Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Check out the collection of Alcohol Ink projects here: Alcohol Ink Craft Collection

Ages ago, I cut a couple of designs about dogs being welcome and people being tolerated. The design I used for this week's sign was too big for the Dollar Tree metal sign blank that I had set aside for it (I must have measured wrong), but my backup design fit, so I made that sign and gifted it to my sister. Well, skip ahead several months later and I finally made it to Michael's and picked up a sign blank that would fit the design and complement the color of the vinyl (I even had a coupon). As you can see, I cut the vinyl out with a bunch of Christmas designs, so it had been a while. I used black permanent vinyl and cut apart each design after it made it out of the Silhouette Cameo . That cut design sat around in my craft cart for months before I finally found a sign. I used my weeding tool to remove the extra vinyl. After the design was weeded, I cut a square of transfer tape to match and prepared my sign surface. The sign was oriented in the wrong direction for my sign, so

I've been enjoying making signs using these metal blanks from Dollar Tree by adding vinyl cut on my Silhouette Cameo . They're usually pretty easy (as long as the weeding goes ok) and turn out cute. So with the upcoming Easter holiday, I was putting up a few decorations and realized I didn't have any signs. Well, that cannot stand--it was now a moral imperative that I made a couple of Easter signs. I perused the freebies in my Silhouette library from over the years and found a couple that I could use. Since I had an idea that was definitely an experiment in mind, I measured my signs and arranged duplicate versions and backup designs and some extra eggs to fill the 12 x 12 grid. After I cut the vinyl , I started weeding the "backup" design. After the nerve-wracking bit of pulling off the exterior vinyl, I thought I was home free--but it turns out I missed a section of the second "E" and it got stuck to the exterior vinyl and thrown out in the trash. This

Check out all of the Easter craft projects from Sarah Jane's Craft Blog here: Easter Craft Collection  

While I was cutting the vinyl decal for last week's project on my Silhouette Cameo , I made a spare vinyl decal design (in case something went wrong). Since it was a simple design, I had the idea to try to use it as a reverse stencil (inside letters) and, if I could salvage it, a regular stencil (outside of the letters). To start out, I needed to prep a wooden sign to be used with the letters from the decal as a reverse stencil. Since the letters will be peeled away, I needed a nice surface or color to show through. I have used a paint wash in the past, but since I found out you could use alcohol ink to dye wood different colors, I thought making it green would be appropriate and a lot of fun. I got out a silicone craft mat to protect the table and a small container in which I could put some green alcohol ink. Then I added a bit of rubbing alcohol to thin the ink and grabbed a foam brush . I used the foam brush to paint on the thinned green ink and then set it aside to dry fo