Experiments with inks and daubers

I was playing around trying to create some papers for the journal project I mentioned yesterday and was making little colourful circles on deli paper. I found my stash of dauber tops for paint bottles and had a bit of a play.

The rough texture of the dauber top gives an odd texture to the paint dots. This may change when they totally dry, or it could be the deli paper, not sure. I have a handful of dauber tops so I figured I should soak them clean rather than install one on every paint bottle I own. That would be silly! But I did think about the (cheaper) fingertip daubers and as I reached for them I saw my alcohol inks that were still sitting on my desk. Had a go with a spare one of those to interesting effect!

I could have gone on for quite a bit more with just a dot of ink. I also tried adding a bit of alcohol to the ink and a different colour in the middle for a more interesting dot

And then disaster. I have never had this happen before!

So because I had one of the paint-top daubers to hand…

and oh man I love those! So not officially collage fodder, but it is nonetheless. I will make more and stash these sheets. The transparency will work great over all sorts of things AND as it is alcohol ink it won’t smear or run. Yay! Hope to find time to work on my Nest Journal over the weekend but we will see. Covid and Flu jabs on Saturday so we’ll see how I feel.

Lift ink alternative and Yupo substitute

OK. So. if you look back a handful of posts you will see all my experiments with alcohol inks, slow-drying medium, and lift ink techniques.Where the SDM was falling down was removing the SDM from the substrate. I do not have any Yupo and the gel plate is no substitute for that part of the process. I tried a few ways to remove the SDM once I stamped to transfer the image but with no real success. Not given up, just none of my first experiments worked.

I still had all the packaging from my new stamps on my desk and that gave me an idea. I grabbed a bit of the plastic bag that they came packaged in and added the alcohol ink to that.

So as you can see on the right, the SDM did remove the alcohol ink, and in this case, daubbing with a wet wipe and gentle rubbing removed some of it, but not all. The transfer was good but darker ink would have made it better

Too much yellow I think and I wasn’t as quick to stamp it off as maybe I could have been. But still a very credible image, I think.

I also found a scrap of transparency film on my desk, the kind with the paper strip at the top for use in a printer, and I tried that instead. Same process, drip on the inks, let them dry, brayer on the stamp with the SDM, lift the ink stamp it off – this time on some deli paper. I got two images, the first by stamping off then adding more lift ink over the stamp and stamping it again

This time, daubbing at the transparency image to remove the SDM worked a lot better. So while adding the ink to the bag and then using that to transfer the stamp is fine, using the transparency film is better because both elements are usable!

I mean, that’s pretty good, right? I like it over text:

But I added some gold acrylic paint to the back and I might like that a bit better.

Sadly the images are just a little bit bigger that an ATC size so I will have to figure out the best use for it. Maybe a special birthday card or another art journal page, not sure. But I like the process and the results!

But my oh my is my room in a state. So tidy up is in order before WOYWW tomorrow. I am falling behind on the Sept. Fodder School class so better focus on that sharpish lest I not finish before October and FS THREE begins. Dear me!

Art journal page with Alcohol Ink transfer

If you recall last week I began playing with the alcohol ink transfer using slow drying medium.

Ideally both bits would have been useful. I really wanted to do something with the better sample, so I made a very quick art journal page. We got a bit wrapped up in some travel planning and sorting out health cover for a visit to the USA is both complex and expensive! Hours and hours on the phone. Ugh. Anyway, it left me with less play time than I expected. The sample was, sadly, on thinner paper than I would have liked, and at some point I might do another and maybe layer it over the top, not sure.

I really like this bit of text from the stamp set. All three from the series are just so stinkin’ cute. Love ’em.

I am trying some experiments with a substrate for the alcohol inks that is not Yupo (have none) but just might produce something usable in the same way, with both the transferred image AND the daubbed-off “lift ink” image left behind. I am perhaps not being super clear, but hopefully, if it works, it will all be revealed in a more informative way.

More alcohol lift with SDM

I got some new stamps that I was pretty keen to play with. I wanted to play more with alcohol ink lifting using the slow-drying medium and the gel plate. I sort of recall that lifting with actual lift ink is done by adding the AIs to yupo or some other slick paper. I have none but I did wonder if just adding the ink to the gel plate would work, both for a transfer of an image using a stamp AND pulling off the leftovers. I’m not 100% there yet but I do have a plan!

