Alcohol ink Merry Christmas

This is the basic design I planned to use when I was thinking about making this batch of cards, but it is not the technique I was hoping to experiment with.

I had thought that I would use the Alcohol Lift Ink pad that has been lurking in my stash for ages along with the large Christmas stamp to leave a white sentiment in the centre of the alcohol ink background. Of course, I haven’t actually tried this before, and I made a fundamental mistake: I used glossy paper which, while it looks shiny, is actually quite absorbent and the alcohol ink does not lift off it at all. I should have used Yupo instead.

Having realised that my initial plan was a non-starter and having already made four panels, I changed tack and decided to stamp the sentiment instead.

I started by stamping it in gold ink and leaving it overnight to dry — I always have issues with pigment inks drying here, some just never seem to do it, and glossy paper doesn’t speed up the process. Luckily it dried nicely.

Next I offset the cards slightly and stamped the sentiment in black ink. I messed up the offset on one of the four cards, but that was quite fortuitous because it meant that I could cannibalise that panel and use it to die-cut a whole load of stars to use to decorate the other three.

It’s a simple design, but the vivid colours of the alcohol ink give it a lot of impact.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Visible Image – classic Christmas
• dies:
  Neat & Tangled – lucky stars
• colour:
  Ranger alcohol inks
  Jacquar Pinata alcohol ink – white
• inks:
  Ranger Archival ink pad – jet black
  Tsukineko Delicata – golden glitz
• paper and card:
  Ranger – glossy paper
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – black
  Hunkydory Matt-tastic – licquorice