Alcohol Ink Tips Tricks and Techniques

1. Introduction to Alcohol Ink : Welcome to alcohol, inks, tips, tricks and techniques. We're going to be covering 11 different techniques using alcohol inks and nine different surfaces that they can be used on when some are appropriate, when others are not. For each section of the course, I'll be creating different samples with the backgrounds that are created, just to give you an idea of what they can be used for, possibly in a card or a product class also comes with a supply less PDF that is linked to where you can find the supplies so that you don't have to spend time sourcing everything. Just go to the supply list link, enter your email and I send it right up to you. If you have any questions at all throughout the course, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and ask, I'm happy to help. Now let's play with some alcohol inks. 2. How to use an Applicator Tool part 1: Alright, so the first technique that we're going to do with alcohol links, we're going to use these alcohol ink tools. And we're going to put the alcohol links rate on them and where you're going to stamp the alcohol ink rate onto our surface. Now, when you're new to alcohol inks, what I would suggest is going with colors that are close to each other on the color wheel. Doesn't really matter which ones is your personal preference, but I wouldn't go with opposite ones because opposite colors combined and they end up making brown. So just so that you don't end up with a bunch of brown, I would choose ones that are somewhat close to each other on the color wheel because then you know that they're going to coordinate well together. So for this particular one, I'm using meadow, I'm using turquoise, and I'm using purple Twilight. So first I'm just going to use just these three colors and then I will add some silver metallic mixed motive to it. So the tools come in a rectangle shape or a circle shape. There's no difference between the two other than the fact that they are rectangle and circle. So what we're gonna do is we're going to add a few drops of each one. And I am squeezing the bottle just a little bit. And then I'm going to add a little bit of the alcohol blending solution. And that's just going to help the colors blend together each with each other. If I didn't use this, the alcohol would dissipate too quickly and would end up just being dots. So even though like right now when I'm doing it, it is dots, it will start blending. Now one thing with the rectangle one is if you do like this, you're just gonna get a pattern. So you wanna make sure that you're moving them around. So the paper that I'm using right now is alcohol ink, glossy card stock. It is a non porous or a it is a porous card stock. It's clay coated, but it's got a glossy surface to it. So it just makes the alcohol inks really shine. It makes them look nice and vibrant. I'm just going to add more of each of these colors because I want those bits of alcohol ink to be bigger than they are. They're just too small. And I'm going to add a little bit of this solution to it. That's better. And you can keep going with this for as long as you want. So you get the look that you want. Right now we're just creating a background. Now, like I said, we're using glossy card stock. It is the only card stock that is poorest that works well with alcohol inks. If you use regular card stock here. So the difference between the two, they just don't it just doesn't cut it. This just it just brightens up the alcohol inks and that makes them look absolutely beautiful. So once again, keep going. If you've done one layer and you just lightly tap, you end up getting these little tiny bits which adds some texture to it. If you want, you can actually just put drops of the colors on there as well. So the one thing with the glossy card stock is because it's non poor or because it's porous. I keep saying the wrong thing. If I were to stay takes them alcohol and just wipe this off, it wouldn't come out completely white. There would still be the colors in there because they are going right into the paper. So I'm just going to leave that, well, we'll just break up some of those colors a little bit there and leave that to dry. Another surface that you can use is acetate. Now, if I just leave that like that, we can actually see what I'm doing. So I'm going to put some white paper on there just so that you can see what I'm doing here. And I really need to add some more alcohol to this, so we're going to do that. And every time I do that, I do it like between 35 drops. And again I am squeezing a little bit, but I do add a tiny little bit of the blending solution because it just helps the colors blend together with each other better. Now you see how the difference in the colors that I, since I added some more. So you could use this on the front of a card, kinda like a stained glass or you could stamp on it whatever you want. You can also use the ink lift pad to remove the color from it, which is a technique that we will do in a different lesson. But the more you keep touching this, the more it keeps changing. That aside to dry. Another surface very similar to the acetate that you can use is foil. So this is actually just foil like plumber's tape. But I got from Home Depot. The limitation with that is it comes I think this is two inches wide. It only comes in one width. So if you're doing the front of a card, you're going to have a scene. So ranger actually makes foil tape, which is perfect for doing for the front of cards. Because then you have an entire surface without having a scene rate in the middle of it. This seem really kind of takes away from it. But look how cool that alcohol ink reacts when I just draw some of the colors on there. It just pushes the colors out. And then you get a section of that color. And I can go right into say, the blue and put a green and then I'll see a green dot. It doesn't mix the two together. It just pushes it out, which is really cool to see and it's a fun thing to play with. So the thing with the acetate and with the foil and as well as the UBO, which I'm going to show in just a second, is because it's a completely non porous surface. I could take some of the alcohol blending solution or I could take some just isopropyl alcohol which I happen to have in a dropper and I also have in a mister I could spray it, I could wipe it off and I would have a clean surface. So if you didn't like what you were doing, you could completely clean your surface and start all over again. 