Playing with alcohol markers

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I like to keep my eyes and hands busy playing with beautiful  colors and shapes, even when relaxing. So it is no surprise that I enjoy coloring. I found a love of coloring when I was in hospital. And I continued with it when I got home.  I bought an inexpensive medium set of alcohol markers and now you can often find me coloring pages in front of the tv. And that satisfied me. That was the extent to which I used my alcohol markers. 

I had been hearing about alcohol inks and of course, I wanted to get my hands on few bottles of spray alcohol ink. But I told myself that I had many art supplies and was not sure I would get a lot of use with these sprays as they only work on non-porous surfaces; and I love working with papers or canvases. So I only explored my alcohol ink markers coloring adult coloring books.

Then I took a class with Sara Naumann called Magic Marker Techniques (offered through Altenew's Academy). And I learned I was sitting on those alcohol markers with a myopic eye. I learned I could use my alcohol markers to create beautiful effects on my cards. 

I created this simple flower card using those alcohol makers on metallic paper. While not totally non-porous, metallic card stock was a suitable enough non-porous surface. At first I was not keen with the effect I saw. But when it dried and I looked at it with fresh eyes, I saw a graceful speckled effect. I like it! 

Here is how I achieved that look.

Supplies

Optional: Altenew's Stampwheel 2.0, Altenew's fine line brush
  1. Cut and fold an A2 (4.25"X5.5") card and set aside.

  2. Using the largest of ornate nesting dies, cut out a large piece with your black card stock
  3. Using the next smallest die (from the largest), cut out a piece with your white card stock.
  4. Affix the large black nesting cut-out to the center of the front of your card. Then affix the white nesting cut-out centered onto that black background.
  5. Prep your white card stock with an anti static medium. I use corn starch with an embossing powder tool. Stamp your selected sentiment with embossing ink. Then pour embossing powder over the ink. and shake off excess. You may need to repeat pouring powder to get complete coverage. If you find stray powder on your powder close to your design, use a fine line brush to brush stray powder away.
  6. Use your heat tool to emboss the sentiment. Cut out the sentiment.
  7. Select alcohol markers in the desired colors for your flowers and leaves. Cover large areas (at least 4"X8") with your alcohol markers onto the metallic card stock. Since the alcohol makes the markers dry quickly, you will need to work fast. After you cover a large area with your colors, immediately spritz the area with your alcohol spray. I kept my spray around 6-8" from the metallic paper. The spritzed alcohol will react to your alcohol marker and create beading and movement of the pigment on the surface of your metallic paper. This effect is more dramatic if you use an even more non-porous surface, like a craft aluminum sheet of about 0.15 millimeter thick. You can find that in craft stores. Let dry thoroughly. I did around three passes of this process to get the effect I desired.
  8. Now stamp your flowers and sentiment onto the metallic cardstock with the dried alcohol ink. Use the black permanent ink. Using the Stampwheel 2.0 helps me ensure I will have dark uniform outlines. 
  9. Use your die cutting machine and dies to cut out the flowers from the inked metallic card stock. Use scissors to cut a framing piece to go under your sentiment.
  10. Design the card layout and glue on your cut-outs. For visual interest I chose to incorporate heigh differences with foam tape for the larger flower and leaves. I also purposefully let my flower overlap the edge of the frames. I used flat double sided tape for the smaller flower and leaf. 

  11. I made the sentiment really pop by foam taping both the white sentiment cut-out onto the metallic base cut-out and in turn, foam taping the entire sentiment onto the card.
The end result was highly dimensional card with unique inking. There are many points of interest on this card. What started as a simple design in my mind turned out to be intricate in it's

subtlety. I am so happy to have dipped my toe into working with alcohol inks in more artistic ways.

If you would like to purchase this card, head on over to my EBay store VanGoghChicaStudio The link is in my link list on this blog side panel.

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