Thinking About Inking

By Brett Lund

Ink plays an important part of my supplies at my craft desk. I have every type and kind of ink there is possible. I must admit, next to stamps, I have an ink addiction. Robert’s crafts carry many, many different inks. If you don’t know much about them, it can be quite overwhelming. In this post, I will explain three different techniques and the ink that I used.

In the “Just saying hello” example, if you look very close at the bird and the birdcage you will see that the bird looks like it is on the top of the cage. Notice, there are no lines over the bird. This process is known as masking. There is a tool that I love to use when I want to do masking. That tool is Frisket Film. It’s not sold in the scrapbook section. It’s actually sold in the section that the air brushes are sold. It is sold in a roll, and you can use it over and over. The concept behind Frisket Film is you stamp the image on your paper, stamp the image again on the film, cut out the image very close to the edge, place the image over your image that you are working on, and then stamp the other image over the film. When you are done peel off the little image that was placed over the original image and your stamp looks like it on the top of the image. You can also do this technique with post it notes. Although I love Frisket Film. You can use the images over and over and over.
Once the images are stamped, I use Tombow markers to color in the image. Markers are an excellent way of using ink in your projects. There are many different types of markers, as well as many colors available. My favorites are the Tombow markers. They are sold in packs as well as in open stock.

In this example, you can’t see it really well, but I took the image, used StazOn ink and stamped the image on a piece of transparency. Then on the back side of the image, I used alcohol ink markers to color the images. To adhere the image to the card, I used Vellum tape. The great thing about both StazOn ink and the Alcohol Inks, is they are good for anything nonporous (that means that it isn’t absorbed into whatever you are doing) Usually they are very glossy surfaces, such as metal, glass, plastic, glossy cardstock, and painted surfaces. The StazOn ink is permanent, so if you stamp something using it, make sure to clean it off, use StazOn ink remover.

This example was really fun to do. First I took an image and stamped it using Versa mark ink. I then sprinkled clear embossing powder on top of it, melted the powder and let it dry. I then took three distress inks, Yellow, Red, and Green and swiped them on a craft mat (a non-stick surface), spritzed the inks with water, then placed a tag on top of the ink. Funny thing about this card was I didn’t use any orange ink. The colors just mixed together. When I got the color that I liked on the tag, I dried it off using my heat gun. (Be careful, the tag will get really hot) To finish off the tag, I used flowers, clear buttons that were glued onto old book paper, and pop dots. This example of the three was my favorite to do. I really liked how it turned out.
As you can see, I have just touched the surface when it comes to ink. If you want to learn more about inks, might I offer a few suggestions: first, go into any Robert’s store and talk to any one of the associates there about inks and what ones are good for which project. They are a wealth of knowledge. Second, check blogs and YouTube for videos on how to use inks. I will be honest here; I have learned so much of my techniques this way. It’s nice because if I don’t understand a technique or project, I can always start it over and watch it again and again.
I hope this gets the creativity juices flowing, and as I always say, Happy Crafting!