3. How to use an Applicator Tool part 2: Which is great for when you're starting out because it's nice to have that little bit of leeway. I'm just gonna do the circle one only so that you see it's really no different from the rectangle one other than shape. But once again, even with the circle one, I want to make sure that I'm twisting it around. Otherwise I'm going to end up having a pattern. So if you haven't heard of UPA paper before, it's actually not paper. It's a plastic, It's a synthetic paper that works lovely with alcohol inks. And it's actually one of my favorite services to work on because of the fact that it's completely non porous. Everything sits on the top. I loved the fact that you can wipe it clean. Now the thing with UPA is it does stain. So even if you wipe it clean, It's not going to be completely white. Again, likely it will have some staining from the colors that you are always using before. But for the most part, if you didn't like what you were doing and you wipe to clean and you had some staining and you can just choose some colors that were a little bit darker than that so that it wouldn't affect that. But I love how with alcohol inks, even once it's dried, you can go back. I'm just gonna do this while that's drying. And you can add some more layers. So you don't necessarily, it's not a one and done. You can go back and you can add extra layers to it. You definitely want to make sure that you don't like if I just wanted to do this, I would end up having a circle. So you want to kind of blend them out. You don't necessarily have to go over the whole surface. You could just do whatever it is that you like. But you want to make sure that you don't just do a bunch of dots because it's going to look a little bit weird. And then even with the UPA, I can go take just the alcohol inks themselves and I can add dots. I can even do it with the blending solution. Creates a really cool backgrounds with that. So I'm going to let these dry and it'll be back and show you some cards that I meet with them. I think that one thing I've realized I forgot to show is I'm going to use some silver mix it up. So you hear that little noise here. There's a little metal ball in there. And you want to make sure that when you're shaking it up new fear that because that's mixing up all the microbes in there. And you want to make sure that that gets mixed up really well before you use it. So I'm going to put some of each of the colors on my felt, although I probably really don't need to because I think it's quite saturated. I'm going to add just a couple of dots of the metallic. It can really take over something. So especially when you're first starting. So I'm just going to use two little ones and that's probably actually too much. But I'm going to put some of the blending solution rating between that to break it up. And let's add the metallic to it. Once again, you want to make sure that you're turning your tool while you're sampling because you don't want to end up with a repeating pattern all over it. You see how you get some metallic all over there. Now, this particular, like using the ink blending tool is really not my favorite way to use alcohol inks. That's kind of why I'm starting with it because this is when alcoholics first came out. This is what you did. This is the only way you did it. And things have really advanced since then. So as we progress through this course, we're going to be using some of my more favorite ways to use alcohol inks and alcohol and through something that I've been using for 15 years or so. So and yet they definitely have progressed. I mean, he's a little bit on here to just break up some of that. Was white dots. When I put the blending solution down, it really need some white dots and I've actually gotten a little bit rid of that. Let's just change it up and add some of the silver to it. And now, alright, so this is what I did with those pieces. So the acetate, I just stamped butterfly on it and then glued it to the front of a card. Now, I will put the list of all the supplies that I'm using for these samples with pictures of the sample. So you remember exactly which one is used with which the PDF supply list that is included with this class. Now I use some Matt collage medium to blue this together. So I am waiting for that to dry and hoping that it's not visible. Once it's completely dry, it's supposed to dry completely invisible and clear, but right now it does not look very well or very good. The UPA paper that I did, I'm going to save that for a future lesson. You'll see that in one of the upcoming ones, the foil piece and I haven't actually glued this together. This is what I would like to do with it. But you see how we've got the seam in the middle, it really detracts from the card. So this is a good reason to use the full sheets from Ranger. The only reason I don't have them is because when I bought this foil tape, apparently I bought a lifetime supply. So I have a whole lot of it and I'm trying to use it up. You could do some sort of mixed media project with it where those seams were part of the design and that would not interfere with it. But for this particular card, I kinda thought this looked a little bit northern lights, a little bit kind of. So I thought that would be really cool. But once I got it all together, I thought that that seam is just to visible for me to want to actually finish it like that. And then the glossy card stock. Since this particular technique is not necessarily my favorite anymore, I thought it would be good to just die cut the pieces and use them and as silhouettes on the front of the card. Now I would put a little sentiment here. I typically wait to add my sentiments and tell I'm going to send a card out. Because if I put Happy Birthday on here and this would have been the perfect one for a sympathy card. I don't want to I want to keep my options open. So typically I don't put sentiments on cards until I'm ready to give them to someone. So that's what I've done with these samples, will see you in the next lesson. 