Sunday 25 November 2012

Crafty Question: Acrylic Blocks and Ink

I was asked this several times, and I thought I'd do a post about it for everyone to benefit :)

Hey can you also tell me which inks work best with these clear stamps? and is it necessary to mount them on a block?

You can do a lot of things with them without the block, the block gives you a backing to apply the pressure and make the imprint. :) Otherwise let's say you stamped with your palm or fingers, you'd either miss some areas, or your stamp would move and it would blur. It's great to try for backgrounds and textures, but I'd opt to have an acyrlic block for let's say fine text and sentiments.

As far as the inks go, pigment inks are great and there are MANY brands and makes out there! If you want to use them for everyday stamping with color, pigments are awesome. You need to know what you're wanting to do so you can use the ink accordingly! Pigment inks stay wet longer so they're fab if you want to use clear embossing powder to heat emboss with. Pigment inks, because of their water based composition, they will dwell into the fibers or granules of paper and may bleed or blot.

If you plan to layer with other media, ie want to use paints, color pencils, markers and such for mixed media, you want to go for oil based archival inks, they dry super fast. And as the name suggests, they're good for documenting and are long lasting.

A note, pigment inks will bleed if used with other water based inks. They're great for lighter background surfaces and are not suggested for slick/smooth surfaces such as glass, acrylic, plastic, foil and so forth.

Archival inks, because they dry super fast are great with the above! AND they won't wash out. :)
Hope this helps!
 

5 comments:

  1. phew! Such a relief Varah! Now i get the difference :D thank youuu! <3

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  2. Thanks A LOT for this :) perhaps you can give examples of brands for diff types of inks for starters like myself? :)

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  3. Thanks alot Varah.
    I use Staz-on inks for permenant results, and distress inks to stamp on cards and in my smash book. I think staz on has more powerful blackness in its ink. I use pigment inks by Studio G, and find them pretty good.
    thanks alot for your post. Thats really helpful. I did not know about bleed effects.. So yea, that helped. *hugs*
    Khadija Farooqui.

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    1. Khadija StazOn is categorized as archival ink, hence the vivid and bold impressions it makes. It's super fast to dry and is solvent based. This allows it to be used on all sorts of surfaces and will work well for your mixed media. Studio G pigment inkpads are awesome, I use them for my colored stamping projects :)

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  4. Hi...wonderful blog and tutorials=)
    I am new to all this and i was wondering if i can get an idea where to get crafting supplies as a starter...ne suggestions?

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