Recipe Holder

Between my boys being off school for 4 days, a wedding, a race, tons of swaps and events to prep and computer problems, posting new stuff to my blog has been impossible!! I try to post origninal work on this blog, stuff created just for you who visit but sometimes I just can't do it all. It seems silly not to share some of my projects I plan for my classes and clubs. So here is a project that we will be making next week at a class I hold at my church. At this class I teach general stamping techniques and try to expose them to a variety of tools and products. They are mostly new stampers and after ten weeks my goal is that they have a good base knowledge of stamping and some idea of the many things they can create with stamps and ink. And we have lots of fun to boot!!

This project is a recipe or photo holder made from a 2" square tile that can be purchased at any home improvement store. In this case we are using a glazed white tile. I stamped the pear stamp from SU's Ageless Adornment set using olive Stazon ink. Stazon ink is permanent and great for glossy surfaces but in my trials I found some of the ink would still rub off if you tried hard enough. I did run the heat gun over it to set it better and speed the dry time up. Perhaps if you bake it in a 250 degree oven for 15 minutes it would set permanently but for class we can not do that. Spraying sealants indoors at church isn't an option either. So the pear is painted with Crystal Effects that was mixed with a drop of certainly celery ink. The rest of the tile was painted with CE mixed with a drop of so saffron ink. Mixing the CE with ink allows you to color your projects while sealing it at the same time. I also love that that I can create so many colors, more than 48 SU ink colors. At 2.50 a bottle, you have an inexpensive way to do so many things. I have had great success using this method on dominoes.

It is usually best to allow each color to dry first before proceeding with the next color or they may bleed together. I again used the heat gun to speed up the dry time for the purpose of class but if you can, just leave it overnight. I glued a clothespin on the back with E6000 glue to hold the recipe/photo and prop up the tile. You could make these tiles into magnets as well. I hope you will give them a try, it's a very easy and fun project that also makes a nice gift idea.