Creative Foundations: How to Blend Ink

Building a self-care habit is not that easy, especially a creative one. Taking the time for rest and restoration can be difficult. Our pace of life often doesn’t allow us to be able to take the time to slow down and make time for creativity.

Creative Foundations

With that in mind, I’m starting a new video series called Creative Foundations. In this series I will be exploring a variety of simple art techniques that are foundational to starting an artistic self-care habit. What is useful about these techniques is that they can build on each other. When used together, they end up being the foundation for creative mixed media art.

My hope for you is that these techniques can be part of your creative restoration. The videos are intentionally short, with techniques that can be done in less than 15 minutes. The techniques in these videos are both foundational and versatile. They can be used on many different surfaces and projects including cards, art journals, scrapbook pages and canvas art.

Technique of the Week: Ink Blending

Blending with inks is a foundational technique that can be used on a variety of projects. Even though there are a variety of ink types and brands, I’m going to talk specifically about dye ink today.

Dye ink is dye that has been fully dissolved into a liquid like water to create ink. This ink is fast drying and water soluble.  These properties make it an excellent choice for blending and allow for a variety of artistic techniques.

My favorite dye inks are the Tim Holtz Distress Inks manufactured by Ranger. I like the range of colors that these inks come in and how they have been formulated to react with water. In this week’s video, I will show you how to successfully blend these inks, on 3 different paper surfaces: smooth manila tags, watercolor paper and 130 pound smooth cardstock.

https://youtu.be/5ALmWsZfs9g

Project Supply List

• Surfaces: Ranger Craft Tags #8 Manila, Fierro Aquarelle #90 Watercolor Paper, and Creative Scrapbooker 130lb Super Stock.
• Tim Holtz Distress Inks: Squeezed Lemonade, Festive Berries, Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Mowed Lawn, Fired Brick, Wilted Violet, Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon, Cracked Pistachio, and Peacock Feathers.
• Other Materials: Tim Holtz Distress Sprayer, Ranger Mini Ink Blending Tool and Foams, Stampers Anonymous Acrylic Block, Ranger Archival Ink Jet Black Stamp Pad, Bird Stamp, and Ranger Heat It Craft Tool.

I hope that you enjoy this video and find it useful. If you have any questions on a technique or have a comment, please comment below or contact me directly.