Flamed Alcohol Ink Glass Plate



I might be a bit obsessed with starting alcohol ink on fire. I tried it out recently on a ceramic tile and then again on a mirrored candle plate. After a recent trip to Dollar Tree, I had some plain glass plates. I decorated one with mod podge and a napkin for Valentine's day, but I had some leftover, so I just HAD to try the flamed alcohol ink technique again.


On my previous attempts at flamed alcohol ink, I cleared off my ceramic stove top...which is probably the best option, but it was full of dishes, and I was being lazy, so I set up on my kitchen table. I was, by now, familiar with how much flame comes off of the ink, so I cleared the table, set out a Teflon craft mat (they are designed for using in heat presses, so they they are heat safe) and to protect my table from the heat, a cork trivet, then I set my little old cookie sheet on top to keep everything contained. I had my alcohol inks set up to apply to the plate, but I moved them away when I brought out the lighter.


I dripped a generous amount of alcohol ink on the plate as it needs to be wet to catch fire. I even dripped along the outer edge, which was probably a bit of a waste since the ink and the fire pretty much stopped at the plate's edge.


I used an eye dropper to drip a little bit of rubbing alcohol on the plate and then lit it on fire with a long handled lighter. It put out some fairly large flames based on what I had attempted with this technique so far. The flames mixed and set the ink on the flat bottom of the plate very nicely--they almost mixed a bit too much. But the ink on the edge of the plate just dried and remained unlit.


So after the flame went out on the plate bottom, I started adding ink to the edge of the plate in 3-4 inch sections, dripping a bit of rubbing alcohol on it, and lighting it up. I turned the pan and just repeated this around the plate with a variety of different colored inks.


Some areas needed extra applications of ink, and others spread out nicely. I also added a few drops of ink to the plate bottom to get more color definition and lit the individual drops to get them to mix and spread as I went.


Once I was fairly happy with the color mix, I pulled it off of the cookie sheet and set it on the craft mat to dry. The places where the ink pooled remained tacky for several minutes, which is longer than most alcohol ink projects take to dry.


Once the ink was dry to the touch, I flipped the plate over and used some rubbing alcohol squirted on a paper towel to clean along the edge. The alcohol ink pooled a bit on the pan as it ran down the angled edge, but it wiped right off the front of the plate.

The flamed alcohol ink is such an interesting technique. It's difficult to control, but it intensifies and mixes the colors. It's a pretty addicting process, and I can't wait to find more surfaces that this technique will work for.

The sun was shining when I finished inking the plate, so I took a few photos and brought it in to seal it with some Dishwasher Safe Mod Podge. It's currently drying (and cloudy), so I'll try to share a couple photos of what it looks like with a few coats of mod podge on it later this week.



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