4. Using Alcohol Ink to create Stripes & Plaid: All right, so another background that you can do with this tool is just a simple stripe. So I am taking my alcohol inks and putting them in a row on my phone. And so the colors that I'm using here are lettuce, pesto, and citrus. I'm going to quit just a row of the blending solution. Now, I did all three of the same color family. You could do all different ones. I'm trying to get a little bit of a little bit of a more subtle background so that it doesn't interfere with doing cards. Now, you could also do like a wavy background if you wanted to. So you could do like if you did it in blues, you could do some water that way. The one thing is, I think a lot of people will start thinking plowed. And I'm just going to show you what happens when you try to do a plot with this. So once again, a little bit of blending solution. That stripe actually is a little bit more bold than my first one. But as soon as I go to do a plaid here, there's a little bit of one, but it's definitely not a bold. So it's going to be a lot more subtle just so you know what happens. So I'm going to make cards out of the US and then I will show you what I did. So this is what I ended up doing with them. I kept this one super simple. I took Math die cut, only put on half because this is a particularly large one. And then I put some rock candy stickers on the body. So little bit tacky, so I'm going to wait till it dries completely. But I wanted to have a little bit more texture on it. So that's what they did with that one. This one, I ended up going all Christmas and put some Christmas die cuts with some holographic paper and some glitter paper. And then this is just cool testicles. You could just use a gold pen to do the strings on there as well. But I thought the tide in a little bit with the gold of the paper. And then I just added some of the gold stickers in the center of those two ornaments just to tie it all in as well. So there you go. Another background with alcohol use. 5. Fluid background with Alcohol Inks part 1: Welcome back. So my favorite way to use alcohol, alcohol inks is more in a fluid format. So these are actually my three favorite colors to do them with. And I don't do them together, I do them separate. But what I like about these three calories is when you're using them, like they haven't looked different colors that pop out of them. Some pinks and some light blues and that sort of thing. So I really love it using these because I really love seeing the different colors that come out of them. So I think today I'm going to do the denim one just because I feel like it right now. I'm not going to use ink lending solution, the alcohol link blending solution for this. The reason being you tend to use a whole lot of is in this. When you use a lot of it, you tend to get a sticky surface. It doesn't really totally dry up and that's because there's resonance in there. So I want it to completely dissipate and dry up. So I'm going to use 99 percent isopropyl alcohol. I have it in a mister and I also have an eye dropper bottle. And then I'm going to use a metallic with it. And I think for this one, I am going to use a rose gold metallic. I don't do that usually toward until towards the end. But just so you know what color I'm using. And again, you want to make sure you hear that little metal ball rolling because you'll want to make sure that all the micas in there are being mixed up in there. So the first thing I do, make sure your surface is clean. I am working with HIPAA, which is the synthetic surface. It is a plastic paper. So I'm going to miss the entire surface with some of my isopropyl alcohol. I am going to oops. And clearly had some dried ink on there, but that's okay. We thought cap off. And I have this ink blower that I'm going to use to push the ink around. Now, you could use canned air for this. That totally works. It does get a little bit expensive if you tend to use this or do this a lot, but it absolutely works, especially if you're just wanting to try it out and see if you like this technique. Now, the other thing you can use isn't empty squeeze bottle from the dollar store. But just take a look at this. As you're squeezing. See how quickly this reinforce and how slow this reemploy. So this will work. But you might get a little bit frustrated because the bottle doesn't reinforce nearly as quickly as the little to peer does. The other thing that you can use is a compressor. And I actually have a compressor below my desk that I regularly use. But because that's not available to everyone, I'm not using it for this class, as well as the fact that it's got quite a bit of noise to it when you're using it. So I don't want to be drowning out my voice with the sound of the air compressor. Now, I love what's happening here. This I don't necessarily love, but that's just because I have some dried ink there. But take a look at this. You see how there's pinks coming out there. There's, I love all the different shades of whatever color you're using. There's all sorts of different pinks within here, and I love how these colors do that. Now, you could certainly use several different colors if you wanted to. Use a few different colors, they're absolutely you can do that. I typically stick to one, maybe two colors simply because that's my personal preference, but not because you have to. It's whatever you want. This is your art piece. You do whatever you want. Now, you notice how I had those bits of the dried alcoholic that we're marking this, I just use a little bit of my isopropyl alcohol and they're not completely gone. You can still see them there, but it's faded them enough so they don't makeup as much of the piece as they did before. And you're just going to keep doing this whole process until you have a result that you like. So I'm going to add a few more drops of the blue and the Center. For some reason, I typically work in this format. I typically go from the top left to the bottom right on I don't really know why. I just like the way it looks. I like having some whitespace. Again, that's personal preference. If you want to completely cover your surface, you absolutely can. There's no reason you couldn't do that. And I've seen some absolutely beautiful work from people that have, that have done that once against that completely personal preference. There's no right or wrong to this really is your artwork. So I did add some of the rose gold. And I like how that's bringing out some of the pink colors that are already in there. I do have a few chunks of that row school that are all just in one spot. So I'm just going to put a little bit of blending solution on top of that. Now, most of the time I, while I'm working on my pieces, I will use the dropper throughout the process. The Mr. gets used at the beginning because I like to have a wet surface to start off with. That's just my personal preference. I've seen a lot of people that don't do it. If I get to a point where I don't like anything on there, I can just take the history and miss the entire thing to kinda rehydrate the ink and start over. Like how it's turning out. But I want to add a little bit of blue here and a little bit in there, the color there. And I typically put the color down first and then put a drop of the alcohol just to help spread it around. And you saw I did both pieces but I could just do this section, work on it and then do that section and work on it. I like letting it sit for a minute while I work on one section before I start moving the other section around. 