USING ALCOHOL INKS

Stamps by Pink Cat Studio

Making A Colorful Metallic Background using Adirondack Alcohol Inks

I know many of you already have your Christmas Cards mailed so I wanted to demonstrate a technique that can be applied year long for beautiful backgrounds. Many of you have perfected your alcohol ink technques, but many write with questions about how much to use on the felt applicator and how to best apply the alcohol inks to glossy paper.

Sometimes getting the hang of a technique takes a little trial and error, so I decided to share my trials as well as the result I was trying to achieve.

Alcohol inks are permanent inks that can be diluted with blending solution or used straight. The new metallic alcohol inks are a lot like the paint in paint pens and are used similar to the way paint pens are used to make polished stone backgrounds. They're a little slower drying, which is nice because they blend a little more nicely adding an overall metallic sheen instead of puddles of metallic and they can be applied directly to the applicator instead of directly to the paper.

Step 1:
Cut a piece of glossy paper the size you want. I find it easier to work with half sheets or smaller instead of full sheets of paper.

Step 2:
Drop alcohol inks onto your felt applicator. You may use cotton balls but be sure to wear gloves to keep from staining your hands. Also be aware that cotton balls will use more ink than the felt and therefore not be as cost effective. How large you make the areas of ink and how far apart the ink drops are vastly change the end result. The applicator on the left was used to make the background in the first exmple below and the applicator on the right was used to make the second example and the final background that was used for the card shown above.

Step 3:
First Try:
The first applicator, above on the left, contained 8 drops of pesto, 21 drops of red pepper distributed in three different spots and 10 drops of metallic gold. I did have to reapply 3-4 drops of each color toward the end because I didn't have enough ink to cover my A2 size paper. The end result looked very spotted and I have to confess that I hadn't shaken the gold metallic ink bottle well enough so the gold came out very transluscent. This wasn't the look I wanted at all. I also learned that trying to apply alcohol inks with a felt tip over cured gold embossing powder will seriously dull the gold embossing powder and not look very good at all. I don't normally count my drops of alcohol inks, but somtimes telling someone that I just squeeze a little on doesn't help unless they can see me do it.

Next Try:
I tend to like the look for larger spots of ink instead of smaller spots of ink. For my next try I applied the inks in larger areas, running the areas together. I started with 30 drops of gold and 18 drops each of red pepper and pesto. I photographed it while reapplying the alcohol ink, using just a few drops of each when reapplying. The end result was very metallic looking and I'm sure I could have gotten away with less gold but I was happy with the look. I'm supplying a close up look to the right. When photographing cards made with this technique it's really hard to see the nice ink detail that you can see when looking directly at the card.

Other information about the final card:
The sequins hanging from jump rings are Funquins from WillowBead. The adhesive metal strip was cut from a Karen Foster Metal Sheet, crumpled and rolled back out flat before applied to the card. The stamped images were applied to the card using pop dots for dimension.

Adding Blending Solution:
If you want a more background with more subtle colors, use a litte less alcohol ink and add some blending solution to your applicator. The blending solution really makes a more reactive looking background and separates the metallic inks out more than just using the alcohol inks alone. The pear tree card uses eggplant and lettuce alcohol inks with the gold mixative. The quilled letter card uses lettuce and pesto with gold mixative.

Coloring Metal:
These also work great on other non-porous surfaces. Here are two examples of tins. Both use cranberry, eggplant and silver metallic mixatives. There was a lot more silver used on the smaller tin.