Playing with Alcohol Inks

 About a year before our relocation alcohol inks came into my craft stash.  On my own, I made no progress using these inks.  I had created a few backgrounds but they had not been quite what I had hoped.  Mary Polanco is a YouTube Creator (Mary Polanco Designs) and associated Facebook Group (MPD Community).  She recently posted that she would be conducting a class on the use of alcohol inks and I enrolled.  

The day of class I assembled the suggested tools which included alcohol inks, specialized, non pourus papers, a manual blower and 91% alcohol or commercially prepared blending solution.  In the past, I had added these inks to alcohol gel applied on gel plates and pressed watercolor paper or card stock onto the gel plate rather than putting the liquid ink directly onto paper and floating it around in the liquid alcohol or blending solution.  Somehow I cannot help but believe that using the gel this way gave poorer results.  Here is a sample of what I came up with as a result of the class:

The upper 4 were inks applied to the back side of photo paper and the lower 4 were created using the front side of the same Canon photo pater.  Over all the backgrounds created on the back of the photo paper were much more to my liking.  They were more difuse with special effects that arose from spraying alcohol over the images after they had dried.  I did use a less concentrated alcohol sprayu (80% rather than the 91% or 99% as was recomended.  

Many creaftspeople recommend using Yupo paper when working with alcohol inks, but that is jusst out of my price range.  Photo paper is cheeper and more readily available.  However along the way I have found some Brea Reese brand Waterproof Panels in after-market shops.  Most of the ones I have are smaller (3" x 3") and seem a bit thick for cards, even though they state on the label that they compare to Yupo.  I was very pleased with the results of adding alcohol inks to one of these panel.  

Overall the look of the Yupo knockoff was exceptional and much better than when using the photo paper, expecially on the shiny side. 

Cutting out shapes of the photo paper was easy enough.  The presentation indicated that certain plastic or synthetic papers don't cut as well as other papers.  I was able to easily cut a circle from the photo paper using a circle die.  I glued a diecut sentiment directly onto the circle cut from the photo paper.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the card created from my efforts.  Next time, T'm sure.  

Meanwhile I tried another technique also suggested in our class:  I stamped an image onto the paper.  I tried first with Versa Fine Permanent Ink in Vintage Sepia.  Because it is a slower drying ink, I attempted to speed up the drying process using a heat gun set on a low heat setting.  The pigment ink didn't completely dry and the effect whas not what I wanted, even after it was die cut.  It wasn't bad, but not what i wanted.  

The images on the left were stamped with VersaFine Pigment ink Vintage Sepia and Trinity Stamps Fern-tastic stamp and die set (top image, left) and a leaf from Altenew's Beautiful Day stamp and die set (lower left).  The  Outline is barely visible and it took a VERY long time to dry.  Even using a heat gun didn't help much and the photo papter curled quite a bit.  I have entertained the thought of using a black permanent marker to trace the lines of Sepia ink in an attempt to improve the finished product, but I have not done so at the time of this posting.  Attmept #2 using the largest pumpkin in Spellbinders Paper Arts's Charming Pumpkins clear stamp set and fussy cutting it out used a die ink (Altenew's Crisp die ink in Permanent Black) was a much better outcome.  All in all, I don't think I'll be using this technique in the future.  

During the Class Video, Mary showed an example of a card that had a cut-out section of regular card stock mounted over the alcohol ink background.  I found that MOST appealing and decided to follow her lead by cutting out some butterflies from my own stash (Spellbinders Delicate Butterflies Cutting Dies).  Alone the cut-out section looked weak.  So I went back and used the cutting dies that created the butterfly wings outline and body.  That went much better:

Of course there was the portion of the cut-out that was removed.  So I also made the butterfly wing outline for the 2 of them by cutting from the alcohol colored photo paper.  They weren't BAD, but one was so light in color that it, too looked washed out.  The other was of enough of a contrasting color value that it was as improvement.  These are seen here:

Based on this, I made other cut-outs of the basic form from one of the alcohol ink backgrounds that had bolder colors and the wing outlines from the darker brown used in the first example.  These turned out to be the best examples of this technique so far.  

 

These should compliment any sort of greeting card that I might make in the future.  

I did want to make one last attempt of die cutting photo paper colored with alcohol inks.  This time I used an intricate rose cutting die by Moments.  The most telling aspect of cutting this out was attempting to line up the cutting die to allow for the greatest amount of color on the rose pedals and the green areas for the leaves.  So the colors were somewhat off and it was a simple matter to dissolve a drop or two of the green alcohol ink into a watercolor mixing well with a few drops of the 91% alcohol mixative.  Then this could be applied onto the cut-out intensifying the colors in the best places.  This was an appropriate way to finish out the item for use on a later card also.  

The rose on the left was cut from the photo paper and re-touched with alcohol ink.  The rose on the right was cut first from green card stock then from pink card stock.  The pink die cut was trimmed to be only the pedals and buds and then that part was glued over the green die cut at the position of the flower and buds.  Either would make a lovely addition to a feminine card for many occasions.  Quite a good run on playing with Alcohol Inks!

A NOTE:  I do not receive any compensation for the items mentioned in this post.  This is merely for my personal recording and as reference to anyone who reads these posts.

