alcohol ink

Colouring on Metal – Part 1

I recently bought video course about colouring on metal. The main reason was to learn more about flame painting  but there are some other very exciting tutorials in it too! One that really appealed to me was using alcohol ink to add colour and extra sheen to metal elements.  

I researched where I could buy alcohol ink and good old Hobbycraft have them! Perfect or what? I had hobby craft vouchers to use which I received as part of the DHL Chinese Whispers blogging challenge. I don’t really shop at hobby craft for jewellery or lapidary supplies so I had no idea how to spend them, I was just going to go to the shop and browse.

But this worked out just right!   Well it almost didn’t because at Hobbycraft Peterborough they had no idea that they had these inks in stock! We asked a really helpful young man who did not know so he checked with a manager and was told they didn’t have them. We could order them online  and come back another day to pick them up so the vouchers could be used.  Great! Two trips to Peterborough for something that might just be an experiment! Oh well!  We thought we would have a browse before heading home.

colouring on metal - alcohol ink
On grey, dismal days like today a little bit of colour can really cheer one up!

Guess what was on a shelf in the papercrafts section, on display in an aisle in full view of the check-out and customer services counter? A whole section of Tim Holtz Products including Adirondack Alcohol Inks!  The same helpful and very pleasant young man was on the till and he looked embarrassed. Not his fault because one of his seniors told him they didn’t have any!  And then the lady on the customer services desk came across (maybe the person he checked with) and simply said “but you need them for metal, these are for paper.”  Me “They work on metals too” She “I use them for papercrafts” And presumably never bothered to read what else the inks could be used for. So the helpful young man read out the label which says metal along with various other surfaces! (I hope he didn’t get into trouble for being so helpful!) I am very grateful to DHL and Hobbycaft for the vouchers but the store experience wasn’t exactly fantastic! Especially as we had to do the finding, they were sending us home!

As the title says this is Part 1 of this experiment so there will be more to show in future but this was just to see what alcohol ink can do as I had never used it before ! The rain outside made the colourful bottles look so appealing I just HAD to have a play!  Painted two Tibetan Silver hearts with “cranberry” ink and used “sunshine yellow” on one so its got a brass look. Then buffed it with fine steel wool.  I think this is going to be a lot of fun!

painted hearts

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