The annoying part is how long it seems to take for the inks to dry on the gel plate. Maybe it was too much cover?

I rolled out the SDM onto a scrap of furniture pad, which has the quality almost of the Distress ink pads, but I suspect another gel plate (maybe even the hideous Creative Palette version LOL!) would be better. Thing to try #1.

I then rolled over the stamp and lifted the image and stamped that onto plain old paper

I tried daubing off the “lift ink” with a bit of paper towel. Wrong call. Thing to try #2 is lifting it with a wet wipe or wet paper towel. I did lift the rest of the ink from the gel plate by rolling the SDM over it and then pulling it all off.

Not as clear an image as I would have liked! Think to try #3 is stamping the image on Deli paper so it could be transparent over something else. I expect this is going to be my weekend play, along with more of the Fodder School class for September.

More Tie Dyed deli papers with image transfer

It has been so hot, for the 2nd time this year, only when we have high heat for many consecutive days with no respite overnight, the house has been hotter than I would like, especially in my office. The downstairs is very tolerable still but upstairs not so much. So I have to say I have been avoiding it, a bit.

I did manage a few more experiments with the alcohol ink + deli paper and some image transfers. My laser printer is being weird, not recognizing the manual feed drawer, which is really what I need for the double-dose of toner. More on that in a bit.

I really wanted a bit more open space for these new ones and mostly managed that.

And aimed for colour combos that were more contrasting – you can also see a bit of how I tied the deli paper.

I still had the previous ones and thought they might be OK to experiment with the image transfer part and I think they worked well – this one, you can see the transparency in his face, with the text showing thru.

These laser print images (Greta Garbo and Charles Laughton, in case you don’t recognize them)

came out less well, solely because of the toner issues (maybe the heat didn’t help much either) although Greta is usable, I think. It’ll be an art journal page at some point.

I think I may put this aside for a bit. In cooler weather, when the paint is not drying on the plate so quickly, I think it’ll work even with a thinner coat of toner. But there is no doubt that these are really fun to make and will layer really well. I think I need to be on the lookout for more images. I really need to get back to Fodder School as season two wraps up this month before season three begins in October. I’d like to complete the last lesson in real time so need to try to focus on that. Sort of…

Still playing with deli paper

Gotta love YouTube. Watch one thing all the way thru and all of a sudden it think you are obsessed with that thing. So yeah, seeing a lot of alcohol ink things. One reminded me of the tie-dyed paper towel that I used for my August journal. So I had to try tie-dyed deli paper right?

Basically you scrunch it up or fold it or whatever you like, then drip on the ink. The original showed spraying the wad with alcohol to spread the inks but I feel like I would try it again and not do that, cause I got too much of an all over coverage. Also not so keen on spraying alcohol, even in a well ventilated room with open windows.

I like the look and they are great over things, but I feel like more open areas would be better.

And the reds, oranges and yellows were all a bit too close to each other, where the browns and blue and green offered a lot more contrast. I did quickly have a go at an image transfer, on the wrinkly crinkly paper (might be interesting as momigami, right?) but the right combination of images, color paint and area of the piece weren’t quite right. So if I have time I will play over the weekend and hopefully have more to show by Monday.

Supposed to be VERY hot for the next couple of days so I may just lay on the cool Victorian tiles all day, who knows?

Such a cool look…

Remember back a week or two when I was using the Slow Drying Medium as a substitute for Alcohol Lift Ink? Well. I had a bit of a thought.

I had pounced alcohol ink thru a stencil, and was thinking I would play a bit more with the image transfer idea, but of course the ink dries so quickly I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off the plate onto the deli paper without adding paint. Which kinda defeats the purpose, as that would leave me with a more solid background. But then!

I ran a thin bead of the SDM across the top of the gel plate and rolled it over the dried alcohol ink. I was able to pull at least three prints onto the deli paper with ease

And then by rolling the brayer that still had a bit of the SDM on it over the plate again I got two more nice prints on paper!

And THEN, I was looking at the stencil that was covered in alcohol ink and thought what if…? I laid the stencil back on to the gel plate

and rolled a bit more SDM over the top of the stencil and pulled that onto heavy cardstock. Oh my but it is pretty.