6. Creating Fluid backgrounds part 2: And I like to make sure that I have some spots that are light. Like I love having some white spots and some dark spots and just add some more depth and some more texture to your piece. You can see I'm kinda moving it from both sides. I'm going to add a touch of the rose gold metallic there. And you want to be careful with the metallics because they can kind of take over a project if you accidentally use too much. So I always think less is more. I can always add more, but it's really hard to take away the metallics for sure. You can take away some of the color by adding some blending solution, but it's really hard to take away in italics. So I think actually I'm going to add a little bit more, a little drop of the rows school just to kind of balance out this part right down here. Lending solution, I just want to add a little bit more dark rate up at that top part there. And you can see with this tool, you actually had quite a bit of control over where it's going. And part of the secret of that is not using too much alcohol. If you use far too much alcohol is just going to cut. You're not going to be really able to contain it. So once you kinda have your first base layer down, you really want to be working on one section at a time. And then you don't necessarily need to wait till it's completely dry because of this particular part, particular spot, right there is not completely dry, but you can tell when I blow on it, It's not actually moving. So it's there's no harm in it and there's no risk of it moving around while I'm working on something else. Soften that line there. And you may get to a point where you've done something and you feel like you've completely ruined your project. Part of knowing when to stop is practice. And I've certainly done it where I have gotten to a point where I wish I had stopped sooner. But again, it's all learning. Now to clean up your desk. There's you'll notice when I lift this up, there's alcohol that has seeped underneath your surface to clean up your desk. It's really easy just a mr with isopropyl alcohol or you can use some hand sanitizer to do that. And then just wipe it up with some paper TO not really liking this little ridge here. So that's what I'm trying to work with and around. Oops. Didn't necessarily mean to add that much, but again, you can just work with what you got. And you see how I keep blowing it out just to get some spots that are a little bit lighter. So I'm that are a little bit darker. And just adds more depth to your piece. And these ones that I'm working on for this course are smaller pieces. They're typically card size. I'll do, I think a project at the end where I do an artwork that you can put on your wall. But that's just because it's a manageable surface to be practicing with. You can absolutely do these on larger surfaces and frame them. But when you're first starting out, it's much less intimidating working life with something that's four and a quarter by 5.5, then it is working with something that's say 12 by 18 or something. So these techniques don't need to be limited to a small size. They certainly can be done on a larger size, larger scale. But like I said, this is much less intimidating when you're starting out and just figuring out how the inks flow and how you can move them and how you can manipulate them. So I'm just going to do this tiny little bit here to let that dry. And I'm liking exactly how this is turning out. So once this is completely dry, all turn it into a card and then I'll show you what I did. So this is what he did with it here. Super simple card. I just mounted it to a complimentary met and then I just die cut some of the flowers, silhouettes from Mrs. excited that I will list in the supply list. But again, super simple card, I could easily add a little sentiment here if I want or on the inside of the card. And this certainly doesn't need to be on the front of the card. It could be a piece of artwork that you frame that would totally work to. What I would have loved to do would be stamp and Emboss on this. But because this is plastic, doesn't like heat, so you can't stamp and Emboss on it because to embossed, to melt the powder is too hot and this would end up warping. So dicots are a better thing to put on top of it. You can do a different technique with stamping that we will get to in a different lesson. But a simple card. But I loved that background. 7. Creating a Fluid Background with Alloys: All right, so the technique for this one is really the same as last one, except I'm going to use alcohol ink in a pitch black just to show you what that one turns out to me. And then I wanted to show you some of the alloys. These are fairly new to the alcohol ink line. And the point of them is to be a little bit more chunky. So that the metallic kind of chunks altogether just to give it more of a leafing effect. So I'm going to use foundry alloys with this one. And just like the metallic, you want to make sure you hear that rattling noise so that you know that you don't have the ball stuck in the ER, in the mica is at the bottom of your projects. So I'm going to mist with some isopropyl alcohol. And you can see I've got some bits from there when I was opening it up earlier. And I'm going to, and I quote a little bit of foundry in each one of them, gets some of the alcohol or the sum of the metallic read off the bat for this one. You see how it's all chunking together. So it just depends on the type of look that you want as to what you would use for it. But it's pretty cool how it gives you little bits of like a gold leaf rate in there. And Foundry is really nice because it's not, I'm not a huge fan of gold myself. I prefer silver or a platinum. But I like Foundry because it's got a little bit of a silver tone in it. So it's not really bright yellow gold. And then by putting it in right at the beginning, I can make sure, oops, got some on my surface there, but that's okay. I can make sure that it really gets spread around my project. But you see how we've got some blues coming out, some pinks coming out. I love the different colors that come out when I use this color. I'm going to add a little bit somebody in here. So you see the technique that I'm doing with this is really the same. I am