Which Inks?

Hello! I hope you're having a wonderful Saturday! Last time I posted I looked back at some basic techniques to create inked backgrounds. This prompted some questions about which inks I use so this is a whistle stop tour of my favourite types of inks!

Alcohol Inks - my daughter's favourite! These can be used on a variety of surfaces from metal and dominoes to glass or plastic and even glossy card stock. I use them on shrink plastic too as the colour is always very pure. They come in a little bottle and can be used directly onto your project or pop some on an Alcohol Ink Applicator. For more tips on using Alcohol Inks why not start here? I think you can see, by the state of the bottles, these are well used!

Distress Inks - these are my absolute favourites and now come in Stains and marker pens (the pens will be in the UK by the end of March I believe!) I use these inks pretty much every day and I suspect I use Vintage Photo Distress Ink on virtually every project I do (I really must hide this ink pad and find a new favourite!) If you are fond of embossing these inks stay wet longer allowing you to emboss with ease. By staying wet this also means you can blend the ink on it's own or with other colours - in fact using more than one colour can look really striking! You can ink a project and blend the colour and stamp an image on top and the image will stand out against the background - a useful tip if you are entering a monochrome challenge! The ink also stays the colour you chose even if heated or wetted which means you have a more even finish to your project. As I showed last time, Distress Inks react with water and can 'bleach' giving a really cool vintage feel. Distress Inks are safe to use on photos and can create some really interesting effects.

The other main type of ink I use is Archival Ink. I use this when I want a really crisp image. The ink will not smudge when dried and will therefore not react once I put Distress Ink over the top - even if I wet it! My favourite colours to use regularly are Jet Black (I know black is boring but it's really useful!) and Coffee but I am currently experimenting with Cobalt and it's a really lovely sort of French Navy colour!

There is one other ink I use a lot - and that's clear ink for embossing or use with PanPastels. I use the ink when I want to create a 'resist' image or as a sort of 'glue' for the PanPastels to adhere to. It's surprising how, when I sat down to write this post, I nearly forgot about this ink and yet I use it often. I think it's because it's a sort of 'workhorse' ink that's always there but isn't terribly glamorous!

This is a tag I've made to show the difference between the inks. The background is Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint Distress Inks and the leaves to the left are Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The middle leaves are Coffee Archival Ink and the leaves to the right are clear ink with brown PanPastels over the top. The small flowers and leaf are shrink plastic inked with Alcohol Inks.

Thanks for popping by!

Gabrielle x

 

Comments

[Eleanor]

A very useful, clear explanation, thank you. :)
I love the effect on the clear shrink plastic - it never occurred to me to do that!
E
xx

[jayne]

I am always forgetting so this will be a post i will look at again & again ...Hope you'll do more things like this (hint hint)
xxxx

[Lynne]

Thanks for sharing.
I've seen pan pastels but can't make up my mind whether to buy some.

[Erika]

Great techniques.
Erika.