I am sure I could get more, but I do like how this is pulls both from the plate and the stencil. I am pretty sure this is something I will want to play with over and over again. I kinda feel the need to really explore and nail down the technique. And I don’t want to overlook anything!

But I also still have the snippet roll stuff that I pushed aside that needs dealing with so I may have to save the play for the weekend.

(sigh) isn’t that always the way?

Image Transfer over Alcohol ink on deli paper

Oh my. I saw a really old (2016) video while doing my daily exercise the other day. It was from Joggles and was a technique that involved layers of deli paper and alcohol ink squirted on the top layer, then allowed to sink thru the layers, colouring them to varying degrees.

I was insanely keen to give it a go, so I swept everything away and had a go. OMG.

A walk thru the layers. The top row is actually the lowest layers and the bottom right is the top, where the ink gets added.

I honestly don’t think that the photos do it justice. My crazy thought was that doing an image transfer over these amorphous ink blobs, translucent and unlikely to smear, was going to be cool. And it was!

And I of course the deli paper nearly disappears when you adhere it with matte medium.

This flimsy magazine paper was not sturdy enough for the job, but one of my art journal pages? Oh yeah!

And the final page:

I am totally in love with this technique. The addition of the image transfer is just fabulous, and the papers are simply stunning. I will totally make 1000 more, I’m sure.

No Lift Ink? No Problem!

I saw a video about Lift Ink on YouTube and a specific technique for making interesting backgrounds. I wanted to give it a go but did not have any Lift Ink. Frankly, I did not even know what that was, which is pretty bad, given it’s been around for a couple of years now. So I watched a TH video about it and had a think about what the properties of it were. I had a bottle of something called Slow Drying Medium (by Winsor&Newton, now just called SDM 🙂 ) so I decided to play around with that and see what happened. A lot.

I did the hand sanitizer layer first, then dripped and spattered the alcohol inks over that.

I brayered the SDM on a glass plate, so I could try stamping a foam stamp into it, but also brayered it right on the stamp. It worked perfectly to “lift” the alcohol ink from the gel plate and stamp it on paper. Not hugely inspiring, those prints. I expect maybe Yupo paper would be better?

I played with a few colour combos then I kinda carried on with the video idea and lightly brayered over the gel plate with the SDM and pulled that print on paper. So pretty. You get both the background, but also the impression from the foam stamps. Love it.

So I tried it on rice paper – and my rice paper is not very thick, it is “practice paper” so cheaper and not as strong. Also lovely!

The final bit of play was to pull up everything that was left on the plate with some heavy-bodied white. Wow.

You can’t see it but the plate is pristine – every bit showed up on that print.

I really need to figure out how best to use them cause IRL they are just stunning. And I need to look at more lift ink techniques to see if this SDM actually works for all of them. So curious!

When I am an old woman, I shall wear PURPLE….

The ABC Printing Challenge I am working on is U: Upcycle. At the moment I am sharing experiments. I was watching the sample video, gelli plate printing on plastic bags, and it made me think of clear things, like plastic page protectors, hard plastic packaging, and clear contact paper. And I thought about things that would remain clear – like Alcohol inks. That set me off on a journey LOL!

First experiment was thinking I might make a version of the circle curtain, using page protectors or contact paper instead of plastic bags. I thought they would be too opaque. Interesting but not very crisp, visually

So I tried adding the AI to the plate thru a stencil then sat looking at all that wasted ink ON the stencil. With the ink drying on the plate

I shifted over to another idea. I stuck a sheet of contact paper over the STENCIL – both sides had plenty of AI on them – and dripped a bit of straight alcohol into the holes. As part of the Upcycle part, I was using that hard foamy, plastic packaging to apply the ink, so pouncing that thru the holes added some of the ink on the packaging as well.

Such a lovely burst of colour! I stuck that to a bit of hard plastic clamshell packaging and held it up tot the light. Yummy!

Much like the first one, it is still indistinct, albeit pretty enough. Possibly need more of a play. In the end I peeled it off the plastic and added it to some white paper. And I pulled the print off the plate and did the same.

Love it but not sure how to use it. I do have a thought for the other bit, and will share that tomorrow!