Thursday, May 3, 2018

Alcohol inks are awesome! How to make your own alcohol ink tutorial.

So many of you seem to be amazed that i've made my own alcohol inks so i thought that i'd share how i made mine and what i used.

First of all, i bought the little travel bottles from the dollar tree. They come in packs of 3. You can buy all snap top lidded bottles or 2 lidded and 1 spray. Then i bought the generic permanent markers from the dollar tree. They have a set of 8 primary colors and a set of 6 pastel colors. Here is a picture of what i used- Jot permanent markers. Because i wanted to make a full bottle of each color i bought 2 primary and 2 pastels packs of markers. Keep in mind, you don't have to fill the entire bottle with alcohol unless you want to. If you only fill half then you only need one marker insert.

I bought 91% alcohol at Walmart for $2.50 or so. This is a very large bottle (32 oz) and will make quite a few bottles. 

Unless you want your hands covered in ink you should wear gloves to do this.

I filled each bottle with the above alcohol and added 2 of the same colors of ink tubes from the permanent markers. You have to pull the nib out first of the marker with tweezers and add to the bottle and then take apart the marker and cut the ink tube on the inside in small pieces and add them. Let them sit until all of the ink is out and try the color. If i didn't think that the ink was dark enough,  i added regular colored ink from other pens like these. ProMarx Fashion stick pens. I am a pen hoarder, so i just used some of these pens that i had in my stash to use some up. ****Don't use the gel ones they don't seem to dissolve the same and end up stringy. I would just add the tubes of ink in after cutting them in pieces. I only added these if i needed the color to be darker and they don't have to be the perfect color to match the permanent markers just close works.

Remove all of the tubes from the bottles with tweezers after the ink is out and you are ready to go.

Note: I've also found some tie dye ink bottles at the dollar tree before and added a little of the powdered dye to make alcohol inks. I bet that if you have rit dye or something similar already you could add that but you'll have to strain it through a coffee filter or something to get rid of the salts that are added to those. Just experiment. If you find something else with dye that works,  please let me know. I may want to try it. lol

I hope that this helps all of you and enjoy!

Card examples using these inks:


5 comments:

Cara said...

Ok .. so that is very cool Deonna!
Thanks for the tutorial!
(Hugs) Cara

Faith A at Daffodil Cards said...

I admire your inventiveness Deonna, very clever. GREAT results with it too, love your card.
Faith
x

Sandra said...

What a great idea Deonna!!! i will buy some cheap markers tomorrow and try it out too!! I don't have alcohol inks sprays yet, and this would be just great!!
thanks for sharing!!

Jeanie Ellis - Scrapbookingmamaw said...

The colors are so vibrant! Beautiful and so creative. Way to go, Deonna!

Carla's Cards said...

Lovely work, thanks for sharing with Crafting from the Heart!