adding more of the alloy to this. Then I added up the metallic for the last one. And the main reason is because it chunks rather than just spreads all out. If you add metallic mix it of it tends to blend with your alcohol ink and attempts to just overtake the entire thing. But the nice thing with the alloys is because they are designed to kind of chunk together. You don't have it taking over your whole project. Was handled a little bit more inherit, little bit darker in the center of the piece. And you see I always add just a drop of the isopropyl alcohol when I add things to it because I want to make sure that it spreads around nice and evenly. Otherwise it ends up getting a little bit thick too quickly for me. A little bit down there. Let's get some of these dark areas. Blend it out a little bit. We'll look at that like almost a bright blue in there. And just like last time I'm going from both sides. Just blending it all out. I want to have a nice variety of dark sections. Next variety of light sections end up having a little white bit in there which is completely not planned, but I'm going to leave it there as long as the alcohol links don't blend into it. But I've been trying to blend it into it at the beginning and it just didn't want to, so we'll just leave it there. All right. So I think I'm going to let this completely dry and then I will make a card out of it and I will show you what I did. Alright, so this is what he did with this one and put it on a Tilly color matte or card. Am I would've liked to have something a little bit more on the blue side, but I didn't have any cards doc output. And that is okay. But you see how we've got chunks of the gold through it. And the difference between the two here, this one's just got the rose gold metallic. So you see when I tilt it, there's some Mattel if within the alcohol ink. But this one here has the chunks rate in it, which is why it's so cool to have something. So you can choose what look, you're going for. 8. How to use the Alcohol Ink Lift Pad : All right, so now we're going to use the alcohol lift ink pad and then we're also gonna do a technique with the real thinker. So for the pad, what I'm going to do now this is some alcohol ink on some UCO. It's just the denim and the egg plant. But I used the tool that I use rate at the very first section. So it had a little bit of green on it, so you'll see some bits of green. So I've got a stamp platform here that's just going to help give me some control, little bit more control. You don't necessarily have to have a stamp platform, but if by chance you don't get a perfect lift, this will ensure that you can go back and try it again. So I've taken my left pad and I've inked my stamp thoroughly. I'm going to close it and make sure that I press it really, really well. Ensuring that I get every part of the stamp, especially the center of those flowers, those tend to be the hardest to get. So you don't see a whole lot now I'm going to take this out. It has a few seconds to sit, so I don't necessarily need it to be super, super quick. What I am going to do is I'm going to put a new piece of paper in here. This is just playing cards, doc, all of the alcohol ink that this ink has lifted up. I've now pressing and stamping onto a piece of card stock. So this technique gives you two different cards in one. So that's the alcohol ink that I have lifted. I'm going to move this out of the way. And now I'll show you what happens with this. So I'm going to take a piece of paper towel. I'm just going to press it and bought it. Then I'm going to move it, press it and blooded again. We're gonna do this a couple times. We want to try to take some of the excess of that lift Inca way. We do not want to start rubbing it and smearing it around until we know that we have most of the excess away. When I am doing this, I'm getting a new piece of my paper towel. Once I don't get a whole lot of color on my paper towel, then I can go and I can lift or just rub all the excess away. So different steps will do different things. This particular one I got a whole lot of white area, but that's exactly what I was going for. And this just shows you what the UBO does so the ink doesn't sink rate into it. So I'm able to lift it and get a silhouette like that. Though I can make a card just like this. I can add some stakeholders that need to add a little bit of sparkle or some charms or whatnot. Or I could leave it just as is. But then I also have a second card here that I can create with this image. Pretty cool. So the other thing I can do is just use the lift inquiry anchor. So this is the linker for the stamp pad and I can use it with a foam blending tool. So this is the tool that I use right at the very beginning. Instead of using felt, I'm using the foam and typically this is used with distress ink, but for this particular technique, I can use this foam and I just save my foams and reuse them over and over again. So you don't necessarily need to have one foam and then toss it away. So I'm going to use a stencil. Put it on top of my piece. Now this is the piece that I did in the very first section. So this is also UFO. And I'm going to just stamp the tool with the foam with the lift ink refill on it. So I did get a whole lot of the refill or I put a lot of it onto here so I can tell that it's really quite wet. Once I feel that everything that I want to cover it is covered, I'm going to lift that up. I'm going to take a new piece of paper towel. I'm going to blot it a couple times first. Even that's kinda cool, isn't it? Once I think I've got most of the excess blotted out, I'm going to take a clean part of the paper towel and I can rub it. If you rub it too soon, you're going to end up smearing the excess ink so you don't wanna do that. There's something I wanted to show you with this. So this particular one, I use some of the metallic. So you'll see on some of the places where I lifted ink, There's still some metallic it does not let the Metallica only lifts the alcohol ink. So the metallic will still be there. So you may want the metallic there. You may not want them to tell us there, but just something to keep in mind that if you don't want to have lots of metallic, then makes sure that you're doing an alcohol ink background without any metallic. But a cool way to use your stencils because you get a negative of what the senseless, something a little look cool to think about. So again, I keep reusing these so I have a little Ziploc bag that I put them in. They do get stained. That's totally fine. It's not going to ruin anything because we're using it to put ink on and just to lift it up so it's not going to ruin anything. And I just keep those aside. So I'll let this completely dry and then I'll show you what I did with them. So this is how I completed the cards here. I just put a little Navy behind this one, a little bit of a green ribbon, added some stimulus to the center of the flowers. Would've loved to put like a little butterfly charm and there, but apparently I own every single BCCI ocean. Each term there is on Earth but no butterflies. And then same with this one. Just a simple Matt complementing ribbon. And I put stickers in the center of the flowers. And again, I would have loved to put a butterfly Charmin here. And we'll after I've ordered some this guy here I actually haven't done anything with because I think it's quite a busy background for a card. But I think at some point I'll make this guy out of him and I think that would be super, super cute. At some point. 