Easter Decoration Detour

Happy Easter, everyone! It's Bibi here with a couple of projects that have very little in common ...

I don't know if this ever happens to you: You have a plan in your mind of what you're going to make, and all is fine and hunky-dory until something or the other happens along the way and you end up making a completely different thingamabob instead. Sound familiar? 

My plan was to alter a plain paint brush ...

Little did I know that the first step would take me on a detour .....

I wanted to colour the metal plate with alcohol inks, 
so I masked off the sides (wood and brush part) with some regular clear tape ....

.... started to add the ink...., then THIS caught my attention! Whuuut? 

Look - something pretty emerged on the tape!

I really liked how the alcohol inks looked on the clear tape. 

With an attention span like mine, you know I had to experiment some more right away ...

 Set that paint brush aside, kids, 'cos momma is going to town!

I put some strips of clear tape on my non-stick craft sheet, coloured them with alcohol inks and let them dry before I adhered the tape to white cardstock.

How pretty is that??  

TIP: If you want to buy alcohol inks for the first time - don't get a whole bunch at once. Two or three colours will go a long way! Choose colours that will mix and give you a wider range, for example yellow, red and blue to get orange, green and purple. If you want brown, a muddy mix of all three will do that for you.

Colours used below are green, red and yellow. No brown ink at all, that just happened when the other colours blended together:

From the blend above, I made these two cards:

Stamps from the Artist Plate set. 

TIP: Spell your own sentiments with what you have on hand!

The text "make art yourself" was made by combining two of the text stamps that are on the set. One is "make art" and the other is "free yourself" - I cut the "free" part off so I could spell "make art yourself" instead. - Have another look at your text stamps and see what you can come up with.

Flower from Antique Botanicals

I added Dimensional Magic to the flower so it would get the same shine as the tape underneath:

TIP: What a soon learnt is that the dried alcohol ink easily could be scratched off the tape, so to make it 100 % permanent I used a clear varnish on top while the strips of tape were still on my craft sheet. The varnish will protect the colours when I tuck the cards into envelopes. .... which gave me another idea: I used a wider clear tape (aka packing tape) and made some bookmarks. Seal with varnish and they're safe to tuck between book pages.

Stamps from Round in Circles, Collage Mix (eyes) and Alphabet Uno.

detail: 

I hope you have enjoyed my little detour! I sure did :-)

But what happened to that plain brush I was going to alter?

The infamous metal plate again, now altered with alcohol inks and some glitter dots:

Some homemade washi tape around the handle and more glitter dots:

Add the Rascal Rooster stamp into the mix:

Ta-da!

This is certainly the weirdest Easter decoration I've ever made, 

but I love it for one reason in particular: The Detour! :-)

I wish you all a very

HAPPY EASTER

We're staying home to relax, do some crafting, and dine with friends. On Saturday we're having the kids and grandkids over for some egg hunting and a traditional Easter dinner, and I'll probably need most of Sunday to recuperate ...  The weather forecast promises lots of rain this Easter, so might as well stay inside and tinker with tape and alcohol - ink, that is.

 XOX,

Bibi

 ♥ ♥ ♥