Alcohol ink panels

Tim Holtz and Ranger recently released new alcohol inks in a pearlized formulation. Some of these inks were included in the May Simon Says Stamp kit. Using these new inks and some inspiration from Michelle Short on the Hero Arts blog as well as Jenn Shurkus, I made some alcohol ink panels. I then used these ink panels to complete some cards I needed to celebrate the coming of babies. Please read on for how I put together these cards. 

In using alcohol ink, you need to have a glossy type of paper called Yupo to allow the inks to float on the surface of the paper instead of sink in. Tim Holtz just released silver sparkle alcohol ink cardstock which came in the mail with my Simon Says Stamp May card kit. You will also need alcohol blending solution which will help the alcohol inks to move around the paper and produce beautiful organic patterns. Using the alcohol pearl inks or the silver sparkle cardstock will give your background an extra shiny effect.

When you use alcohol inks, be prepared to allow the inks to just flow. I picked colors that wouldn’t make a muddy mess if they ended up overlapping with each other. I started by dropping some blending solution onto a piece of Yupo paper I had cut to 4×5″. I then added the medium shade of alcohol ink by dropping in random locations onto the paper. Looking at open spaces on the background, I dropped the lighter and darker shades onto the paper. Ink that collected in places, I moved around by tilting the paper or blowing onto the ink. To lighten up any areas of ink, I added some blending solution. After allowing the panels to dry a bit, I placed some reactive foil onto the paper, rubbed it with my finger and lifted which left foil pieces on the Yupo paper. While the Yupo panels were drying, I repeated the process using the silver sparkle alcohol cardstock. The gold foil wouldn’t stick to the silver sparkle cardstock so I did not end up using foil. 

After building the alcohol panels, I cut them into 1 3/4″ strips to mount onto A2 top folding card bases made from Gina K cardstock. I was going for a triptych look with three panels of varying sizes on the card base. The first panel was made by dry embossing with the Celestial stencil from the Hero Arts My Monthly Hero August 2017 kit. This embossed panel was cut down to 2 1/4″ height and mounted to the card base using Nuvo liquid adhesive. The second panel was the alcohol panel and the third (cut to 1 1/4″) was Neenah Solar White cardstock where the sentiment, welcome to the world from Hero Arts Welcome Little One stamp set, was stamped using Momento Tuxedo Black Ink. The die cut elements came from the kit and the stars are from the Altenew envelope liner die set. I stamped the images and then heat embossed them using Hero Arts gold or silver embossing powder. For the stars, I directly added VersaMark ink to a piece of scrap paper, added the embossing powder and heat set it. Then using the Altenew star dies, I die cut out stars. For both the moon and stars elements, I did multiple paper die cuts and stacked them together for added dimension. Because I was using sections of panel to make a card, I made four cards (two from each of the Yupo backgrounds) for today: two pink and two blue.

Thank you so much for joining me on the blog today. I hope this card inspired you to try out alcohol inks. Let me know in the comments below if you liked the sparkle paper or the Yupo paper backgrounds.