9. How to use Alcohol Inks on Tiles: So another surface that is fun to work with is tiles. Don't need to do anything with them to prep. I do then clean them with some isopropyl alcohol to make sure that there's no oils or whatnot on the surface. So I'm going to first cover the background of the tile. I'm going to end up making a tile with a flower on it. So I want to make sure that background is completely covered. We're going to use my blower to blow the ink around. Trying to go for a little bit of a sky. Ish. Look here. And the cool thing about tiles, especially when you're starting out, is if you don't like what's happening, you just clear it off and start from scratch. It clears off beautifully. So you can have you're not going to be wasting a lot of paper or a lot of product while getting to know how to use alcohol, lay eggs. So I'm going to leave that for the background. If you wanted, you could have it completely covered. And I'm just going to leave the modeling colored modally looking back ground there. So now what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get my, oops, what we're going to go there. Touch of isopropyl alcohol and I'm going to blow it out. Now if I were to use my air compressor, I would have a lot more Air Force, so I would be able to blow it out a little bit more, but that's totally fine. And I love how the pink in the sky color kind of blend together. They're a little bit, I'm going to leave it without the isopropyl alcohol. And I could have done it right in the center. I wanted to have it so that that's part of the flower was a little bit off. So now let's do some purple tiles are also a fun thing to do for Christmas. I've seen lots of really neat Christmas tiles that people have done. But the alcohol moves really beautifully on it. So yeah, it's just a great surface, especially when you're starting out and you don't want to be wasting a lot of paper, whatever, it's a great way to get to know your product. So I'm going to choose, well, let's do a yellow in the center here. Usually I don't do well, that's kind of a dark yellow. Usually I don't go with yellows because it's not my favorite color. But what I want the center of that to pop a little bit. There we go. And then if you wanted to add a little texture, these are little dental tools and I'll link in the supply list where you can get them. But what you can do, I'm just gonna put a little bit on my surface here. You can dip the dental tool in here. And then I get a little bit of texture in the center of the flower. Now, depending on how much alcohol ion I have on here, if I have only a tiny little bit of alcohol on here, I can control and get a little bit less texture to it. But it's a neat way to add some texture. I could even add some texture to the background if I wanted to. Now I have some yellow on here from being in here, so I'm getting a little bit of yellow there. But if you wanted to add a little bit of a polka dotted background or say you were doing kind of under the ocean theme or whatever, you could do little bubbles. But there you go. Just a cute little surface to work on. And it dries super, super quick. So some of these thicker areas are still wet, but it dries really quite quick. So it is a great surface to be playing and practicing on. 10. Creating with Alcohol Pearls: Another thing that we have in the alcohol link line, our alcohol pearls. Now these weren't very similar to metallics, as in they have a mica in them. There is a metal ball in there. And when you shake them up, you want to make sure that you hear that because you want all the Omega two mixed in with the ink. The thing with these mycosis, they are colored so there'll be pink Micah in the pink one, blue and the blue, that sort of thing. So these alcoholic pearls work on really all of the surfaces. So they'll work on the UPA, the work on the glossy card stock. But my favorite surface to use them on is this black alcohol ink card stock. Now it's a matte black. It's just beautiful. It feels like suede. Some people like to use it just as is and not even use it with the alcohol inks. But I just want to show you what these guys look like when you use them. So let's make them wrong. And I'm using them all on their own right now. But you can absolutely use them with some of the regular alcohol inks, like for instance, that probably actually work better with I haven't used them in a while. Really work better with the alcohol simply because it will help spread them around a little bit more. Think of the purple, Let's add a little bit of pink. Yeah, That works much better. Let's see how you get a little bit. This is still still wet, but there's some sparkle in with it from, and that is from the mica in the alcohol ink pearls. So let's put some pink and some of those, but some blue. Now, just like the metallics, these can overpower things really, really quickly. So you definitely want to use in moderation until you get to know them, to know how much you should use. Spread that around a little bit that's still wet this year is glossy card stock, so it does soak into it. So you'll notice when I put my drops, they stayed there fairly. Didn't really move around on their own and that's because they seep rate into it. But you can see there is mica in there. So they get quite sparkly where you've put the pearls. So leave those aside because that was just to show you that you can use them on that surface. On the black doesn't really work super well to using regular alcohol lengths. And that's because they are translucent. So once you put them on there and spread it around, you don't see anything. Now, if I were to take it and then say add some of the white, mix