A Little Jar Of Spring Sunshine

     When I was asked if I would like to make some samples for Keep On Crafting using the Seth Apter I-Zink pigment inks how could I refuse, they are amazing inks. Why amazing? because they are water based, thickish inks in a bottle, with their own little brush that will paint on almost everything you can think of. Now for a water based ink that is amazing, they don't bead up on metal, glass or plastic, they just paint straight on without using gesso first!

     For this little project I used a small glass jar about 3 inches in height. I gave it a wash to make sure it was perfectly clean and dried it thoroughly.

     I wanted some tiny flowers all over the jar so I dug out a JND die and some Stix2 masking sheet. The masking sheet is like a very low tack masking tape that rests on a thin plastic film, so die cutting it might be tricky. Not if you put a sheet of copy paper under the plastic side, it seems to help the die force it's way through the plastic and even cut the copy paper.

     Using tweezers I stuck lots of the tiny mask flowers all over the jar and pressed them down firmly.

     For the colour I used one of the older version inks in the dropper bottle - Cactus and one of the newer flat colours - Olive Drab, more Olive than Cactus in the mix.

     I dropped some of the ink onto my craft mat and picked it up with a sponge, dabbing the ink all over the jars sides. I left this to dry for a couple of hours, it does dry quite quickly even on a non porous surface, but I wanted to be sure it was hard. I applied a second coat of the same colours, making sure I had a speckled effect all over. Again I left it to dry for a while as I didn't want the ink to peel off when I lifted the flowers.

     To lift the flowers I used my pointed tweezers and pushed each petal from the end to the middle, to my delight they all lifted perfectly.

     I tried a set of lights inside the jar but it didn't look quite right, too bright. Using a strip of vellum cut to wrap around inside the jar I was able to achieve a slightly more opaque effect. The top needed to be covered and this jar had no lid, so I cut a circle of hessian to go over the top but with battery lights you need to be able to get at the switch which was inside. A small length of copper coloured elastic left over from a jar of jam was just right, now I could get in and out of the jar to operate the lights.

     A few of these little jars dotted about the room help lift the spirits on these dark winter afternoons. I'm really looking forward to being able to craft together at workshops again.

Materials used 

Old glass jar

I-Zink Pigment Ink - Seth Apter Olive Drab

I-Zink Pigment Ink - Cactus (pearlescent)

JND174 - Small Flowers die

S57268 - Masking Sheet - Stix2

Small string of LED battery lights

Strip of vellum

Small circle of hessian and some fancy elastic

I would like to enter this project in the following challenges:

A Bit More Time To Craft - Anything Goes

Crafts Galore Encore - Anything Goes

Creative Fingers - Anything Goes

The Creative Crafters - Anything Goes