{my sweet earth}: It's An INKY Feast For the Senses!

Thursday, May 12, 2016

It's An INKY Feast For the Senses!

It was my pleasure to be one of the first people to use and review the new Susan K. Weckesser inks by Clearsnap: ColorBox Color Pop Minis

Here are the two cards I created using these inks...

And here is my review

I LOVE them! Grin

These are all the things I love about these inks:

The 1"x2" size is perfect, small enough to easily have within reach but large enough to handle most stamping jobs. The Lid fits snugly so the ink won't dry out and it does not come off when I throw them in a basket (which is my usual modus operandi).

The dye ink colors are vibrant, both when they go on and when they have dried (not always the case with some inks) and they blend beautifully with water - again without fading!

The pigment ink is thick and opaque, just the way I like it, and takes a while to dry unless you use your heat gun - all Good qualities in a pigment ink. But the Metallic ink... Swoon! Seriously, the best metallic, pigment ink I have come across to date and I have used a LOT of them! This ink dries metallic and looks like I used metallic paint - which is what I have resorted to since I have been unable to find a metallic ink that still looks like metal after it has dried - that is until NOW!

And now for the fun stuff. Because I was trying out a new product I wanted to use these inks in a few different ways and I took photos along the way so you could join in... I hope you enjoy this mini card class and a peek into my creative process.

I decided to ink the background of my cards and then use the white pigment ink to stamp right onto the dark background. For me THIS is the true test of a both a dark dye ink and a white pigment ink. will the dark ink stay dark? And will the white ink be opaque enough to show up and not fade away?

Not only did both inks pass, but I needed very little of the dark blue ink to create a wash on my background... I used way too much! Grin

Then I stamped right onto my background (after the ink had dried of course) with white and gold pigment ink. I used a masking technique to make the sun appear as if it was coming out from behind the clouds.

You can see how the pigment inks stay crisp and bright and how the background ink is still dark even after drying. Then I did something CRAZY! I used water with my white pigment ink and added a light wash to the clouds... This NEVER works for me with pigment inks and yet here it is!!

Then I stamped a whole bunch of tiny house images onto white 100lbs card stock, grabbed my water brush and started painting in the houses. I used Archival waterproof ink for this part since I knew I wanted to get my images wet. These dye inks acted like a watercolor paint and blended beautifully. They worked so well I went and grabbed another of my ColorBox dye inks in yellow, (Not the mini pops 'cuz NO yellow) and it did not work at all! So this confirms for me that all inks are NOT created equally!

And then I did the same sort of things for the second card in Red...

The rest of the photos are all about design and embellishing... using my very favorite techniques of fussy cutting and popping the images, and then using gel pens and Stickles & Liquid Pearls to enhance the card.

Then of course you have to mount the card image onto a card base...

What I love the most about these two cards is how the ink stayed dark and vibrant so the white, un-coloured houses I stamped just jump right off the page... but then that one coloured house becomes the focal point...