Tool Thursday: Recycling Supply Tips

alcoholinks
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ictured above: a disassembled marker and resulting mess/homemade alcohol ink

Looking into making my own gesso sent me down some unexpected… craft holes. The article I linked to last week made me curious about making my own alcohol inks and mentioned reconditioning polymer clay with common materials instead of the clay conditioner that I thought I would need to purchase.

So I set about doing some tests and I’m going to share some results today. =)

Searching online for making alcohol inks brought me to this article. Super simple tutorial and I decided something I would try right away. I knew I needed to go through my supply of markers as I hadn’t touched them in years and one or two had been leaking. I tested Prismacolors, Sharpies, and some dollar store markers.

Besides the first attempt, pictured above, in a newly repurposed pill bottle, I used part of our baby food jar stash to make the inks in. The reason for this was twofold– we have a lot of them, and the pill bottle was irksome due to the circumference of the opening. I wanted something smallish with a good sized opening, and these fit the bill.

I should have used something smaller, put less alcohol in, or used more markers in some of the resulting inks, but I still got what I was looking for- useable inks from unusable markers. Sweet!

Some other tips/hints:
1. You’re going to make a mess. It may or may not be permanent. I suggest working over a cookie sheet like I did after the first round which got all over the counter- but came out with alcohol applied to paper towels. (That didn’t work as well with the Sharpies, or anything that got on regular towels…)

2. Prismacolors worked best, Sharpies did work but the color wasn’t as strong, and the dollar store markers did not work at all. I -think- because they were washable markers, but would need some type of similar marker to compare. Considering the original article uses Crayolas, I’m leaning towards the fact they’re washable.

3. Prismacolor markers open on the “Fine” tip side, twist and pull to get it open. Sharpies depend on the type. Fine points open on the end, regular points open on the marker side. Pliers are your friend.

4. Gloves are also your friend.

Speaking of gloves, I used them for the next part, reconditioning of some old, polymer clay. How old? Well, my friend bought it for an 8th grade science project and then gifted it to me when we were about teenagers so… 20 or so. You can NOT recondition clay that has set, which will happen if the clay is exposed to heat or too much light over the years. I stored it very carefully because I knew and had read that when she gifted it to me.

I remember years ago when I decided maybe I would try making something with it I found it was crumbly. I looked up online how to deal with that and found clay reconditioner existed, or I could also use mineral oil. Having neither of those options, I put it on the back-burner… again and again over the years.

This time, I found someone who suggested olive oil. I have an ABUNDANCE of that because our household is a Costco membership holder… so decided to try it.

I took a sour cream container we had saved (they’re great for leftovers) and put a chunk of clay in, drizzled it in olive oil, and put on some gloves. At first, the clay just slipped around. Then it began to change consistency and I could start massaging it in. Eventually I got lovely, workable clay, just like freshly purchased. And I decided to make a test object… (if you’re following me on Instagram, you’ve seen a picture)

Then next step was baking it following the usual directions. So I did, and I can officially say this was a success. No cracks appeared in the surface, it didn’t lose detail, and it was as hard as original Sculpey clay gets in the oven (which is to say, you can scratch it with your fingernail if you push hard enough).

I’ll be testing other types of clay that I picked up at “ArtScraps” eventually and let everyone know how that goes, too.

And that’s the update for this week!

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