A different sort of Ink Blending Brush

Some of you may have seen the hype around the Picket Fence Life Changing Brushes- and from the name they clearly think they're going to be the best thing since sliced bread.
 I did see them demoed by Jennifer McGuire in a video recently, and they seemed to do a great job of soft blending. But the price is Eye watering!

That equates to roughly £40 over here, and I don't think they are actually available in the UK yet.
 However, I came across a thread about them on SCS- Splitcoast Stampers- in which a number of people said they were no different from the sets of Professional Make Up Brushes you could get on Amazon & E-bay for a few quid. The pic top left is of the actual PF brushes. This pic is my set of Make Up Brushes ordered off E-Bay.
Similar much?
 So, in the interests of saving you money, I decided to give them a go. My set cost me £7.99 but when I went to get a link for you, I see they've gone up to £12.99, and I only ordered mine last Friday. Interestingly, some of the American ladies were saying they had seen just this happening, as sellers had obviously realised that crafters were jumping on them smartish.
 The link I have given goes to the search results page, and if you scroll down a little, there are still a lot on offer around the same price I paid. And the few sets on Amazon are a lot more expensive.
 So, quality.
 They are a really super-soft brush, and feel very smooth. There is a wide selection of sizes, from a very small round one you get two of, up to a quite large round one.So 7 in this shape, as you get two of the smallest.

You also get three sizes of a thin, narrow brush too- I can see that being really useful if you wanted to apply colour into a narrow space.

I have to say that in trying them out, I didn't get any problem at all with shedding hairs. Not one.
 The handles are a nice soft black rubber feel where you hold it, and I have to be totally honest and say the rest of the plastic handle does seem as though it could break easily with too much pressure, but as you will see, that actually shouldn't happen.

Now I'll show you my trial and error, along with the results. At first I could only get a blotchy application. I dabbed the second largest brush on my Distress Inkpad, and dabbed it off on the glass mat first, then started in from the edge. As you can see I got quite a lot of ink at the edge, before it started to fade out. But I will say the fading out goes on for a long time, putting a very pale coat on the cardstock.

So I moved around the cardstock, getting very similar results, and I'm starting to think these are not going to do the job at all. I could get really light applications, but not right from the start.

Here I've flipped the cardstock over, and tried again. This time with way more success, as I realised the secret to these is to hold the black part of the handle in your fingers, and to not put any pressure on the head of the brush. Which means it shouldn't snap.
 I'd been applying pressure by sort of leaning onto the brush part.

This time using Oxides, and I got a lovely pale, smooth application of colour.

Switching over to red.
It has been said that all you need to do to clean the ink off is to wipe them over a Microfibre cloth, but to be honest, I found that still left some ink behind. I think you probably need to scrub them back & forth over one, rather than just wipe.

Also, you can wash them out after use.




Here I was trying out the very small round brush, and one of the narrow ones.

 
I think the small round would be good for 'spot' addition of ink. Like if you'd white heat embossed a snowflake, say, and wanted to highlight it with some blue ink.
 Very easy to get narrow streaks of colour with the thinner brush. Again, it starts out really pale, but you can build up the colour.

To sum up, these actually do a really good job of applying an extremely light coat of ink. If that's something you want to do, and struggle with sponges/regular brushes, these may well be worth a try. The most important bit to remember is to use only the lightest touch, no pressure on or towards the brush end. That will only get you a heavy application of ink, and I'm pretty sure snap the handle.

White Inkpads- The never ending search!

Right, so I know I did this sort of thing a while ago, probably a couple of years now, and since then I've acquired a few new whites. As you do.
 This is by the way of a bit of a side project, as it started out that I was going to recreate the card I made with Pauline last week, then I looked into the Black Magic technique  on Pinterest, and realised that it can also be done with White Pigment Ink, so I thought I'd do a side by side comparison, to see which gave the best effect, Gesso v Pigment Ink.
 Then I needed to see which of my whites would give the best coverage on black, and here we are with a blog post!
When I did the last try out, I think the only pads I had were the Hampton Arts, Studio G and Brilliance, besides the despised Staz-On White Opaque, and I believe I also embossed them with white detail powder. These ones are not heat embossed, so the colour is as it comes from the inkpad.

So here they are, and I've made the image extra large, so you can see them clearly. I've also split them down into rows, with a few words for each.

Tims Picket Fence shows up remarkably well I thought, but the middle two, Do-Crafts Artiste Palette and Ink It Up left a very pale imprint. The Adirondack Snowcap also produced a good print- when I realised it had a plastic cover over the inkpad!😀😀

 On the next row, I thought only the Versacolor White gave a poor image. By the way, the Colourbox Frost White is a VERY juicy pad- I had to clean off the stamp and try again, so a very light hand when inking up with this one.😁

The final two, and I did squeeze these on to the bottom of the card, as I'd used an offcut, but wanted to get them all on the same base, for comparison.
 Both these inkpads produced a good image, in my opinion. I'd be happy with either one.
 Could well be a case here of getting what you pay for, as the two worst performing were also both at the bottom end of the price range on inkpads, just a couple of pounds each.
My top three would be Memento Luxe, Brilliance Moonlight White and Colorbox Frost White,followed by Picket Fence,Hampton Arts & Studio G. Snowcap from Adirondack would be next, along with Versacolor, and finally Artists Palette and Ink It Up.

 By the way, a tip I picked up from a forum: When using a White inkpad for something like the Bokeh technique, where you are adding white ink to a still damp inked background- smoosh your white inkpad onto your craft mat, or put a little reinker on your mat, if you have it. Then work from that, thus saving your precious white inkpad from getting stained.