hi guys kate here with tested and today we're going to do another halloween from home video
so these are going to be some creepy specimen jars i don't know about you i have a thing for
specimen jars i just think they're so cool and the best thing about this project is that it's really
easy to do you use materials that you can get at any craft store or you might already have at home
especially jars like these i feel like i've seen some really cool ones at thrift stores even so
keeping the budget low and the the skill set easy but let's try it out i bought a
bunch of random creepy things at a local craft store so i have some mixtures of spiders here
and some uh scorpions uh i really like these baby heads especially because they come super
creepy these are halloween themed so they've already got the dark eyes and the gray skin
and along the same lines i've got some baby arms and legs as well these were all relatively cheap
and they require almost nothing beforehand if you wanted to put in the extra time and
effort you could totally make your own creatures you could sculpt something out of sculpey you
could use thermoplastic to mold something you could even take one of these and paint on top
of it to really kick it up however much time you want to put into it you can make something cool
after we take our cool creepy items we are going to put them in the jars we are going to suspend
them in liquid for this we're going to use mostly water a little bit of alcohol ink but we might
even have a glowing surprise at the end so stay tuned for that all right before i fill anything
up with liquid i'm going to do a fun little tester i'm going to take this jar and paint the outside
with an antique finish mod podge that's going to make it look like it's a really old specimen jar
that's been sitting on some crazy scientist shelf forever so if you've never used mod podge before
it is amazing i personally have been using it for years since i was a kid um at its core it's
really not too dissimilar from elmer's glue right it's water-based i believe non-toxic it
smells the same and it's really easy to use it's most commonly used for decoupaging or you know
putting down cutouts of things and applying this over the surface to really glue it down
it is super versatile it comes in many different finishes this is an antique matte finish which is
pretty cool because i i feel like i've never had occasion to use this finish before and it's on
my bucket list to use every kind of my gosh if you find that the mod podge is too thick or too opaque
you can always take a wet paper towel or get your brush a little wet and try and remove some of that
that you put on it's just like putting a wash on add a little take a little off find the sweet spot
it also helps break up some of the brush lines that you leave behind
now the the mod podge is really helpful in giving that really old dusty used look this isn't going
to look like a brand new jar that you found in a shop this is going to look like something
that has been sitting around for a very long time gathered up the dirt and the dust of the ages but
i think you'll be surprised at how much clarity you'll still have you'll still be able to see
the figures all right all right when you're ready pick out your beasts i think for this one because
it's the biggest i'm gonna do the baby head in that one i'm i'm the most excited about the baby
head save that i think my mod podge one i'm going to do
since it's the smallest one i think i'll do scorpions
so you can have some fun here deciding exact placement of items varying orientation
how full you want it is it a full bushel of scorpions is it just a couple
you also want to make sure it reads you know if it's too full or if they're angled in a weird way
you might not be able to tell what it is let's see what we can do here i want to try and get
some pushed up against the edge and that'll help you uh identify what we're looking at
let me put a few more in there
you also want to take into account any floating that might happen when you add the water
so if you can wedge them in place make sure that they won't move too much once you
put a bunch of liquid in there kind of like that
this one let's do a baby arm
now whatever's at the top of the jar is going to be seen less because of this lid so i'm going
to put the fingers at the bottom and then the shoulder at the top then you won't see it as much
there you go nice creepy hand now we fill with water now some of these jars are going to be
better for water tightness than others obviously when you have something with a rubber gasket seal
around the edge that's going to really help hold on to it especially something like one of these
this is called a gross top that's going to be very effective so potentially these could be things
that you save for multiple years now something like this where it's just a pressure fit top like
that obviously you're not going to want to turn it upside down you might get a little spillage
and there's a possibility of evaporation over time so could be at the end of the season you dump your
liquid out you refill it next time that baby arm's trying to float out now in order to make this
look a little bit more creepy and aged i'm going to try adding a few drops of yellow alcohol ink
i'll use my baby arm as a stir stick
see that nice weird amber glow you've got going
feels pretty weird really lay on that formaldehyde look don't worry if you get alcohol ink on
yourself or on a hard surface as the name implies it is soluble in alcohol so get an alcohol wipe
clean yourself up oh it's pretty good all right i've added my head in here i poured the water
in a little trick with this one since there was a hole in this head it wanted to float
so i turned the sink on real low and i let a tiny stream of water go in there filled it with water
that helps it stay a little more sunk it doesn't want to
go all the way to the surface so pro tip there add some color to this one
i'm going to add some water to our scorpions
something i think that is worth noting about when you use the mod podge antiquing
is because it does obscure a bit what's inside it might be a good thing to use
say if you have an object that looks a little more cheap or something that you want to hide seam
lines on or if you just want it to even look more creepy and you only see maybe two eyes staring out
at you but it could be a good way to to hide some things that you don't want to be fully visible
all right now for the spiders i want to try something a little special
instead of just filling it with water i'm going to try making it glow so here's a
little technique i looked up let's see how it goes first i'm going to put gloves on
i'm going to fill a cup with the water that i want to put in here
now i'm going to activate my glow stick
so something i didn't know before this is that when you snap the glow stick
it's that you're actually breaking a glass vial that's inside that let's loose all the goo
so that's something you want to be very careful of in these next steps so i have a cup here
i'm going to try to very carefully contain it while i cut into it now these are super turbo
scissors you're probably going to need to use a matte knife or a heavy duty knife make sure that
you're in an area that you can clean up nicely and try not to get this on your skin
do you hear that all right i've cut this open now i'm going to attempt to clean off these scissors
these glowing scissors all right now i'm going to pour this liquid into my water
i'm going to make sure not to let the actual pieces of the glow stick fall in there
all right now i'm going to add some dish soap
and some peroxide these things are supposed to help extend the life
of the glow so i'm going to stir this up
whoa now i'm going to add it to my spiders see if i can do this without spilling
oh
all right here we have all of our different liquids i wanted to get more of a different
feel a mix and match type thing so i did a few different colors of alcohol ink in here
obviously we have the antiquing on the outside of this one we've got our glow stick going in here
and this one is just the straight yellow alcohol ink everything looks a little different
now if you don't have time to do all of this if you don't want to mess with the liquids
a really fast and easy option is something like this which is just taking transparencies that i
printed on my printer cutting them out shoving them in a jar now the last step is obviously
this guy is glowing all by itself but what if you want to illuminate the other ones i bought
these they're basically like little coasters but they are leds so you push the back they
have different glowing options i want just straight on and if you put one underneath here
voila they glow so this is the perfect recipe to make a very creepy bunch of specimen jars at home
for halloween thanks for joining me and i hope you get spooky with it