it up with it. I've got some dried stuff on the top of this one here that would certainly bring out some of the color. Should have had these all open at once. So now you'll see a little bit of that purple because the white is there for the purple to be seen. But here's what I love to do with the so I'm going to add some of my alcohol here. And we're going to spread them around on the black. Now because they are an ink, an alcohol ink with mica in there, they're going to show up beautifully on this black, even when they're dry. So it's gonna kinda look a little bit almost like a Northern Lights night sky. A little bit. Simply because of the microbes within these alcoholics here. And you'll notice with this one, I'm not necessarily adding the regular alcohol ink in with it. And that's mainly because it is there's color in with the micas here already, so I don't necessarily need to add more color. I can just use the the pearls. It's almost like having the alcohol ink and the white or the Mix it ever whatever. All right. Together. Because they just work well and the micas make them stand out a little bit so you can actually see them on here. Now you'll notice I'm only doing this site and that's because I have a plan for this. So I'm not even going to put the alcohol inks down here because I'm going to cover that with a dicot anyways. So I might as well just leave it as it is. And this comes in, they come in different colors. So I'm actually just going to add some of the green one here. See if that makes my plan come together. It may or may not. So you'll notice that they move, but they don't like the there's a limit to where they move. Um, I could take it and I could go do a line with it if I wanted to. Add a little bit of alcohol tail deal flow a little bit. Let's try that one. There. Here we go. I'm just going to leave it like that, let it dry. But you can see that even with the kinda looks like a hot mess right now, but it'll look better once I'm done. But you can see with just the black card stock, it does absorb rate into it. But with those micas in the alcohol ink pearls, it, you can see the colors without having to add and mix it up with it. So I'm going to let that dry. Then I'm going to make a sample and I'll show you what this is, what I did with this one here. Now, this is a dicot and I like dicots because they tend to give a little bit of extra dimension. It could have been a stamp over top as well easily and that would have given the same look to it. But like I said, I like the extra dimension that dies tend to give. But that's where I went with that one. And you might have caught that when I happened to mention northern lights. Well, I was demoing it. But yeah. And there's really, really pretty how the micas in the alcoholic pearls just give a shimmer to the entire thing. And there we go. 11. How to create a Marble Background Effect with Alcohol Inks: All right, so for the last technique, we're going to do some marbling with watercolor paper and alcoholics. So I'm going to drop some alcohol ink on the surface of the water. And I'm using the same colors as I used with the tile little toothpick here. I can swirl it around if I want. It doesn't work exactly the same way as when you do actual watercolor or sorry, actual marbling paints. So I get does go into the water a little bit. I've got about an inch of water in there and you just need to make sure that your container is a little bit bigger than your piece of paper. I'm going to drop it right in there. And there we go. And that's what the back looks like. So you can choose which side you want to use. Now I'm gonna do another one and this time I'm going to add some metallic to it because I actually haven't tried it with adding metallics. I'm just kinda curious what is going to happen with it. So what's exactly the same as we did for the first one? And I've got some gold here. I've already mixed it together. And let's see what happens where you can tell it definitely doesn't go into the I was worried that I was going to go onto the surface and take over the entire thing, but it clearly doesn't. So let's break some of that up. Who I like, how it breaks up on the surface though. Very cool. All right, and let's get our other piece. And if that one, Here we go. So I did still stay quite chunky, the metallic on the top there. But there we go. So we're going to let those dry and I'll show you what I do with them when they're dry. All right, so this is what I ended up doing with these two backgrounds. So this one, I just took a very simple silhouette, dicot and I cut it in white and layered on top, put a blue background because there's some blue in there popping through to just make that pop a little bit more. This one here I chose to stamp and Emboss this rose with golden bossing powder and ended up not being a great choice because since the background is so busy, you end up losing a lot of the detail of the stamp. So something else would have been better. And I might actually just try do some flour silhouette dicots and just put it on the front end of that and see how it ends up turning out. So I think I'm going to do that and I will pop back once that sometime back I did put some white dicots over top of it and I like it much better, but I actually really like the gold pot behind it as well. I think that really makes the white silhouettes pop. So those are the two cards with the marble background. 12. Creating Alcohol Ink Art on a Wood Panel: So now we're going to use a wood panel and create some artwork. So I use this enamel paint to protect my wood panel. If I did it read on the wood, the alcohol ink would just absorbed rate in. So I want to make sure to cover all of the edges and sides fully. And I usually put a few layers of this on. I want to make sure it's all sealed and protected and it just gives me a nice white base to work with. And the easiest way to get a nice smooth coat is a roller. You could use a brush, but you'd then you're going to run the risk of having brushstrokes all the way through it. By using a ruler, you don't get any brushstrokes. You get a little bit of dimpling just from the paint. But that doesn't necessarily affect the alcohol groups as much. Once you've got a COVID on there, you can let it dry. And then like I said, add a couple extra ones, make sure it's all completely covered so that you've got it Nice protected wood panel. And this one that I'm working on is an eight by eight wood panel. Simply so that it would take a little bit less time to do it on camera. You could use as big or small as possible or as, as you'd like. The other