 Hello there, it's Sandy Almak and today I want to share with you how I made this beautiful decorated cigar box with alcohol inks. I have had this box for a very long time. I bought it ages ago and you can get these at all different kinds of places. You can get them at craft stores. I know that there's a number of them that carry these. You can get them at vintage shops and other places but this one is old. You can tell there's just dust all over it. Need some work but I finally, about six months ago, decided that I would start working on it and what I did was start to put watercolor grounds on it. My Daniel Smith watercolor grounds, I was going to paint it in watercolor and I just never came up with ideas. I just had no thought about what I was going to put on it just that I wanted to do something on it and over time every once in a while when I had some time I put another layer of the watercolor grounds on it and another one kept thinking maybe at some point this would start to come together and I'd have an idea on what to do and it never quite did. I was thinking about doing some pen and ink work on it but then I started realizing the surface was never going to work for pen and ink because it's just too lumpy and then I thought well let me sand it how about that and I got it nice and sanded and I was ready to do pen and ink on it and that seemed okay until I realized no I don't want to do that at all. I found a video on YouTube about putting something on the surface that will make it so I can use alcohol ink on the box and that got me excited because I've been playing with alcohol ink a lot lately and I thought it would make a beautiful design on this box. This stuff is called Kills II, K-I-L-L-Z II and I'll have a link to it in the description but I would not recommend buying it online. It's a gallon and it's paint it's like a primer enamel vicks type of thing of some sort and I would not ship that. I just don't think that that's safe to ship so you can get it online and I'll link to it just so you can see what it is but it comes in a giant gallon. I got mine at the local hardware store same price as I found it online so just pick one up there and I painted a couple coats of that and sanded between those so I could get a nice smooth surface and thank you to YouTube for having that suggestion. They were painting it on other things but I tried it on this box and it worked great and the colors that I'm using are from Ranger and I just am using 99% alcohol with it to liquefy the color a little bit more and I'm using a pipette to get it out of a glass jar. I see people put the alcohol into a little squeeze bottle but I get more control with the pipette and I also get more control in moving the color by using an airbrush. I know a lot of folks will use things like the Ranger's Blower tool and a straw and all kinds of stuff but I don't find that I get these long fluid movements the way that I do with an airbrush. You can also get a in in addition to this Copic airbrush system which has the Copic gun which is you know like 30, 40, 50 dollars. I don't remember what it is. You can get that if you're going to also do Copic airbrush and then you can use it for this as well and you need a cord to link to the compressor and then you need the compressor and the compressor is the big expense. They're like 150 dollars online but you can get them at a store near you for probably 50 bucks and ask to see if your spouse or your neighbor or anybody that you know has a compressor because a lot of people will have that in a toolkit or you know out in their garage and stuff so maybe you can borrow one to try it with. But there's also a little crafty one I say crafty because it's meant to do either painting nails or painting cookies and it's got a lot less pressure to it but you can still use it to move color around. I'll have a link to that one in the description as well but I also have a whole other video all about alternate supplies for blowing things so if you're interested in more of that then the link will be in the doobly-doo. However, I want to put out a major, major, major caution about this in the first place. One is the caution is that you're going to get addicted to this so be prepared. Everything's going to get alcohol ink on it because you're going to be alcohol inking everything you own because you can do this on metal, you can do it on plastic, you can do it on apparently a cigar box so now I have a gallon of this kills two stuff. I'm going to be looking for other things I can paint. I have a rocking chair that needs some work and maybe I'm going to alcohol ink a rocking chair. I don't know. However, okay back to the warnings. The other warning is do this in a ventilated room. You can actually really hurt your lungs. You could burn your eyes like you could just have too much chemical stuff going on and there are people who are really sensitive to that and I don't want you to find out the hard way that it's going to make you pass out or anything and also if you're going to use anything for blowing like a straw you really, really, really want to be careful. For one, you don't want to use the ranger solution that they have that they sell because the ranger solution is going to damage your lungs if you inhale it so do not do that. Don't ever put it in a mister. No way that's going to be able to be ingested into you by accident. So that's why I use the 99% alcohol. You can also use the 91%. I've gotten the 91% at target in the section for all medications and makeups and all that kind of stuff. It's in that area and I've also gotten the 99% on Amazon because I was trying to see if there was a difference between the 99 and the 91. Again, see my other video all about supplies for more information on that and the pipettes you can get very easily at craft places will sell them and they're also you know all over the interwebs etc. Links to all the supplies that I'm using are down below and that sort of stuff. I'm just layering dollops of color and dollops of the alcohol and forming them into little flowers by moving the color and the alcohol around using the airflow and the thing I love about the Copic airbrush or any airbrush is that I can actually make the air go where I want it to. I can work things back and forth pushing color and creating a shape that dries and then as soon as it dries I know I can drop more of the alcohol in and get some other things to move in particular ways. So I will be having a class on using alcohol inks in the near future so stay tuned for that if you're interested. But this was just a crazy wild fun project to do and I hope you'll consider doing crazy wild things like this but I'm about to show you where I've ruined this project or some will say I've ruined it. I liked how it came out but it has this sort of glossy feel to the outside of it in any of the areas where a lot of the ink collects it gets sort of super shiny and I thought oh I'll just do some epoxy spray on it that'll be good I'll just go get some spray varnish or something and I did I got some spray varnish I took it outside got some newspaper and thought well I'm just going to spray this puppy it'll be great and I sprayed it it came out looking like I was spraying something white but I thought oh it's going to dry clear I'm sure because it said that it was varnish and it's actually white varnish so I now have a pastel alcohol ink box. How crazy is that? I kind of liked it when it was all said and done even though it felt kind of disappointing so make sure you get one that's clear and not white I mean the lid on this thing was white but I didn't realize it was actually white spray so there you go I just did a light coat of it heavier coat on the top apparently because that's the part that went more pastel but I still think it's beautiful and it's not tacky at all on the outside of it so I I achieved that much at the very least and the colors are still really pretty I mean it just it looks like it's frosted glass over it now as opposed to having so much bright color and it actually goes better in my studio because I don't have anything that's like that intense kind of colors I have more subtle colors like this I have no idea what I'm going to put in it if you have ideas let me know but look at these gorgeous feet these are from ranger but again I bought these years ago I don't even know if they're available anymore but tell me in the comments did I ruin it did I I hope not I think it's still pretty and yeah you know you make lemonade out of lemons you buy the wrong paint and you get what you get but thanks so much for staying tuned for this video more links in the description I'll see you later