Alcohol Ink Tea Light

Do you remember the alcohol ink art craft that I did a while back? Since I still had some ink and since I love tea light votives, I decided to use the ink to paint some votives!

Here is a list of supplies you’ll need:

• Alcohol ink
• Canned air
• Small glass votive from the dollar store
• Disposable plastic gloves
• Cardboard box

Before I start telling how to make these votives, let’s talk about disposable gloves. I had some on hand before the pandemic hit. This type of glove is probably hard to get now. So, you can use the type of plastic gloves that food handlers use. They would work just as well. (And they are probably cheaper!)

Now let’s talk about canned air. You can get canned air at a business supply store. (And probably Amazon.com or Walmart.) I had this on hand from cleaning my computer keyboard a long time ago.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s begin!

Put a disposable glove on the hand that will be holding the votive. You don’t want your hand stained from the ink.

Hold the glass votive so the opening is horizontal and not pointing up.

Squirt some ink at the base of the votive. Make sure that the cardboard box is underneath your hands so that you don’t get ink on your table or countertop.

Quickly put the ink down and quickly pick up the canned air. And I do mean QUICKLY!

Point the straw on the canned air so that it is aiming at the ink on the votive. Spray the air to spread the ink on the glass.

Add more ink on the votive and spray with the air.

Keep adding ink and blowing with the canned air it until you are satisfied. Use 2 to 3 different colors if you’d like.

I used red, yellow, and orange on this votive. (Why, you may ask, is there a circle in the paint on this votive? Good question. I have no clue.

I used purple, blue, and yellow on this votive.

While this is a fairly simple craft, it does take some ability to squirt the ink on the votive, to quickly set the ink down, and to spray the canned air. I would say that this would be best to do with grandchildren that are at least ten-years-old. (Maybe you could be the squirter of the canned air if your grandchild can’t manage to do it.)

So here’s a lesson learned. Actually three lessons learned.

First. Sometimes the colors that you use will run together and make brown. This might not be what you were looking for. (But, hey! If you like the color brown, go for it!) If you don’t like how your votive turned out, you can wash the ink off because it is water soluble. Nice!

Second. The inside bottom of the jar that I used is not flat. It is humped up. Which makes it hard for the candle to sit flat. So either make sure the inside bottom of the glass jar that you use is flat or else use a knife to shape the candle to fit the bottom of the jar. You’ll want the candle to be flat when you light it.

Third. It’s hard to take pictures of these painted votives because the ink on the other side of the votive show through and the picture isn’t very pretty. Sigh. (But in real life, they are lovely!)