compared to Ranger's 90+). The bottles are this nice square shape which is easy to hold and come with color indicators on the top with their names clearly listed. The shapes of the bott...

Previously on Sarah Jane's Craft Blog : I made some faux stained glass panels by alcohol inking the inside of laminator pouches and then applying stained glass patterns that I cut out of vinyl on my Silhouette Cameo . It's been a busy couple of weeks here, but I finally managed to get my plastic "stained glass" panels hung up. I went into my sewing kit and grabbed the largest metal needle I could find and then used a lighter to heat the tip. I held it in the flames for a ten count to warm the needle. Then I stuck the warmed tip of the needle into the laminating film to create a small hole. Be careful with the needles. I grabbed it in the center once and almost burned my finger. Make sure to only heat the very tip and to only hold it on the eye end. Then I used fishing line to string up the panels. I tied a square knot in the fishing line and then poked it through the hole in the plastic panel to hang. I even connected my small squares into a hanging trio.  This m...

 If you needed a break from all the alcohol ink posts as of late, check out some of my Mod Podge Projects !

A couple weeks ago I made some rainbow-colored sheets of plastic with alcohol ink and some laminating pouches. I turned those sheets into some Easter Sun Catchers with the help of my Silhouette. I dripped ink onto the inside of the laminating pouches and then ran them through the laminating machine . I only ended up using one of the plastic sheets to make my Easter Sun Catchers, so I had two leftover pages of rainbow-colored plastic. I found some stained glass designs with a quick google search. I think this one might be a coloring page, but it was the right size, and I liked the pattern, so I traced it in Silhouette studio and sent it to the cutting machine using the preset settings for vinyl. I designed two pages of decals (since I had two sheets of rainbow plastic). I cut them out of my machine and trimmed off the excess vinyl (since the laminator sheets are 9 x 12 ish and the vinyl is 12 inches--if I had been smart, I would have cut 12 x 18 with the designs turned on their sides...

For the last several years, I've tried out various different methods of decorating plastic Easter eggs . I buy them on clearance after the holiday, so I usually have a stash in my Easter box. I have mod podged and spray painted and inked them . This year, I decided to try using alcohol ink on eggs that have been spray painted white. It can be tricky to find the inexpensive plastic Easter eggs in white--they usually come in a variety of pastel shades. Alcohol ink is so much brighter and vibrant when it's on a nice light background. So I grabbed a can of  glossy white spray paint and put some plastic eggs in a cardboard box and attempted to spray paint them. It took several coats with them opened up, then I put them back together and put them into an egg carton and tried to spray paint the sides. They are tricky to paint just because of their shape. I ended up with some paint issues (spots where they touched and some pealing, etc...), so I tried another batch, so I had more o...

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...