Tuesday, December 23, 2014

altered ornaments with alcohol ink

I was looking for outdoor ornaments (a.k.a. plastic!) for an outdoor wreath and wanted them to be a cranberry or burgundy color.  But all I found was red ornaments.  So I thought I could make my own and purchased plastic silver ornaments (already in the sale bin if you can believe that!) and added color with alcohol inks.   The silver tinsel was a wire glued in the ornament.  I decided to leave it and color it as well.  I ended up using it to wire to the wreath.


For this color I experimented a bit and ended us using Cranberry, Eggplant, and Currant to get the desired cranberry color. The color may seem red in the photo but it really did turned out to be a deep cranberry color (which matches the ribbon and my front door).


Then I started looking at other pieces I had wondering how they would look when altered with alcohol inks.

Decided to do the same with this silver sparkly  "Joy" ornament.  Cranberry alcohol ink was used here.  Note - it's a good idea to use gloves when doing this technique.  I didn't have any gloves and my hands were stained with LOTS of cranberry ink for a few days :-)  Also, let pieces like this dry overnight after all the ink is applied. The ink did not dull the ornament at all...it still sparkles!




I forgot to take a "before" photo of this metal star ornament.  It was originally silver and I colored it using Purple Twilight, Sailboat Blue, and just a bit of Raspberry alcohol inks.  Really liked how this turned out.  Perhaps I'll hit the after Christmas sales to look for more silver (or white) ornaments to alter!