thing, I'm doing it right on the wood panel with with it being sealed with the paint. You could if you want, do your artwork on UFO and then glue it to the panel. So I'm using Rosewood alcohol ink. And if I remember correctly, it was foundry alloys. If it was not that I will put it in the description. I'm going to use the alcohol inks and put the alloy rate on top and I'm using my blower to blow it around. And I do have this video done at double speed just for time management. You get the gist of what I'm doing. You don't necessarily need to see it in real time to understand that. As I said before, I tend to always work from the top left to the bottom right. So I'm doing that again. And once again, you could use different colors. So like several different colors to create this piece, I tend to prefer using one color and then one either mixed motive or alloy is just my personal preference. But once again, I'm making sure to have some dark areas and light areas. And I really love how the alcohol ain't kinda feeds into the paint. It does stain more than it would say if you were working on U-boat, you'll notice that once it's dried, once I read rehydrated with the isopropyl alcohol, it doesn't really move too much. I can feed it a little bit, but there will still be some of the alcohol ink there. So you just have to be mindful of that when you are working on it. You want to make sure that you don't put alcohol ink or you don't want it. Only put it where you're absolutely certain you want to have some color. And then I'm actually letting the alcohol ink flow over the sides. And once it gets to the point where I'm done the front of it, I will take a brush and make sure that the alcohol link kinda flows a little bit more evenly down the sides. I want to have it looking nice around the edges as well and not just the front. The other thing you could do if you wanted was once this is completely done and completely dried, you could take your paint that you used to base coat the wood panel and you can paint over top of it if you wanted. But I like having the front colors wind over the sides. And you'll note is this one I did. I didn't just do the top left to the bottom right. I added some more on the sides. I wanted to have a little bit of that done as well. But like I said, it's your artwork. There is no right or wrong. You do it how you like it. And if you wanted to have the entire piece completely covered, that's absolutely okay too. You can absolutely do that. And again, I'm using my alcohol ink blower. You could use a compressor, you could use canned air for this. It would work as well. So right now I've got a little bit that isopropyl alcohol and I'm taking a little bit of the Rosewood and I'm just brushing and filling in the areas on the side of the panel that the alcohol ink missed when it was running over it. I want to make sure to do that on all four sides. Sometimes the patterns the alcohol ink makes when it runs down, it is neat, but it may not be the look that you're going for. If you want to make sure that everything is completely how you like it before you end up selling your artwork. And I add the isopropyl alcohol to it just to thin the color out a little bit and to make it flow a little bit better, it doesn't the parts that I'm painting, they don't need to be dark. They can be a little bit lighter, just like the front of the piece has some darker areas and lighter areas. But you definitely want to make sure that parts that should be red or whatever color you are working on are covered. And this is just an inexpensive brush from the dollar store. You wouldn't want to use inexpensive brush with this because we're just, like I said, we're just filling in the side so you don't necessarily want to ruin a brush with some alcohol. And then if you want a brush or want to clean your brush after you're done, you can just clean it with the isopropyl alcohol as well. I love how the red and the gold color together. And it looks quite rich looking. And with this particular alloy, again, I love how you get the gold, but you also get a little bit of a silver tone to it as well. This is quite similar for it when you're working with the alcohol on UCO, the way it flows on it. But like I said, it does stain it so you can't completely remove the alcohol if it's in a spot that you don't like, you can fade it a little bit, but you can't completely remove it. And then I use the isopropyl alcohol just to feed some of the colors, just to make it a little bit lighter, is to create a little bit more depth there. So once your piece is completely finished, these are the two sprays you're going to use. You need to use the Kamar varnish first to seal it in. It's the only aerosol spray that I know of that is not going to affect your alcohol inks. So a few light coats just to seal it in. No heavy coats because it will affect your alcohol ink if you use a heavy coat and then you can use a UV resist spray. I happen to have Matt, but it's also available in glossy and you can do a few light coats of that. Once you've got it sealed that way, you can spray it with whatever you want or you can cover it in resin. 13. How to Store your Alcohol Inks: Storing alcohol inks. So this is how I have my alcohol being stored. You can get these alcohol ink storage tins. I have blues and greens and Guang, pinks and reds and another neutrals, oranges and yellows. And then I have my metallics and my pearls. And you'll see I took a little bit of the ink and I put it on some glossy card stock and then just punched a hole with a whole bunch and glued it to the top. So rate from the top of my 10 I can see exactly what colors I have, what tones, what not. And then just so I remember exactly where I what I took out of there in case I take one and I'm using it. I know exactly what color is missing, so and I also know where it belongs. So if you find, you're getting a fairly large collection, this is a great way to store them. They do have a little lock on the side, so I end up storing them on their sides because they fit on my shelf perfectly like that. But just so you know that there is a storage container for them, which makes it much easier to organize and store. 14. Thank you for joining me : Thank you so much for joining me for alcohol, ink tips, tricks and techniques. If you left with any questions, please reach out and ask. I'm happy to help. And if you wouldn't mind taking a moment to review the course, it lets me know if you're finding value in what I'm teaching you. And it also let other people know whether there's value in the course that they're considering. Thank you.