Alcohol inks on Mirror card

Well, the Black Hole that is Pinterest does actually yield some interesting stuff. Mind you, if I wanted to make everything I've pinned, I'd have to craft 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next couple of lifetimes!  But still it sucks me in. However, today I spotted something, pinned it, and for once had a play with the idea there and then.  So to all of you now suffering biblical plagues and floods, sorry, my bad! The thing that caught my eye, was someone using alcohol inks onto what she called shiny card, for that read mirror card. Now I just so happen to have a Really Useful Box full of that stuff- bought back when I first started card making, and did a lot of decoupage. Always made a nice backing panel. Then I discovered stamps and ink, and was lost for ever. So if you have any of this knocking around, and don't know what to do with the stuff anymore, have a look-see at this.
I've got some plain 'pillars of light' style card, and some with patterns, so I thought I'd give both a try out. The tub of felts for the blending tool by the way- I bought a pack of felt sheets off e-bay and cut my own. A pack of 10 9"x9" squares cost me £4- the contents of that tub is from one square!
By the way, I give you fair warning now, this is a picture heavy post!

 For the first one, I tried out three of the new colours- Mermaid, Indigo and Honeycomb.

 Its not easy to show on here, but the effect is really amazing, a little bit like glass paint on a mirror.

 This next one is Purple Twilight, Raspberry and SailBoat Blue.

 Because of the holographic effect of the card, you get different colours depending on the light direction.





This is one of the pieces with stars in the foil- Poppyfield (another new colour), Pesto and Sunshine Orange were used here.

 This one used Raspberry, Wild Plum and Raisin, with a tiny bit of Black Soot added at the end.

 I thought the starry background would look good in night sky colours- Purple Twilight, Raspberry, Stream, Denim and Sailboat Blue.

       This combo is  Botanical, Honeycomb,(both new) and Sunshine Orange.

                                                


This one is Indigo, Poppyfield and Terra Cotta.

  

 The four completed panels.










             






And the three with the pattern.











Now I wondered how the plain ones would look with some embossing folder texture added.




















This is a Cuttle bug folder, Gears.





The second two are Tim Holtz folders.




 As is this one.

The four sheets, all embossed. You get a lovely deep reflective colour using this card, plus the bonus of changing shades depending on the light source.

Blending Solution/Rubbing Alcohol

We all know the Tim Holtz blending solution for using with alcohol inks- and we all know its around a fiver for a 57ml bottle. A while back, some ladies were talking on SCS about using Rubbing Alcohol instead, and Kyla mentioned this stuff a few days ago,which reminded me about it.  I bought some via E-bay, although you are supposed to be able to get it from chemists, but I just got blank looks when I asked. There seems to be two strengths available, 70% and 90%. The 70% costs around a fiver for 500ml- so roughly 10 times the amount for the same price. The actual name of it is Isopropyl Alcohol, and it is one of the ingredients in Tims blending solution, the other two are other solvents. But, does it work? Actually, it works extremely well, these two pieces I did below, one with blending solution, one with the rubbing alcohol.I used the 70% one, by the way.
 Those of us of a certain age will remember the old 'Taste test' adverts between butters and margarine,so this pic uses that old standard- can you tell which is which?

The colours are slightly different, but only because its impossible to get the same blend on a felt twice!
 Both times I used Stream, Cranberry and Terracotta inks.

Wider shot with the respective blenders behind them. I used an old hair dye bottle (heaven knows I get enough of them) to put the Isopropyl in.

I was also interested to see if it would work as a blender with Alcohol based pens- Promarkers, for instance. In short, the answer is no, it doesn't. But I did discover that you can get some interesting effects with it.

You can see where I tried blending two colours together- it removes the ink rather than blends it. So then I tried stamping with it,onto a patch of card coloured with Promarker, and that does work. It removes the colour to give you a ghost like image.

        

                                         
I made a pad from a sheet of kitchen roll,then stamped the butterfly on it and then onto the Promarker coloured  bit of card. If you enlarge the picture you will see the result a bit better, I think. By the way, it does smell a bit stronger than Blending Solution, but not much, just in case that is an issue for anyone.