 

The Twelve Snowmen of Christmas, 2024

The preparations for the 2024 Deck the Trees fundraising effort revolve around the theme of "Winter Wonderland." While the image above is only of five snowmen, a complete set of 12 have been finished for this season's Tatted Tree.  Some years ago - 2011 to be precise - Palmetto Tatters Guild's Tat Days Conference had a similar theme: "Tatting in a Winter Wonderland" which had artwork in the Logo that included a snowman.  This has prompted the idea that snowmen would be an outstanding addition to the snowflakes, angels and bells that have been gracing the Tatted Tree for the past 13 years. 

Patterns for snowmen are a bit of a challenge to find, but Sandy Scales and Barbara Foster have written  a free one that can be found on the Handy Hands Tatting site here.   It is cute and fairly straight-forward to carry out.  Another such design is Wanda Salmans' "Button-centered Tatted Snowman" written in 2015.  This one, too is simple but effective.  Monica Hahn included 2 snowmen patterns in her Dover Needlework publication entitled "Christmas Angels and other Tatting Patterns"  Debbie Arnold sells a pair of patterns in her Etsy Shop and a completed tatted snowman is available for purchase from Tatted Dreams by Jolene Etsy shop.  That was for the most part the extent of what I found.  If I missed anything, it's on me, but armed with these patterns I set to work.  

It took several months to finish them, but to date, I have completed a total of 12 snowman bodies from 3 different patterns including ones with button centers and an older pattern that I have modified so that it went together more smoothly.  If a hat was part of the pattern, such as in the Scales & Foster pattern, the over all appearance seemed rather stiff.   Some of the patterns did not include hats at all. So off to the land of images went I looking for something I could use to add whimsy to the finished products.  I found a few that I though might be suitable, printed them out, re-sized them as necessary and came up with 3 options that I thought might work.  They looked like this:

Craft foam sheets are cost effective and easy to cut through.  They are useful in many crafting applications and really fit the requirements in this case because they are light weight, solid construction and not translucent or transparent.  I traced off the reapective outlines for each design and cut each out so that I had hats that looked something like this once a hat band was added:

The hats aren't very big some smaller ribbons were in order.  Since I am confined to our camper until the house is finished, I have to rely on what craft supplies I can find in our storage lockers unless I want to purchase items I have no room for.  Each hat that was worked up ranged in size between 1 inch and 2 1/2 inches wide and no more than an inch high.  If the ribbons on hand were too wide, I cut them down to a suitable size before adding them to the craft foam "hats."  

For the most part, the items were something I could use easily, but the ribbon with the red pom-poms was going to require greater modification,  I cut off the red pom-poms for use as "buttons" reserving the white band for use on some hats themselves.  

With the 12 hats and respective bands ready to attach to the tatted snowmen, I used a fabric glue to put the parts together.

Any of the snowmen that did not have a face as part of the tatting or pattern was going to require adding sequins for eyes and mouth and something to indicate buttons on the "body."  

The hats taken from snowmen images really added a touch of fancifulness to these snowmen!  Lastly,  ribbon scarves and embelishments are added to the hats as well as hangers to mount them on the tree at the Monte Vista Hotel the first week of December.  More to follow once the date has arrived.

Moving to More Tatting

 I haven't created a post here in quite a while.  It has been quite a journey from late January to today.

The door on the art barn has been replaced thanks to our friend and HandiMan Alex.  The building is now secure and weather proof!

Meanwhile, I hit a problem in one of my tatting projects: it involved a pattern printed originally in Norwegian, I believe.  Once translated, there were some linguistic obsticals to overcome.  I am not sure if I made a mistake or if there was an error either in the pattern or in the translation, but something had to be re-arranged.  Sometimes, in cases like this, shifting emphasis to something else is beneficial.

One day I saw a Facebook post about a flower that had been created by Krystyna Mura based on a 1920 publication in German by Eleonor Endrucks.  Someone had suggested that the pattern might be suitable for a 3-D version.  Since that looked similar to other 3-D flower patterns I had tatted, noteably those of Linda S. Davies of England, I decided to divert my attention from that which was overwhelming me and give this a spin.  The resulting pattern is this one.  

The next several weeks were spent tatting the specimen, creating the pattern using Inskscape, testing and re-testing the written pattern and reaching the final outcome.

The project is known as Endrucks 1920 Project and is housed on Facebook.  It was begun in 2015 when Tatting Expert Georgia Seitz approached another Tatting Mentor known as Muskaan to tat one of the patterns pictured in the publication.

There is a particular twist on this story: Eleonore Endrucks' work is printed in an Old German Gothic font and rather than giving written patterns, the publication consists of mostly photographs of the works and a rather general description of the way she created each piece.  They are unique in their own right.  But with directions that are challenging to first read and then to carry out, the creation of each design is largely left up to anyone who can look at a photo and carry out the design.

The group was formed and was joined quickly by Ninetta Caruso, Martha Ess (who first scanned and donated the publication to the Antique Pattern Library, in the public domain), Vicky Clarke and many others.  Since that time, a wealth of patterns has sprung off the nimble fingers of many of the 2000 members.  To date, I have contributed several patterns or variations of patterns myself.  The most recent one being completed with the help of Muskaan during the past winter months.  It's titled "January Snowflake" and complete pattern can be found here.  

Since this pattern was completed, my husband and I have begun migrating our posessions to storage while we prepare to relocate nearer to our son and his family.  I do so miss my craft space which has been dismantled and tucked away for safe keeping.  But tatting is quite portable and I have good projects to keep my "crafter's urges" satisfied.