Welcome Summer – bloghop & giveaway

Welcome to this  blog hop for the Jessica Sporn Designs Creative Team – and yes, THIS BLOGHOP COMES WITH A GIVEAWAY! Read on to learn everything about it.

I’m hopping along with Karen Gaunt, Kristin Van Valkenburgh and Jessica Sporn to share our SUMMER creations using Jessica Sporn Designs products.

The theme for this bloghop is “Welcome Summer” and that’s right up my alley ’cause we had lovely warm weather the last couple of weeks in The Netherlands. Summer was on my mind all the time and so I decorated my balcony to make it ready to sit and relax. I bought some furniture (yep, furniture… the balcony has a roof – the housing association calls it a “loggia” but to my opinion that’s too much of an exaggeration,) decorated the space with plants and even crocheted a granny square to cover the boring lawn chair.

 

And then I sat down to create a last ‘finishing touch’… can you see what the arrow is pointing at?
It’s a jam jar that holds a little candle, but of course I decorated the jar first using a Jessica Sporn Designs stencil… it’s a fun and easy project and it lights up your day (and evenings) – let me show you how I did it.

Take a glass jar (mine holded pees) and clean it.

I used this Krishna Deity stencil to decorate my jar. (Krishna is the god of compassion, tenderness and love in Hinduism.)

Tape the stencil around the jar. Make sure the part of the image that you want to use is right on the glass (in my case, the face of Krishna.)

Trace the stencil with a permanent marker.

I wanted to outline the picture with relief paint, but adding the stuff while the stencil is on the jar would probably destroy my stencil. That’s why I used a permanent marker first.

Once the image was outlined with a marker, I took off the stencil and traced the lines again with golden relief paint.

To color the image, it’s best to use special glass paint but I didn’t had any. I went to the store to buy some but I found the paint way too expensive… so what now?

Then I remembered I once used alcohol ink on a plastic sheet, and how lovely it looked. So I went home and searched for the alcohol ink. I had only three colors in my stash and they looked a bit boring to me, but I tested it on glass anyway to see how they would hold up…

Hooray, hooray, it worked lovely!!! The ink doesn’t come off easy… (it does when you scratch it but not if you grab the jar) and the colors worked excellent for this image, so I went with it.

Here’s the result.**

Flowers (from the same Krishna Deity Stencil) on the back side.

So now this little jar stands outside on the shelf, lighting my Summer evenings.

And what a lovely image it is to shine light through!

I hope your Summer nights (and days) will be filled with light, compassion, tenderness and love!

** If you want the image to stay on permanent, I recomment you use special glass paint.

And now for the GIVEAWAY

One lucky commenter will win this Woman Will Heal the World stencil from Stencil Girls Products, designed by Jessica Sporn. It’s brand new, just in store, and don’t you love it? I can think of many ways to use it!

All comments at all the blog hop participants posts count – so make sure to visit everyone and leave some kind words.

Marit Barentsen (you’re here)
Karen Gault
Kristin Van Valkenburgh
Jessica Sporn

The comments for this giveway closes Monday morning June 12th at 6 PM EST (for the Dutchies that’s Monday midnight) Jessica announces the winner on her blog on June 13th.