That's Crafty!: Alcohol Inks by Ingrid Vichova

We are delighted to announce that our last guest designer for the year is Ingrid Vichova.

Hi everyone!

Ingrid here today with a little inspiration for your daily craft play.

I am big fan of abstract art and love to play and experiment. I hope you will enjoy my little tutorial for an experimental play with alcohol inks.

You will need some yupo paper which is a synthetic non-porous material that will allow the inks to slide on top creating fun patterns rather than seep into it. I resisted buying alcohol inks for a while, but I watched a few YouTube videos and absolutely fell in love with a few techniques that I was itching to try out myself. After a few experiments, I have a few tips to share myself. Let's get to it...

I used an A5 size sheets of yupo paper. I taped them onto my chipboard so that I could move the board, as and when needed, but my paper stayed in place and not flapping about when using a heat tool or blowing on it.

Step-by-step:

Step 1: Tape yupo paper to the board on the very top and bottom of the sheet.

Step 2: Drip alcohol or Alcohol Blending Solution onto the paper.

Step 3: Add a few drops of your chosen colours of alcohol inks and use a hairdryer or your heat gun from high up whilst moving the board to move the ink until it is dry.

Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 and this time blow into the puddles of inky goodness to create splatters until it is all dried up. Use a Spritzing Tool to spread the last tiny drops of alcohol or to move more ink around until satisfied. Have a good play until you are happy with the background.

Step 5: Create splatters using alcohol and brush (these will dilute the ink on the background so be as sparing or as liberal as you like) and flick the tip of the alcohol ink bottle with your finger to make coloured splatters on top.

I bet you anything you will not be able to resist making another background like this with other colours. Don't be afraid to combine secondary colours to create your own neutral browns and greys.. let the magic happen and colours to mix. If you don't like it.. just wipe it off with some alcohol! Simple!

Here are a few samples I made...

And a few close ups…

I loved them as they were, but I can never leave a thing alone. I added some highlights and doodling with my white Signo pen. It just glides over the patterns! I could have carried on and thought how lovely my cards would be using these as backgrounds or as die cut embellishments, art journal pages or similar, but couldn't bring myself to cut them up. I took a few pics of what they look like as a small works of art to display...

You could also pop them in a smaller black frame for a real statement. The possibilities are endless! I hope you are feeling inspired to play!

Thank you for having me and I will be back next week with more fun projects.

All the best

Ingrid xxx